# Writers you love, but may not forgive (open spoilers anticipated) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 25, 2016, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602 "2016-05-25T00:04:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2016, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602/41 "2016-05-28T02:23:01Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > I thought Ms Alcott’s real sin was marrying Jo off to that old German coot who shows up in the last fifty pages. Ick. and then writing _Little Men_. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2016, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602/42 "2016-05-28T15:28:57Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > I thought Ms Alcott’s real sin was marrying Jo off to that old German coot who shows up in the last fifty pages. Ick. Not to keep nattering on about Little Women, but I’m with Ms. Alcott. Jo (as a feisty spinster) could have made a go of it, she could have been one of those bold Victorian women who left her stuffy home, wrote books, travelled to the Pyramids and other far away places alone, maybe become a journalist, mapmaker, run an intellectual salon, after rejecting domesticity. But Little Women wasn’t that kind of book, every chapter was based on Pilgrim’s Progress (a work about Christians laboring away in the world), and syrupy do-the-right-thing lessons learned. The girls had to get married to appropriate men, even Jo, awkwardly with that awful professor. I don’t think I ever read Little Men, supposedly Jo enjoyed the company of the boys in her school - certainly not burdened by girls! with their drama, vanity, and dreams of romance. ---
**Author:** ![Waltzes\_with\_Cacti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90ced4/32.png) [@Waltzes\_with\_Cacti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waltzes_with_Cacti)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2016, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602/43 "2016-05-28T19:22:59Z")
> [@misling](#): > > Jo deserved better than Laurie. > And Amy had reformed and grown up by the end of the book. Better than Laurie? Hah! Men don’t come better than Laurie. As for Amy, she can go suck pickled limes. ---
**Author:** ![Tapiotar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@Tapiotar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapiotar)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2016, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602/44 "2016-05-28T20:07:55Z")
Agree! I hated Amy, and was horrified when she got Laurie. My understanding was that Laurie was based on a Polish count that Louisa admired and perhaps had an affair with. Because she didn’t marry him, she didn’t let Jo marry him. It is also true that she was a staunch women’s rights advocate, and approved of Boston marriages, whichever way you define it. She herself lived an adventurous life, and wrote the blood and thunder stories that Jo gives up. Little Men was based on her father’s school, though much more luxurious than the conditions she herself grew up in. Bronson Alcott was a fanatic. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2016, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602/45 "2016-05-29T00:38:05Z")
I love Mario Puzo… and I started to love the first 3/4 of “Fools Die”. I put the novel down for some reason for a few years w/o finishing it. When I picked it up again, I remembered all the characters in impossible situations that I loved. Then, I came to the ending and I was Horrified at how callously and easily he slaughtered them. Pigs in a slaughter house died better. It was such an abrupt end, like he was rushed or forced. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2016, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602/46 "2016-05-29T01:24:09Z")
> [@Count\_Blucher](#): > > I love Mario Puzo… and I started to love the first 3/4 of “Fools Die”. I put the novel down for some reason for a few years w/o finishing it. > > When I picked it up again, I remembered all the characters in impossible situations that I loved. > > Then, I came to the ending and I was Horrified at how callously and easily he slaughtered them. Pigs in a slaughter house died better. It was such an abrupt end, like he was rushed or forced. the only one I didn’t like was the actress john had that weird relationship with I always thought her whole point was she was a victim of how scummy showbiz is … I mean cully was a gambler who just made the ultimate gamble and lost which he was going to do eventually… his was just with the mob boss osano was actually based a few people literary puzo knew (ive heard hes just an exaggerated version of puzo himself)one of which supposedly died of either syphilis or an aids like illness but even the macguffin of the biography was based on real life ---
**Author:** ![Hermione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/cdc98d/32.png) [@Hermione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermione)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2016, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602/47 "2016-05-29T13:48:24Z")
Maybe you guys might be more charitable towards Professor Bhaer, and his relationship with Jo, if you heard [“How I Am”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmSYS9GrWXU) and [“A Small Umbrella In The Rain”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFoiZzlvs48) from the musical. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2016, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602/48 "2016-05-29T14:02:08Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Several authors hit my buttons for starting series **and then never finishing them**! Jerry Pournelle, Chris Stasheff, I’m looking at you! David Gerrold gets a pass because by the time I got to the last book that he wrote I wanted everyone in the series dead. Harlan gets a pass for being Harlan (and really touchy!) Gerrold doesn’t get a pass from me, because I want more Solomon Short quotes. Harlan, well, um. Yeah, I met him once. He’s a force of nature (if forces of nature had a huge ego). [sub]he mocked me for having him sign my Science Fiction Book Club copy of _Dangerous Visions_[/sub]. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2016, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602/49 "2016-05-29T14:54:38Z")
> [@G0sp3l](#): > > Brandon Sanderson, for what he did to Kelsior. I still like his work and I KNOW why it had to be that way. But still. > > and for gods sake, fix Shallan before I start to hate her as much as Nynaeve!!! What’s wrong with Shallan? Shallan’s awesome. Nynaeve would never ask someone about pooping in armor. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2016, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602/50 "2016-05-29T17:32:23Z")
I had always admired John Steinbeck for his deserved inclusion in the tiny number of great American writers, until he came out with that stupid “Travels with Charlie”, which places him somewhere beneath William Least Heat Moon. Cormack McCarthy, standing by himself as the greatest American writer of his generation, is now writing junk screenplays for Hollywood big-studio blockbusters starring beautiful people… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-you-love-but-may-not-forgive-open-spoilers-anticipated/755602.md?page=2)