ABSTRACT
The best-known love story of modern times may be Erich Segal's (1970) Love Story. In this 20-million-copy best-seller, Oliver Barrett IV is a Harvard ice-hockey jock born into family money. The great-grandson of the man after whom a colossal dormitory and several other campus buildings are named, Oliver is ambivalent about his family's in-your-face Harvardism. Moreover, he positively loathes being programmed into the Barrett tradition: "It's all crap" as he unambiguously puts it. Jenny Cavilleri, on the other hand, is a sarcastic Radcliff music major with gorgeous legs (by Oliver's account). Her mother's death in a car crash left her to be raised by her roughhewn, big-hearted, pastry-chef father (whom she lovingly calls "Phil") and welcoming neighbors in Cranston, Rhode Island.
