Time To Talk About "Kings Row," Girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                      What a satisfying read.  I savored all six sections by reading one a day.  But let's get to what many of you want to know.

                                         The iconic line, "Randy--where's the rest of me?." spoken by Ronald Reagan in the movie, comes directly from the book.  Yes.

                                           However, in the movie, though Drake McHugh recovers emotionally, he never learns the truth--that Dr. Gordon sadistically and unnecessarily removed his legs, to prevent him from marrying his daughter, Louise.

                                             The Gordons are the real villains in the town.  The scene where Gordon treats Willy Mackintosh's father without anesthetic, and the children hear his screams, is there.  Gordon and his wife are religious fanatics; he beats his wife and daughter, but the wife grovels to it, and, in the movie, where Drake learns the truth, and Louise goes about town destroying her father's memory to the citizenry, in the novel she is imprisoned in her home, like Cassie, and then consigned to a mental asylum in Florida.

                                            It is also hinted that The Gordons were somehow responsible for Dr. Tower not getting his job at the asylum.  Maybe each saw the evil in the other.  This led to Tower's embitterment, and the eventual murder/suicide of he and Cassie, due to years of an incestuous relationship.  It also hints Tower killed his wife, to be alone with Casssie.

                                              Benny Singer, seen being bullied only in the movie's opening segment, is a special needs person, but who functions well, when given a chance to work.  If the bullies had not gone after he and his mother, the tragedy of his death by hanging would not have occurred.  His story is one of the saddest in the book.

                                                 The one disappointment is Jamie Wakefield.  He is clearly the town's gay character, from grade school on up.  I thought there was more to his story--an escape, or suicide.
But Jamie's parents, beat him down, forcing him to work for a living in the bank run by his father, where he is chronically unhappy, but writes secret thoughts at night.  I am sure his secrets are his hatred of Kings Row.  The closest we get to Jamie's situation is a conversation between he and Drake, where the latter informs Jamie that it was OK to play childish games--doctor; "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours!"--but that now it has to stop.  Jamie says he has not done anything, and I believe him, he is so repressed.  But Drake gives a speech saying Jamie should give girls a try, to which Jamie vehemently replies he dislikes girls.   Drake fears Jamie will be caught playing with younger kids.

                                                 This is suggesting a common belief at the time--that homosexuals are child molesters. I cannot fault Drake here, because this is all he knows.  People like the hero, Parris Mitchell, are making things move forward, but only incrementally.  And Drake is acting out of a kind of compassion for Jamie.  As the town's renegade, before his leg accident, he is drawn to the outsiders.

                                                   After that, Jamie withdraws into the fabric of the town.  I wish Henry Bellamann had done more with him, but maybe he was unable.

                                                   Nevertheless, the book is panoramic, the kind of fiction that does not get written, anymore, and it is the reader's loss.  The author's hatred of his hometown of Fulton, MO, is palatable, and comes through.  And, though barely in print now, except online, "Kings Row" still speaks of ills that plague small towns today.

                                                      As Janis Ian went on to say, "The small town eyes will gape at you/In dull surprise/When payments due/Exceed accounts received, at seventeen."

                                                        Anyone with small town issues, or an interest in this literary genre, should not miss reading "Kings Row."

                                                         If only a stronger remake could be made!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!