Gone With the Wind Turns 70

Margaret Mitchell's classic Gone with the Wind was published seventy years ago this summer. While the novel is admittedly dated in its Southern sentimentality and troublesome in its treatment of racial issues, the icon that it captured and substantiated is a vivid part of the Southern literary landscape today. The novel (followed by the wildly popular film) became nothing short of a phenomenon. I saw documentary footage over the weekend of the Atlanta film premier. The entire city was in an uproar, audiences cheered aand wept, and even in recent years the film is considered a staple of chick films in some circles.... Or is it?

Sustainability
It is said that the test of a literary work's value is whether or not audiences can still connect with it decades later. With that in mind, I wonder if Gone with the Wind still matters in 2006? Folks everywhere in the 1930s read/watched it--Southern and otherwise. But have any of my 20 and 30 year-old friends out there ever read or watched it? Is it a generational thing? or just a Southern thing?

Trivia Facts
For those of you who are Margaret Mitchell fans, let's see if you know these facts:

* Mrs. Mitchell originally named the heroine of the novel Pansy, but changed her name to Scarlett at the insistence of her editors during the re-writes before publication.

* Mrs. Mitchell had little confidence in herself as a writer and had no intentions of publishing the novel. She even denied its existence until a friend vocalized doubt of Mitchell's talent as a writer. At that point she turned the manuscript over to an editor to prove a point, and the rest is history.

* Mrs. Mitchell wrote the last chapter first and then wrote the various other 1000 pages one chapter at a time in no particular order.

* The $3 price tag for Gone With the Wind when released in 1936 is the equivalent of $43.50 in today's economy. (When is the last time you payed 40 bucks for a book?) And yet for a time it was second in sales only to the Bible.

Related Links
The Story Behind Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell House and Museum)

Biography of Margaret Mitchell (Margaret Mitchell House and Museum)

Margaret Mitchell (Literary Traveler)

Gone With the Wind, Indeed (The Washington Post)