"A Few Thousand Words About Love"
"A Few Thousand Words About Love" is a collection of memoirs reflecting on love in many forms. Unlike the Blender, this book doesn't limit itself to love in a romantic vein, although that is certainly the focus of several of the works. Instead, this book is astonishing in the width and depth of the loves it explores.

Ron Carlson writes on "Longevity" in an essay of that name:

We were twenty-one and twenty-two the year we wed, and through the years we've been able to move through the many rooms of this marriage, which primarily means my wife was strong and forgiving while I finally matured. It takes forever in this country, because we don't champion maturity. It, after all, is the enemy of the marketplace, the economy. We make a point of celebrating want here, elevating it to need, and every film, song, and book is intended to be part of the ubiquitous machinery that sends us once again to the store. I finally realized I was mature this year because I hadn't been in a store, other than the grocery, for fifteen months; that's the only test we've got left, the only rite. You stay out of the mall long enough to let the snow melt and you've made it. I don't want to get sidetracked into that entire discussion about marketeers targeting everybody age 18 to 34, because they are sure those people are immature, and how now that group has become 18 to 49, because there's a real good chance you can find the empty space in those folks too, nobody quite finished, grown up, but that discussion-- maturity in America-- is absolutely related, shot through any discussion of sustained love. It is not by mistake that all the great love songs of former eras take easy reincarnation as advertisement soundtracks; a broken heart is about need, and longing, well, that is always longing. What we should be after is a way to turn longing into longevity. Is there a chance of that? The reason I've been married this long and will be married for the whole deal is-- yes, in fact partly because my wife Elaine is utterly resourceful and large-hearted-- but the part of the credit I will take is simply this: I never imagined anything else. I actively imagined this. Even at times when I was right against the broken window of rocky times, I never saw anything but this, a marriage, and all the dear and trying vicissitudes of that terrific and muscular and vivid and intimate word: longevity
Carlson continues and relates scenes from his lifelong romance with Elaine. The memoirs in this book are very personal, and as varied as the people who have written them. The book ranges from the frustration of balancing a gay romance against caring for an elderly grandmother, from the love of an adopted daughter to how an affair with George Gershwin has echoed through generations, from the love invoked by oldtime comedy teams to a study in the things that won't heal. The editor, Mickey Perlman, has found some amazing stuff. While the cover price is a bit steep, Amazon.com is charging a price very reasonable for a book of this magnitude.

This book is currently available from Amazon.Com.

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