High Fidelity (Ep 2.21)

After two extremely depressing books, it was actually a welcome relief to get my hands on a laugh-out-loud (albeit in a sarcastic, subtle British way) humour.

Am sure a lot of us have read it/watched the movie. Or watched the movie based on Nick Hornby's other book, About a Boy. Similar stuff.

Rory goes to see Jess in New York after missing Lorelai's graduation day in, well, Lorelai's Graduation Day. Jess shows no surprise at all in seeing Rory there (I still wonder why) and proceeds to take her to a record store which he claims to be "right out of High Fidelity".

The book is the story of a record owner, who runs the above-said record store in Holloway, London, and his love life (which, in short, is miserable). The Championship Vinyl is apparently a store that sells punk, blues, R&B, a bit of ska, indie stuff, 60s pop and everything else (the story is from 1995). It exists, to quote Hornby, "because of the people who make a special effort to shop here Saturdays - young men, always young men, with John Lennon specs and leather jackets and armfuls of square carrier bags… young men who seem to spend a disproportionate amount of their time looking for deleted Smiths singles and 'ORIGINAL, NOT RE-RELEASED' underlined Frank Zappa albums".

I don't think I got a visual strong enough for my liking at this point - so I cheated by watching the movie which was conveniently playing on Sky Movies. HD. And that made me understood what Jess was talking about - it almost looked like an exact replica of the record store set from Gilmore Girls. Dirty and dingy, with rows and rows of record stacks (from the 60s and 70s I imagine). Jess was obviously referring to the movie High Fidelity and not the book one, for a change! The movie was a great late 90s reminiscence movie as well, from the world of mix tapes, bulky CD players and no mobile phones. I just hated the fact that they changed the setting to Chicago for the movie, destroying all its essence, in my opinion.

Franny and Zooey (Ep 2.15)

LORELAI: Hey.
JESS: Hey.
LORELAI: Did you get lost?
JESS: No, I was looking at Rory’s books.
LORELAI: Uh huh.
JESS: I wanted to see if she had Franny and Zooey. She does.
LORELAI: Okay.
JESS: I was gonna get it for her if she didn’t.

Well, that's what Jess says when he is caught coming out of Rory's room (when she's not around, doubters!) after having returned her bracelet in Lost and Found (which he had stolen, or saved as a keepsake, depending on your own version of Jess' character - I like to believe the latter).

It is interesting that he brings up the book Franny and Zooey out of nowhere. Maybe because he considers himself as superior and other-wordly as Zooey? Or because he thinks Rory resembles Franny in that she is beautiful, gentle, yet sassy?

The book is a collection of two short stories by JD Salinger ("Franny" and "Zooey", duh) that were published in the 50's in New Yorker. Franny is a young woman out on a date with an egoistic student, but constantly analysing religious commitments and life motivations. She ends up having a nervous breakdown, and the latter book picks up from that point with Franny's brother Zooey leading the narrative. He, like Franny, considers himself unique and superior in a world full of common folk with common ambitions, and is thus unable to do any work to satisfaction. He considers himself "unsocial" with no ability or interest in having a normal conversation with those around him.

Perhaps Jess identifies with that?

What impressed me the most about the book, though, is the tremendously detailed knowledge of Eastern philosophy that Salinger has. He treats Sankaracharya like a best friend, and the philosophies of karma from Bhagavad Gita as his work ideologies. Epictetus, De Caussade and Zen monks appear in the book as well - but I somehow would not attribute Rory and Jess' interests in the book to the religious philosophical side of the book - we have never seen that in the rest of Gilmore Girls, have we?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Ep 2.6)

Phew, finally - the book took a good 3 weeks to arrive and about 3 hrs to read up.

The episode Presenting Lorelai Gilmore starts off with Lorelai and Rory arriving at Richard and Emily's house for Friday dinner and hearing (quite nasty) arguing sounds from upstairs. And Lorelai comments that she didn't realise George and Martha were coming for dinner.

Which is an interesting reference to Edward Albee's three-act play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with George and Martha as the protagonists. The entire play is about the mind games both of them play with each other, obviously with constant arguments.

This is probably the ugliest comparison Lorelai can make - George and Martha are probably Richard and Emily's age (or thereabouts) and they live on the east coast of the US - but they are devoid of hope, ethics, scruples or love for each other (Martha even sleeps with a younger man during the course of the play, with George in the next room). Their lives seem to be mired with arguments and one-upmanships, with no room for sensitivity. It is also interesting that a "child" forms the centre point for most of their arguments - although in this case, Richard and Emily are fighting over Richard's lack of time for Emily's social engagements. And in the rest of the episode, funnily enough, it does not even look like Lorelai is dragged into the aftermath of the arguments.

The World of Gilmore Books

It's too bad, almost tragic, that an intelligent series like Gilmore Girls was killed off prematurely (by almost 3 years) leaving the fans pretty p*ssed. I wonder if the show acquired all the fan base after it went off air? How else would you explain the gazillion fan sites on Facebook, Twitter, the blogging world and even Amazon Listmania?! It must have done something right.

To me, the show was all about educated literature and music choices. I am hoping to complete my wait out for the movie (which better be on its way!) by taking up a Gilmore Books project to read all the books mentioned in the series. A daunting task, considering most of the allusions were to thick, voluminous books (Tolstoy, aargh)! I vaguely even remember reading (and being bored by) the classics back in school so it will be quite interesting to see if life experiences have made them a teensy bit more exciting.

Rory Gilmore did most of the reading, but there are some interesting books mentioned by Jess and Lorelai, and I am especially curious of Jess' choice of books. But, let's start with an easy one. Always been a big fan of plays, so have reserved Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf from the local library. Remember the dialogue "George and Martha joining us for dinner" from Presenting Lorelai Gilmore?