by Leslie Thomas
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APPEARANCE
14:35-14:45
IDENTITY
The one book turned toward the audience on the stack closest the doctor (visible in only two quick shots) is Orange Wednesday by Leslie Thomas (fuck, was this one tough to decipher). Fun fact: as a news writer, Thomas covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The Evening News.
SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE
The only review I found easily was the Kirkus review which may have been an automatic translation into English from some other language, but manages to convey that it has something to do with a British officer who looks after some moldering WWII files, and has become friends with an ex-SS, neo-Nazi, and an American, Keenor, who are going to reunify postwar Germany. The culmination is “swift and brutal” and the ending “empty and sad”. It sounds like the book is all over the place, tonally, and perhaps not the Jonathan Demme-esque romp the British release cover would have you think. Certainly, the various cover arts I’ve found online come from very different selling points, and I’m left wondering if it was a hard book to sell. The content reminds of what Catch-22 (which also appears in the Torrance collection) managed to do – balancing the comedy and tragedy of war’s insanity into a delirious chaos. Perhaps the novel’s obscurity is meant to speak to Jack Torrance’s obscurity; he wants to be a legend, like Joseph Heller, but he likely (barring the Overlook) would’ve wound up like Thomas.
The author’s big hit, The Virgin Soldiers, is described in a similar light. That was made into two Hollywood films, and concerns a love triangle, much like the one in Summer of ’42. Anyway, I really have to wonder about why this one was so buried in the image, buried by the editing, so lonely atop its stack, and so seemingly similar to the other WWII books in the various stacks. I imagine it wasn’t just for the loose connection to Pearl S. Buck. Is it possibly connected to the WEDNESDAY of the movie? That section is just under 39 minutes (26% of the film, roughly), and opens on Danny playing on the very orange carpet outside 237. Maybe someone wants to get a copy and read it and let me know if anything jumps out at you.
Next literary reference: Unidentified Boulder Books
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