Modern Love
Title: Modern Love
Author: Daniel Jones (Editor)
Publication Year: 2019
Genre: Autobiography
Eve Pell, a twice-divorced New York Native, met her running and life mate Sam in her mid-seventies. The two belonged to a San Francisco running club geared towards the population of active senior citizens. Brought together by mutual friends, the two began their relationship with dinner and a movie. For Sam, the new relationship brought with it feelings of hesitation and guilt for dating after the death of his first wife, Betty. Pell lovingly encouraged him to open to the possibility of having the room in his heart for her as well.
In their two years of marriage, they traveled to Italy and competed in the 2007 World Masters Athletics Championships, held a joint 150th birthday party, and fought Sam’s stage four cancer after an inaccurate first prognosis. “The finish line was drawing closer. Why not have one last blossoming of the heart?” Pell wrote in her essay. Their limited time together provided both Pell and Sam with a new understanding of what it meant to give and receive love after experiencing loss. Her essay, titled “The Race Grows Sweeter Near Its Final Lap,” was featured in the “Modern Love” column of The New York Times in February 2013. But was this essay truly a story about modern love? This book review will be an exploration of how love changes over time as well as how love may differ as we age and develop our understanding of the word.
The “Modern Love” column was first featured in The New York Times in October 2004. Since its inception, the weekly column has taken the form of a podcast, a web series, and a book featuring a culmination of 42 submissions during its 15 years in the paper. The 2019 book of the same name, developed and edited by “Modern Love” founding editor Daniel Jones, represents this idea through the interesting selection of stories found in its pages. In the forward of the book, Jones shares that the founding editors of the column decided that “love” would be interpreted broadly to avoid any possible limitations that would come with the establishment of a singular definition.
With every submission, the column offered different interpretations of love in its many forms. Pell’s short essay was included in both editions of the book, nestled between a story about a couple that attended 27 weddings before deciding to be married and one about experiencing multiple failed relationships. All three belonged to a section in the book affectionately titled “I Think I Love You.” The section is one of four with each titled and organized by subject matter. “Holding On Through the Curves,” for example, is a series of essays dealing with the death of a loved one while “Somewhere Out There” reveals the shared trials and tribulations of dating. By doing so, Jones allows readers to forge connections between the stories shared by strangers and themselves and determine how the act of love has been “modernized” over time.
“Love, at its best, is more of a wheelbarrow than a rose: gritty and messy but also durable. Yet still hard to put into words.” - Daniel Jones
Although it is easy to find identify the commonalities shared between them (i.e. unreturned messages, struggling relationships, and life-changing losses) comparing essays written years apart reveal the basis of their relatability. Additionally, At the end of every section, it is worth noting that Jones made the editorial choice to include a brief description of the essayists’ location, career, and year that the original essay was submitted and/or published. In some cases, a witty statement is included about the essayist and if they have continued to be affected by the emotions and circumstances presented in their submission. For example, at the end of the essay “Loved and Lost? It’s Ok, Especially If You Win,” Jones notes that the essayist is still happy the guys she dated in the past weren’t that into her despite her dating history. In accordance with its year of publication, this anecdote presents a symbolic “end” to their stories while the absence of one relies upon the imagination of the reader.
Readers can also trace how social and technological changes are represented overtime through the writings of strangers from all walks of life. An essay comedically describing the range of emotions felt after sending a risky text to a new romantic interest can be juxtaposed against a missed call from a deceased ex-husband. The more modern love stories that were more recently published often feature a heavy reliance on technology usage (or lack-thereof) that play a major part in their events. As a member of a generation raised with constant use of technology as part of my everyday social life, the differences between love stories in the world of technology and those before it were glaring. There is no denying that the ways in which we socialize with each other have been subject to change.
Technological and social evolution has significantly altered how we go about forming, maintaining, and experiencing relationships with other individuals over time. One essay in particular published in the column in 2018, “First I Met My Children, Then My Girlfriend…” recounts how author Aaron Long began a relationship after reconnecting with one of his sperm recipients on 23andMe. While coming into contact with a number of his biological children online, he also began a relationship with the recently separated mother of one. “While 23andMe is not generally considered a dating site, Jess and I are grateful to the technology that has made our backward-formed relationship possible,” Long writes towards the end of the essay.
This love story, although very clearly reliant on technology for socialization between individuals, is also evidence of how the act of loving and being loved in return has remained the same. Like all the other essays included in the book, it depends upon the many interpretations readers have of love. Jones supports this best in his forward to the book. “As someone who has read, skimmed, or otherwise digested some one hundred thousand love stories over the past fifteen years - love, at its best, is more of a wheelbarrow than a rose: gritty and messy but also durable,” Jones writes. He begins and ends the forward by stating that after his 15 years working on the column, he still does not have a singular definition of love. Based on the stories shared in Modern Love, it would be fair to argue that what it means to love really has not been modernized that much after all.
With love always,
Maya.