Articles must include Texas Observer alongside author byline (first name / last name / Texas Observer).Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.” This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet.Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story:.I thought it was just a movie.”Īll of the Texas Observer’s articles are available for free syndication for news sources under the following conditions: “Terms of Endearment is a book?” a well-read friend asked recently. Aurora Greenway’s been lost for almost three decades now. You know what troubles me the most? It’s the fact that no one noticed or objected. The movie took Aurora from being a commanding, complex, mercurial woman of great appetites to a skinny, sniveling housewife who needed to get laid.ĭo I sound angry? You bet. MacLaine won for best actress, and Nicholson took best supporting actor. It won the Academy Award for best picture. He seduces Aurora and teaches her how (and I quote) “fan-fucking-tastic sex is!” Then he dumps her, and she’s crushed. The film’s strongest character-who wasn’t in the book, but was created for the movie-is Jack Nicholson as a randy astronaut. As played by Shirley MacClaine, Aurora is irrational and prudish, a silly, forgettable, negligible woman. You’d never know any of this if you’ve only seen the 1983 movie. She’s worshipped and coveted by men who will never understand her. In her most private times, she loses hope. She’s also aging and grappling with her own unwieldy emotions. If she sounds like a monster-well, she is. She’s alternately gentle and brutal with them you’ve seen a self-satisfied cat toy with its hapless prey, haven’t you? She rejects their advances, corrects their grammar and pounces on inept literary allusions. A small horde of suitors-an opera singer, a four-star general, a playboy, an oil millionaire, a bank vice-president-hover around her, dazzled by her beauty, spirit and wit. Approaching 50, Aurora is imperious, domineering, charming, indomitable. But Aurora Greenway is one of the greatest characters to get lost between the page and the big screen.Īccording to the back of my yellowed paperback, “Aurora Greenway is the kind of woman who makes the whole world orbit around her.” That sums it up pretty well. Terms of Endearment doesn’t quite qualify as a “lost book” since it’s written by the renowned McMurtry. It’s one of my favorite Larry McMurtry novels, published in 1975. Hell yes it’s a book, I said, and told her she should read it immediately. “ Terms of Endearment is a book?” a well-read friend asked recently.
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