They Live!

Brian asked why I liked Ethan Frome, since he'd not gotten much out of it in high school. Here's my [slightly edited] reply:

Ethan Frome is great because at first it just seems like a sad tale of a wretchedly repressed (and depressed) man, but then he falls in unexpectedly requited and illicit love with the housekeeper, but his ailing wife sends her away he loves and then it seems like they're going to perversely sublimate their love, or something, by sledding straight into a tree before she leaves, which nobody was expecting although it had been foreshadowed a little, but then THEY LIVE and essentially become crippled slaves of the cruel and newly vigorous wife, which somehow makes the book both more terrible and fulfilling.

I think in general I like the broad theme of the man who, stuck in a seemingly inescapable rut, rather than accepting his fate engages in wild and taboo activities that may fail to alter his fate, but still attaining a glimpse of happiness that, even if it doesn't last, he can treasure until he dies. [Note: Not sure the sex role matters, and I don't necessarly need to self-identify with the protagonist.] My affinity for this sort of story probably has a lot to do with growing up around so many socially conservative and perhaps overly moralistic people. Ethan Frome is kind of like American Beauty now that I consider it.