By Anouchka Grose
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A e R anc eal om ist’s Guide to R 100% 50% by Anouchka Grose 25% Books Portland, Oregon & New York, New York Copyright © Anouchka Grose 2010 Originally published by Portobello Books Ltd as No More Silly Love Songs: A Realist’s Guide to Romance 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210. Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and New York, New York Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, 1700 Fourth St., Berkeley, CA 94710, www.pgw.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Grose, Anouchka. Why do fools fall in love? : a realist’s guide to romance / Anouchka Grose. — 1st U.S. ed. p. cm. “Originally published by Portobello Books Ltd as No More Silly Love Songs: A Realist’s Guide to Romance, 2010.” Includes index. ISBN 978-1-935639-00-8 1. Love. 2. Man-woman relationships—Psychological aspects. 3. Interper- sonal relations--Psychological aspects. I. Grose, Anouchka. No more silly love songs. II. Title. BF575.L8G76 2010 646.7’7—dc22 2010028601 First U.S. edition 2011 Printed in Canada Interior design by Laura Shaw www.tinhouse.com FOR MARTIN Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat. —Ben Hecht —11 — Introduction have i toldContents you l ately that i love you? —19 — What Do We Mean by ‘Love’? cry me a river — 43— Why We Love to Be Unhappy in Love crazy in love — 65— Why Love Drives Us Insane when will i be loved? —87— What to Do When You Aren’t Loved Back marry me a little —107— How to Be Dedicated without Being Dull hate that i love you —129— What’s the Relation between Love and Hate? only you —151— Is Monogamy a Good Idea? things are swingin’ —169— Are Multiple Relationships a Good Idea? boys and girls —189— Do Men and Women Behave Differently in Love? hey, that’s no way to say goodbye —207— Breaking Up Is Hard to Do —225— Acknowledgements —226— Index t would be reasonable to say that the last thing the world needs is yet another book about love. It would also be rea- I sonable to speculateIntroduction that without love there would be no books in the first place—so who’s going to quibble about one more? The human tendency to bond and fight is at the heart of our culture. We seem to have a burning need to speak, write and sing about attachment and separation: what brings people together, and what makes them break apart. The great thing about books, songs, films and poems about love is that they don’t even have to be very different. Love is such a pressing issue for humanity that the subtlest variations seem to matter. The charts are always full of records detailing the intricacies of the first six months of romance. You wanna dance with somebody, you can’t get them out of your head, you’ve really got the feeling, and so on. And then there’s the aftermath: you’re never gonna dance again, you’re leaving on a jet plane and every day you love them less and less. Extreme emotions are charmingly packaged into accessible—and often strangely addictive—blocks of sound. They’re all a bit simi- lar and a bit dissimilar. Love songs also make endless attempts to define exactly what love is: Love is Strange, Love is Like a But- terfly, Love is Noise, Love is Hell, Love is All There is, Love is My Religion, Love is a Number, Love is a Losing Game, Pain is Love, Love is a Serious Business, Love is Blue, Love is Only Love . If you can convincingly pin down something, anything about the experience of linking or unlinking yourself with another human being then you are providing a useful service. Thank you Burt Bacharach, Dolly Parton, Björn and Benny. Not to mention { 11 } WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE? Shakespeare, Proust and Barbara Cartland. As a subject, love has proved equally inspirational for poets, novelists, playwrights and film directors. Our appetite for stories about love appears to be inexhaustible. For scientists too, it’s a compelling topic. According to modern science, love has been essential to our survival and evolution as a species. Recent developments in neuroscience give us new ways of thinking about the chemical make-up of love. It’s even been suggested that we give poetry a break and try to think more seri- ously about the mechanics of the whole business. Instead of hearts and flowers we apparently need to be thinking along the lines of hormones and neurotransmitters. Humans are basically breed- ing machines that function according to their programming. An appealing member of the opposite sex (assuming we don’t possess the mythical ‘gay gene’, presumably) will trigger a chemical rush in us, inducing an attraction. If both parties are available they can act on this triggering and have sex. And if they procreate, then more chemicals will be released in order to ensure that they love their baby and each other. But as you can see from the way humans actually live, this machinery functions far from impeccably. So, are literature and lyrics just part of an illusion that blinds us to the physical realities of attraction? Are all these words written in order to describe something that is already there, or do they magic it into existence? While some writers define love as a basic human need, there are also those who see it as a product of our culture—something that was invented quite late in human devel- opment. Some historians and anthropologists would argue that love as we know it dates back to the Middle Ages, or that each period and society invents its own notion of love. What passed for love in the European courts of the eleventh century may have little to do with the practices of contemporary New Guinean tribes, or with the world of the heart so acutely described by Amy Winehouse. There’s animal attraction and then there’s what we do with it, which are not at all the same thing. { 12 } Introduction This question of natural or unnatural is brilliantly played out in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! Apparently the film was con- ceived as one long, relentless cliché about love. Any narrative ele- ment that deviated from the norm was erased in favour of what was totally generic. It’s the story of a young romantic who falls in love with a prostitute with very ‘realistic’ ideas about love. He thinks it’s the best thing about life and that you just have to do it for no reason. She thinks it’s a great way to squeeze money out of stupid, rich men. She has a confusing moment when she mistakes him for a rich man, but actually likes him, and then finds out that he’s a penniless writer. So he sets out to persuade her to love him for nothing. They stand on a roof and Ewan McGregor strikes out with a barrage of lines from famous love songs by kiss, U2, Joe Cocker, the Beatles, Dolly Parton, David Bowie, and whoever else has written a romantic number that half the world might be expected to recognize. When Satine, the prostitute (played by Nicole Kidman), finally has enough of McGregor’s warbling she fires back a line from Paul McCartney’sSilly Love Songs, to the effect that enough’s enough. McGregor’s character, Christian, is unfazed and keeps singing. And eventually it seems to work. Satine is brought round by the power of song (and cliché). But the argument has been set up: is love a sublime and mysterious force that we should submit to? Or is it part of a more pragmatic system of exchange? And, perhaps more confusingly, which is more natural and which more artificial? Is Christian following his instincts while Satine suppresses hers for financial gain? Or is it the other way round? Don’t animals mate according to the eco- nomics of attractiveness—better looks get you better stuff? And isn’t pure, unadulterated romantic love a bizarre human artifice? Satine’s objection to love songs seems to be that they make love appear one way, whereas the reality is something quite other. She’s certain that romantic love can’t last and that, if they get together, Christian will be mean to her and she’ll start drink- ing. In other words she has the idea that love is just a temporary mirage that binds you to another person and that, once bound, { 13 } WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE? you can only be unhappy. (A concept that can be biochemically backed up, if you’re so inclined.) According to Satine, the best thing to do is to use the blinding illusion to extract what you can—and then disappear. Although she is eventually unable to resist Christian’s charms, the film finishes with her dying in his arms, having just declared her love for him. Things don’t get a chance to turn sour between them and the fantasy of enduring love is sustained. The overall message of the film seems to be that love is extremely compelling, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to anything good. In fact it promises precisely nothing—that’s the point.