The novel is told by the boy, David Axelrod. It's the story of his endless love --- that is, his obsessive love, his love that looks to all the world like madness --- for Jade Butterfield. Yeah, they're teenagers, but there's nothing "puppy love" about what they feel. This is romance that rocks their souls, addicts them to one another, turns each word and touch into a moonshot.

So what does Zeffirelli --- the Italian opera director --- do? He turns the story into a homo-erotic fantasy. The big question of the book: Is David in an extreme state of love --- or is he crazy? The big question of the film: Who loves David more --- Jade or the film director?

The film was a spectacular flop. And, over the years, it sufficiently damaged the book until 'Endless Love' was, briefly, out of print. A few years ago, it returned, as a trade paperback --- large pages, large print: a format easy to love --- with one of the dumbest covers I've ever seen. No matter. It's back. 

Ever have one of those hotter-than-the-law-allows romances? Ok, did it end well? Mine too. But take your worst, most maddening love story and then multiply its real-world effect by a thousand. Which is the story of 'Endless Love'. 

Consider: At the start of the book, David has been banned from the Butterfield house for a month. One night, he cannot do without seeing Jade. So....he sets a small fire. Which turns into a larger fire. Which burns the Butterfield house down, almost killing them.

 

But let David tell it. Here is the opening of the book:

 

It was a hot, dense Chicago night. There were no clouds, no stars, no moon. The lawns looked black and the trees looked blacker; the headlights of the cars made me think of those brave lights the miners wear, up and down the choking shaft. And on that thick and ordinary August night, I set fire to a house inside of which were the people I adored more than anyone else in the world, and whose home I valued more than the home of my parents.

Before I set fire to their house I was hidden on their big wooden semicircular porch, peering into their window. I was in a state of grief. It was the agitated, snarling grief of a boy whose long rapturous story has not been understood. My feelings were raw and tender, and I watched the Butterfields through the weave of their curtains with tears of true and helpless longing in my eyes. I could see (and love) that perfect family while they went on and on with their evening without seeing me.

Wow. That is what I believe they call Writing. But is that David writing --- or is that his heart? Hard to say. Love has turned David into a poet; he's in some permanently altered state, his being totally fixed on the girl whose every breath gives him life.

I re-read the book this week as a favor for a friend. He's having love problems, and he was feeling off-balance. Here he was, a successful, organized, enviable adult --- and he was mooning like a teenager about a woman who dumped him. What, he wondered, could he read to "feel better"?

In fact, there's probably nothing you can read to cure lovesickness --- and 'Endless Love' is the proof. David admits his guilt, is shipped off to a mental hospital and ordered not to contact the Butterfields. From his point-of-view, it would be better if he were whipped. "From the moment I set the fire," he writes, "all of my life was an argument against keeping my love alive." But he will! His love will never change! He will see Jade! He will win her back! He must! He must!

This story is pitched high. Scott Spencer, a novelist of great gifts, never falters --- he turns obsession, a sick thing, into an open-ended question. We can't decide: Do we want Jade and David to get back together? If they do, can they live together in a way that's less than incendiary? Or would it be a beautiful destiny for them to consume one another, to kiss and touch and merge until they immolate?

In our daily lives, these are not questions we ask much. But oh, how we wish we did. We are burning for love, all of us --- it's the earthly grail. And so we read on with no flagging of interest, through David's self-abasement, his reversals, his seeming triumphs, an 11-year saga that exhausts almost everyone who gets near it. Except David.

I'm not giving away the ending, but I do want to share the final lines:

I am standing on a long, black stage, with a circle of light on me, which is my love for you, enduring. I have escaped --- or been expelled --- from eternity and am back in time. But I step out once more to sing this aria, this confession, this testament without end. My arms open wide, not to embrace you but to embrace the world, the mystery we are caught in. There is no orchestra, no audience; it is an empty theater in the middle of the night and all the clocks in the world are ticking. And now for this last time, I don't mind, or even ask if it is madness: I see your face, I see you, you; I see you in every seat.

Dazzling. Just dazzling. You owe it to yourself to read --- to be confronted by, to be challenged by --- 'Endless Love.'

--- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com

To buy 'Endless Love' from Amazon.com, click here.

Copyright 2006 by Head Butler Inc.