What to read

[NotWise]

The final "love scene" in my current story will not involve any sex. Instead, the male protagonist and the two female protagonists will curl up together while he reads to them.

If you were in their position -- about to say goodbye, possibly to never see each other again -- what would you read?

My leading candidate right now is The Wind in the Willows. I know it's a 'childrens' story, but so what?

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

The final "love scene" in my current story will not involve any sex. Instead, the male protagonist and the two female protagonists will curl up together while he reads to them.

If you were in their position -- about to say goodbye, possibly to never see each other again -- what would you read?

My leading candidate right now is The Wind in the Willows. I know it's a 'childrens' story, but so what?

If you chose Wind In The Willows, consider the chapter Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. Great book no matter the age, and I love that Toad is a murderous motorist and Rat pulls at a pair of pistols like a badass

 

[NotWise]

If you chose Wind In The Willows, consider the chapter Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. Great book no matter the age, and I love that Toad is a murderous motorist and Rat pulls at a pair of pistols like a badass

Piper at the Gates of Dawn would be my choice if I went with Wind in the Willows.

 

[KeithD]

War and Peace, of course. Making the good-bye as long as possible.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Poetry, specifically poems of love, specifically EB Browning's sonnets. (OK, maybe Shakespeare's love sonnets, but definitely love poems.)

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot and King's Mountain by Muriel Rukeyser have some evocative lines to quote, if you were looking for unconventional poetry, since it is an unconventional sounding relationship.

 

[Voboy]

A children’s book does seem like an unconventional and unpretentious choice. Charlotte’s Web, Wind in the Willows...

Seems like innocence might be some of what you’re looking to capture.

 

[KeithD]

You don't think that reading a children's book in a story by people who have had sex--they have had sex, haven't they?--wouldn't be seen as creepy and hinting underage interest?

 

[Hypoxia]

Ginsberg's HOWL will set a certain mood.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Prufrock! Oh, yes. And the way the poem fades out - a good ending.

 

[NotWise]

The reading will come near the end of my story. I'm closing in on the end, but there's some stuff between here and there, so I still have time to think about it.

Maybe not as much as I think.

 

[KeithD]

No, not necessarily. It’s the ‘Porn’ vs. ‘Erotic’ discussion. Quite a few stories on Lit aren’t ‘Porn’, and I think that, for romantic stories, it is okay to contain romantic sentiment.

Not really. It's the underage discussion. But I'm not writing or reading it, so I'm not going to worry about. It just seems like it could be slipping into subtext of underage role playing and signaling.

 

[FEELINGLUCKYPUNK]

War and Peace, of course. Making the good-bye as long as possible.

Your posts always remind me of a dog licking its balls.

 

[Sara2000Z]

The final "love scene" in my current story will not involve any sex. Instead, the male protagonist and the two female protagonists will curl up together while he reads to them.

If you were in their position -- about to say goodbye, possibly to never see each other again -- what would you read?

My leading candidate right now is The Wind in the Willows. I know it's a 'childrens' story, but so what?

If you wanted to jerk some tears, what about this poem by Leo Marks, 'The Life That I Have'?? It was written for a girlfriend who had just died, so it's often used in funerals etc. Might be too much for what you're looking for?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_That_I_Have

 

[FEELINGLUCKYPUNK]

Spraking of underage, stay awat from Henry James THE TURN OF THE SCREW.

two dead lovers haunt children who act out the sex. The movie called THE INNOCENTS.

 

[Handley_Page]

Piper At The Gates Of Dawn ?
Ain't that a Pink Floyd album ?

 

[TANSTAAFL58]

What are the circumstances of the parting? Was the act of leaving "a far, far better thing..."? Was it hollow, dead, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing..."?

Staying (sort of) with a more youthful story, the end of the last story in the first Jungle Book, where Mowgli leaves the Wolf Pack for good, to join the humans still chokes me up. It has a kind of finality that is very powerful.

Poetry seems appropriate. " My Love is like a Red, Red Rose" by Robbie Burns?

A love poem to two women? Not even Shakespeare was up to that! Maybe some Vogon poetry; that will make them want to leave! I think there is a Vogon poetry generator on the BBC website.

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

Piper At The Gates Of Dawn ?
Ain't that a Pink Floyd album ?

Lol. Not one of my faves, but not their craziest either.
The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is about how Mole and Rat find themselves in the presence of the Great God Pan and it's one of the greatest excerpts in literature. Even if you don't get into the rest of TWitW (which I still find hilarious) try to read that chapter.

 

[oggbashan]

This poem by John Donne:


A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Donne, 1572 - 1631

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“The breath goes now," and some say, “No,"

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do;

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Piper At The Gates Of Dawn ?
Ain't that a Pink Floyd album ?

Yep, named after the Wind in the Willows chapter (apparently, not always published?) - Syd Barrett era Floyd.

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

Sadly enough, Green wrote the book for his troubled son Allistair, who as a teenager committed suicide by laying his head on a railroad track. Wonder if whoever wrote Inception knew that. Maybe his son also thought he'd wake up in the "real" world.
Ogg's Donne suggestion is better than my favorite of his called The Flea, about being with his lover in a flea infested bed- after taking her maidenhead

 

[NotWise]

This poem by John Donne:

Great poem, Ogg.

I realized this morning that he could read about anything to them. The emotional importance of reading for them was established early in the story and he's had good effects so far from just reading them the news.

Reading something more endearing adds value to the scene, but it isn't going to create something that isn't already there. I don't intend to quote a lot of text, so whatever he reads needs to be something that's widely recognized. I'm even considering biblical stories.

 

[R. Richard]

"The Long Goodbye," a novel by Raymond Chandler.

 

[KeithD]

Your posts always remind me of a dog licking its balls.

James is back.

 

[oggbashan]

Some of Dylan Thomas' poems might be suitable.

I prefer them read by Dylan himself, or Richard Burton...