If endless love was a dream, then it was a dream we all shared - the dream of never dying or of travelling through time, and if anything set me apart it was not my impulses but my stubbornness, my willingness to take the dream past what had been agreed upon as the reasonable limits, to declare that this dream was not a feverish trick of the mind but was an actuality at least as real as that other, thinner, more unhappy illusion we call normal life. David Axelrod's account of his passion for Jade Butterfield takes the form of a criminal confession, with the accused pleading his case before the jury formed by the reader. The analogy is reinforced by the opening scene of the novel, in which David describes how he set fire to the Butterfield mansion, in anger over being temporarily cast out from what he considered his Garden of Eden. The place is Chicago and the year 1967. The attenuating circumstances, in the accused opinion, are the refusal of the adults to accept the reality and the depth of his feelings, his upbringing in a Communist family and the lure of the liberal and anarchic Butterfields. I would add 'temporary insanity' to the plea, only the rest of the novel made me realize that David's condition is neither temporary, nor out of his control. His actions are deliberate, calculated to prove the whole world wrong in regards to his love. A reader more familiar with pathological conditions of the mind, might describe David as a psychopat or a schizophrenic, a case of multiple personality disorder. He refuses to accept reality and keeps tilting at windmills in order to change the facts to conform to his views. If people are hurt as a result of his actions, he considers it an accident or a conspiracy of Fate to keep him away from Jade. All of us have two minds, a private one, which is usually strange, I guess, and symbolic, and a public one, a social one. Most of us stream back and forth between those two minds, drifting around in our private self and then coming forward into the public self whenever we need to. But sometimes you get a little slow making the transition, you drag out the private part of your life and people know you're doing it. They almost always catch on, knowing that someone is standing before them thinking about things that can't be shared, like the one monkey that knows where a freshwater pond is. And sometimes the public mind is such a total bummer and the private self is alive with beauty and danger and secrets and things that don't make any sense but that repeat and repeat and demand to be listened to, and you find it harder and harder to come forward. The pathway between those two states of mind suddenly seems very steep, a hell of a lot of work and not really worth it. So, why should the reader feel sympathy for David Axelrod? Why is this story one of the best descriptions of love instead of a crime thriller? I think it boils down to either personal experience of personal yearning for a feeling as strong and true, as deep as David's love for Jade. We are either nostalgic for our first time experiencing the feeling of caring more about our partner than about ourselves, or are envious that it never got that strong in our lives. David's father confesses to this emotion in a dialogue with his son: And you reminded me that I once had it and that I never felt so large and important as I did when being in love was everything. I saw you walking a foot above the earth and I remembered that was where I used to walk, for a few months. Did I do crazy things myself when I was young and my head was filled with romantic poetry and movies like Love Story or Splendor in the Grass or Sweet Bird of Youth ? I didn't burn any house down, but yeah, I was acting impulsively and irrationally, and all I have left is the memory of flight, and a stack of letters: Those letters were all that I had that wasn't invisible. They were the only tangible proof that once my heart had wings. My mentioning of the movie titles is not accidental. I believe Scott Spencer has written as powerful an account of the power of love and of its destructive potential as Elia Kazan or Tennessee Williams. I still remember Chance Wayne and Heavenly up in the lighthouse room, discussing how there are only two types of people in the world: those who have fallen in love and those who nver experienced the feeling. Same with David and Jade, it is easy to judge him as a stalker and an egotist and her as weak and impressionable, but does that really make their passion untrue?It's a once in a lifetime thing. I hate to think it but I bet it's true. It's too bad for us that our once in a lifetime happened when we were too young to handle it. Speaking of passion, the novel steers closer to the pornographic than to the erotic in the detailed descriptions of the bedroom activities of the two lovers, so it might be a turn-off for some readers. It's again a matter of taste and personal experience and should not be a criteria of dismissing the story because some parts of it are too explicit.Beside the romance between David and Jade, the novel does a decent job at analyzing love at a more mature age, both in the Axelrod and Butterfield families. Long repressed feelings and failures in communication lead to divorces. Neither the leftist insistence on traditional values, nor the permissive atitude and the drug experiments of the 'modern' family are sure recipes for success. Both sets of parents and siblings have to re-evaluate their relationship in the light of David's persistence. The final rating is irrelevant for me - the point of the story being neither escapism nor tittilation of the senses, but a provocation to consider how far you are ready to go for an intangible concept that may be only in your imagination. It asks us to choose between a cynical or delusional vision of love. I didn't 'like' David or many of his choices, I thought he was too selfish and interested in self-gratification and too little concerned about other people's opinion or feelings. I didn't get the impression that David cared to listen much to Jade or cared about her misgivings. (view spoiler)[I particularly disliked how he lashes out at other women because they are not Jade during his second term in the psychiatric hospital. (hide spoiler)]
