GWTW needs happy ending

The Boston Herald

The writing is tacky. There are too many "My darlings," and exclamation marks and phrases like "there were no longer words or thoughts, only a union beyond mind, beyond time, beyond the world."

But that's not what's wrong with "Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind." The original GWTW is 1,037 pages full of "fiddle-de-dees" and "Oh, how unfair life was!" and even tackier sentences like "She felt again the rush of helplessness, the sinking yielding, the surging tide of warmth that left her limp."

Yet for 52 years, Americans, Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Brazilians, millions of people, young and old, all over the world have been freshly intoxicated by these shop-worn, overly dramatic sentiments.

Why? Because Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize winning novel wasn't just an ordinary love story. It was a love story set against all odds. Scarlett O'Hara's world was destroyed in front of her eyes. She lost her home, her family, her friends, her pampered past and her privileged future. She was a spoiled, selfish girl who should have been undone by what happened, who should have withered and died along with the way of life she thought would always be.

But she didn't die. She survived, and survived in style. She didn't just grow, she prospered and thrived.

In 1936, when GWTW was published, the world was once again smack in the middle of a transformation. The Great Depression was still gnawing at people's heels and Roosevelt's New Deal, which was supposed to make everything better, was being called a Raw Deal. Life was hard and not getting easier.

Then along came Scarlett, a willful, headstrong, gutsy survivor. The world didn't break her. It just made her stronger. It was a subtle message, but it was there. And it was this message that elevated the book from historical romance to historical novel and made it the best-seller it still is.

Those in the know today believe that the millions who continually re-read "Gone With The Wind," the millions who have memorized entire scenes from movie, will jump at the chance to know what Paul Harvey calls "The Rest of the Story." Did Scarlett get Rhett back or did Rhett walk out of her life once and for all? That, after all, has always been the number one question.

And no doubt the book will be a big seller because people are curious. How will Alexandra Ripley, a Southern writer of historical novels, who was chosen to finish what Margaret Mitchell believed she had finished a half century ago, who studied every word of GWTW, who even wrote out whole chapters in longhand to get a feeling for how the words felt, end the story?

In just a month for $24.95 the answer will be available. Yet even Ripley is predicting, according to Life Magazine where a small excerpt appears this month, that there will be "widespread hatred of the book among devotees of the original."

Ripley is right. The book will be hated, but not solely because of what she wrote or how she wrote it, but because of what she write.

For the simple truth is that no one really wanted a sequel. What we wanted and want still is a look not into the future, but into the past, a glimpse at all that might have been.

That's the sole reason we reread the book. That's why we never tire of the movie. We come back for more because we continue to hope against hope that the past change, that what we know will happen, happen this time around.

This time Scarlett will recognize Rhett for the wonderful man he is. This time Scarlett will see that Ashley is all talk and no action, a dreamer whose life ended the day the South lost the war. This time she won't waste her life pining for a man who is so obviously wrong for her while Mr. Right is pounding at her door.

This time Rhett won't stop kissing Scarlett when he asks her to marry him. This time he won't spoil the moment with a sarcastic barb. This time he won't pretend not to care about her on the morning she is suddenly certain she loves him. This time Rhett will hear Scarlet crying out his name in her room after her fall, and go to her and say "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen. I wanted that baby and I want you, too."

This is what we all want: Rhett and Scarlett to be together. Bonnie to live. The past fixed. The missed opportunities taken. Not something new but something different.

And, of course, we want as that one final line, not "After all, tomorrow is another day," but the ending we hunger for: "And they lived happily every after."