Boy Loses Girl, Girl Loses Boy, Boy and Girl Lose Each Other

21. Boy Loses Girl,
22. Girl Loses Boy, and
23. Boy and Girl Lose Each Other
THE GREAT urge that slick editors have to put something a
trifle different into their magazines sometimes leads them
to take chances with their golden formulas. An editor
prints a lot of stories, very many more than any single
writer writes. So an editor can take chances. If 90 percent
of slick love stories end with the lovers in bed or about
to go to bed, and 10 percent end with the lovers wiping
tears from their eyes, there doesn't seem to be much point
in producing the latter. At the end of the discussion of
standard plots, a section will be found concerning "problem
stories." It might have been just as well to have
relegated these unsuccessful love affairs to that chapter.
But somehow, feeling that their mechanics and idiosyncrasies
might be more clearly explained when contrasted
with happy tales of amour, I decided to give them here
their own listings and space.
Of the three possibilities indicated by the chapter heading,
"boy loses girl" is the most acceptable. Considering
usual slick literary standards, a few very creditable exam.
pies have appeared on glossy pages. In doing this type of
story the intention of the writer is most often to produce
a heavy, terribly poignant tale that will tug at the reader's
heart strings till they break. The editor's purpose is, first of
all, to give the reader a change of pace, and, secondly, to
introduce a "quality" tone into his periodical. But no
smart editor hands out heartbreak without a dark shadow
of doubt being cast over his cheery, optimistic soul.
Quite often in the case of the boy losing the girl, the
story will be carried along on a comic level. When the boy
is finally turned down by his loved one, the unexpected
outcome has a certain shock value for the reader. And the
story is saved from being ironic-usually by compensating
the hero in some other way for his loss of the girl, or perhaps
by having him discover that he wasn't truly in love
with her at all. Take the following:
"I" am busy getting freshmen initiates for my fraternity.
It is the beginning of the college year and frosh week. One
freshman will be a particularly fine catch for whichever fraternity
gets him, since he is a boy millionaire and will be able
to contribute handsomely to the frat coffers. I am also deeply
smitten with the charms of a certain campus co-ed, but decide
to put off my ministrations to her till after pledge week is over.
I center my activity on snagging the millionaire student
and, in the course of pursuing him, learn that he is engaged
to, of all people, the girl of my dreams. It looks like a nasty
dilemma, but, true to the old frat, I leave the girl alone and
go after the millionaire. After we have pledged him, he tells
us that he has purchased the mortgage on a rival frat house
with the intention of foreclosing and so lessening our competition.
My frat brothers and I do not consider this quite
cricket and, in order to dissuade our new member from this
unbrotherly act, give him some very rough treatment. He
relents, but then buys the mortgage on our frat house and
holds it over our heads for the remainder of his four years at
the college. When he graduates, he presents the mortgage to
the house as a farewell gift and marries my own true love.
The predominantly feminine readership of most slick
magazines seems to account for many peculiar slick mores,
one of which concerns girls losing boys. A girl losing a
boy is damned serious business, not to be made light of.
Suppose, for instance, one were to write a story about a
bright, ambitious fellow who worked very hard at a certain
trade or profession and yet turned out a miserable failure.
What kind of a slick piece would that make for male
readers? Love is a woman's trade-even in the economic
sense-and watching some heroine fail to make the grade
is rarely an inspiring or amusing sight for the slick female
audience. But, as with cases of boys losing their beloveds,
stories dealing with the theme do occasionally creep into
the slicks. Here's one.
"I," a young American woman, work in a Paris bookstore.
I see a lady come into the shop one day inquiring after the
proprietor. When she leaves, after having failed to see him,
I follow her into the street. She tells me that during the war
she fell in love with the man who now owns the bookstore
and, eaten away by the passion, has come back to find him
again. I tell her that the man she once knew, the Resistance
fighter, the good and noble chap she loved, is no more. He has
turned into a roue and a lecher; he is no more the fai thful,
innocent young man who once had some use for sentiment.
Hearing this, she decides to return to England, her home.
The snapper is that the shop proprietor is actually still the
sweet fellow he always was. But he is now happily married to
another woman. I am working there at his bookstore only to
be near him, because I love him too. I know the pain of
unrequited love and told the lie about him to the English girl
so that she might be better able to free herself from her
yearning.
The story of the boy and girl, mutually in love, who
lose each other is not really a rarity, if one considers (as discussed
in Chapter 12) the pieces which deal with married
men and women falling in love with third parties and
giving them up in order to save their marriages. But as
for the genuine "boy" and "girl," the young uncommitted
pair losing each other, it's a phenomenon as rare as a total
solar eclipse.
Non-slick literature is, and the motion pictures of the
1930's were, full of such stories. But I came across only
one example of the plot-that is, one example which was
not incidental music to a stronger story.
A young man, an ex-soldier, is having dinner with a sophisticated
young woman whom he has known for some time. By
usual standards, she seems to have everything. She is fairly
witty, more than ordinarily bright, and pretty-in a cold,
American way. As she chatters on about this and that, the
ex-soldier's thoughts slip back to the time he spent in occupied
Japan and to the Japanese girl he fell in love with there and
who fell in love with him. He recalls all the tender details of
the idyll, and every now and then the small talk of the girl
he is with intrudes on his reminiscences. He realizes, hearing
the girl's vacuous patter, how wonderful his Japanese sweetheart
had been by comparison. He remembers the heartbreak
of having to leave her in Japan because of their decision that
the prejudice against Oriental miscegenation would be too
much to bear. The story closes on a note of infinite loneliness
and frustration.
category:plot lines
Category:romance