I used to believe that there is no such thing as an endless love. After reading this book, however, I certainly know better. I can no longer be cynical about it: endless love is, indeed, possible.If two blind men play tennis, there'll be an endless love. Create an insane character like David Axelrod here, and you'll also have someone who endlessly loves.No wonder a woman's heart is broken every second. All women like endless loves with endless lovers not realizing that they can only have one with the insane. It'll be a thrill at the beginning, but when she begins to detect the deranged quality of this seemingly unending ardor of her lover, the excitement wanes and is later replaced by horror. On the other hand, if a girl picks a sane partner, he may be the best guy on the planet but he'll be incapable of a love that does not end. For as I have said, only those who are mad are capable of that. At least that is what this novel seems to say.David Axelrod, the endless lover in this story (which he himself narrates), tells us of his love for Jade Butterfield. He starts with, perhaps, an attempt at a symbolism: fire. His warm and burning love for her. For unclear reasons he is banned from the Butterfield household. This, after being a boyfriend to the uninhibited, though flat-chested Jade, and after having sex with her several times inside her own room, with Jade once enticing him to enter her through her other orifice for variety, and where once her mother, Ann, secretly watched them having sex which made her (Ann) horny. One evening, the Butterfields (spoiler alert here, stop reading!)--Jade, her parents and her two brothers--were having LSD together, believing perhaps in the adage that a family that gets high together stays together. David passes by outside, hoping to see Jade, and a brilliantly insane idea comes to him. He starts a little fire on a part of the house, planning to make it appear that he fortunately was passing by when he sees the fire, prevents a catastrophe, and be welcomed again in the house as a hero. What he didn't anticipate, however, is that the little fire would grow big fast and quickly gut the whole house. He himself almost dies a fake hero, as well as one of Jade's brothers. In the hospital, perhaps still woozy for so much smoke he had inhaled, he confesses to the criminal prank.A minor at 17, David isn't put to jail but in a mental institution. He doesn't say something is wrong with his head, after all he's the one telling the story, he just says his parents found it better to put him there than in prison. He stays there for several years pining for Jade everyday. He who could have sex 5 times straight in a single night (with Jade only, of course) wouldn't even masturbate. He is a faithful lover, the ideal for women, especially that he is a veritable sex machine.Eventually he gets out of the mental institution and is placed on parole. By this time, Mr. and Mrs. Butterfield have separated, the latter having found a younger Mrs. Butterfield-to-be. Their children have left already, including Jade, and are living their own lives elsewhere. Looking for Jade, David goes to Ann who promptly tries to seduce him. She fails. David loves Jade only.On a street, Jade's father spots David walking. He leaves his current flame and runs after the latter. David tries to escape. His pursuer becomes reckless and is ran over by a speeding taxicab. Dies instantly. David keeps this a secret. He attends the wake, sees Jade. On or about this time, he learns that even as he had been practicing celibacy like a Taoist monk for years after the fire, Jade had been promiscuous, sleeping with her professor, a fellow boarder, a lesbo, and others. Yet it all doesn't matter to this endless loverboy. David loves her still, and only her.They hook up again. On their first night after the long separation Jade is having her period. She bleeds mightily whenever she's menstruating. But small things like this do not matter to the endless lover. David licks her with gusto, like it's strawberry syrup running between her legs, takes her every which way with his pecker that goes harder after each ejaculation. He bursts into tears while making love, the salty droplets of his tears mixing with the blood smeared on his face. Oh what a fella! Handsome, young, doesn't get soft where it counts, gets harder where other men would fall asleep, loves only one, faithful even in his thoughts, faithful even if his lover plays around, sensitive (cries while having sex marathons; cries while looking at his lover's pictures), will burn houses, violate parole regulations, do crime just to be with his love."From the time I learned to love Jade...there was nothing in my life that wasn't alive with meaning, that wasn't capable of suggesting weird and hidden significances, that didn't carry with it the undertaste of what for lack of anything better to call it I'll call The Infinite."--David Axelrod.
What do You think about Endless Love (2003)?
I have always loved this book. A nice primer on love and sex. It's a great portrait of obsession. Mesmerizing prose.I remember getting a scornful look from Mrs. Bendick for passing it around freshman English when we were supposed to be discussing the similarities/differences of "Romeo vs. Juliet" and "West Side Story." How could I not share that crazed, blood-soaked lovemaking scene with everyone? So much more interesting than Rita Moreno dancing on rooftops!I try to read it every couple of years. I also try to avoid the movie (and that horrible song) every day of my life.
—steffie
man, this book. this book! this is the second intense reading experience I've had in a row. do you like "intense reading experiences"... and by that I mean a narrative that unspools from one feverish narrator and that deals primarily with escalated, deeply emotional highs & lows? if you do, then this is your book. the book is all David Axelrod, all the time. that boy has the fever, for real.it doesn't start off in an escalated state. one of the most striking things about the novel is how much time it takes to get to that place. sure, David has just been released from the cushy mental institution Rockville for burning his girlfriend Jade's house down around her and her family... but he's a thoughtful lad. Endless Love spends much of its time in moody contemplation as David makes his way back into the world. we get a lot of David coolly dissecting his parents' failing marriage; a lot about his anomie and alienation; his quiet, sneaky yearning for the vanished Jade Butterfield and his hopeless longing for her family and his equally vanished place in that family; we watch him go through the motions of his life as he hunts for the Butterfields and we see how he muses on the impact of his literally burning love. the reader eventually comes to understand David inside and out - and we don't even meet the fascinating Jade until page 265. I'm not sure if Endless Love actually switches gears into something more heightened, if there is a part that I can put a finger on where the story (and the narrator) becomes something delirious. but we get there. one moment we are reading David's nonchalant but sympathetic description of his union job and his co-workers, his meetings with his parole officer, his sadness over his mother's bitter loneliness and his deep love for his unfaithful father, and that is this book; then we get to a place where he is suddenly lashing out against an obnoxious former classmate, inserting himself into unwelcoming lives, physically attacking his mother, smashing through windows, sleeping in an abandoned doghouse... and it is still somehow, incredibly, the same book.the prose is precise although the novel is dense with detail. it is a beautiful book with so much to say about life and how lives are lived and how deep connections are forged and broken. but I would not recommend it to lovers of romantic novels - there is very little of romance in it. there is love and eros and obsession and tragedy, but this is not really a page-turner, so to speak. my understanding is that many readers disliked the outwardly diffident but internally VERY INTENSE David. that surprised me when I read those reviews because David is completely sympathetic to me; I saw a lot of myself in him and I certainly understood the obsessive nature of his love, I've been there. he actually appeared fairly reasonable to me for much of the book - well, until he suddenly wasn't. but I always understood him. I also noticed that some reviewers hated how David's love for Jade was never really explained. why exactly was he in love with her? to me that is an unanswerable question and I'm surprised that some readers search for it. I can't explain why I love someone. I can explain the things I like and love about them, the details... but explain the love itself? who can do that? I think love is one of the unexplainable things in life. it can't be quantified. so... all of that, and the starkness of David's perspective, the overall contemplative melancholy of this thick book... I think Endless Love would be a real turn-off for readers looking for exciting descriptions of passion.but we do get that exciting description of passion. and how! it starts so softly. then over 20 pages of extended love scene. the most gruesomely erotic love scene I've ever read. blood everywhere, it's like a crime scene. sweat and semen and saliva and orifices dilating and bodies stuck together and menstrual blood all over the place. I have never read anything like this scene in my life. it is amazing and horrible. but mainly amazing.that love scene, singular as it may be, is not really what I take away from the book. for me, the beauty of Endless Love is how it so carefully and clearly and even delicately explores the difference between our private selves and our public selves, our internal and our external. you move too much in one direction and that becomes eccentricity or strangeness or even madness. you move too much in the other direction and, well, I suppose you become the consummate empty professional. I guess. I wouldn't know. the external is just a prop for me; I use it and look forward to discarding it whenever I can. I feel you, David Axelrod, I really do. “I don’t know why I call the people there crazy,” I said. “It’s not what they are. It’s a habit, a way of thinking about Rockville and keeping myself separate. You know what it is? All of us have two minds, a private one, which is usually strange, I guess, and symbolic, and a public one, a social one. Most of us stream back and forth between those two minds, drifting around in our private self and then coming forward into the public self whenever we need to. But sometimes you get a little slow making the transition, you drag out the private part of your life and people know you’re doing it. They almost always catch on, knowing that someone is standing before them thinking about things that can’t be shared, like the one monkey that knows where a fresh-water pond is. And sometimes the public mind is such a total bummer and the private self is alive with beauty and danger and secrets and things that don’t make any sense but that repeat and repeat and demand to be listened to, and you find it hard and harder to come forward. The pathway between those two states of mind suddenly seems very steep, a hell of a lot of work and not really worth it. Then I think it becomes a matter of what side of the great divide you get caught on.____________YE OLDE PLACEHOLDER REVIEW(view spoiler)[Happy Valentine's Day, lovers! please don't read this book today.the novel is brilliant. amazing prose, characterization, amazing everything. review to come but for now here are some gifs.(view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)]
—mark monday
I thought this book about a boy who is obsessively in love with a girl and ends up setting her house on fire would be kinda dull and just a lot of in-love wankery, but what I didn't realize is that it actually *starts* with the house-setting-on-fire and goes from there, really delving into his messed up psyche in the aftermath of his "endless love" being disrupted. It was actually pretty good. I sometimes lose patience with dated novels, but this one's datedness didn't bother me much because it was quite gripping and intense.
—Julian
