Final thoughts on What's Eating Gilbert Grape

I love the movie, it's one of my favorites. The book...I liked and parts were really funny but it's not the same as the movie and maybe I did want the two to be more similar. The Mamma character isn't near as likable and when you are so fat that you are virtually immobile and not particularly useful, you had better be a charming motherfucker, not some stinky lump who bangs on the table demanding their whole box of cereal and package of Kools be brought to them for breakfast. There are extra siblings-Larry and Janice-who flew the coop and send money home but visit rarely. There are also a few plot threads that were dropped from the movie: a local boy who became a huge celebrity for being a Des Moines newscaster whom Gilbert naturally hates, Gilbert's school being burned down after being closed for several years, and Gilbert's grade school teacher who humiliated him on the same day his dad hung himself dying. Arnie is still Arnie, although he has the addition of a glass eye caused by a dartboard accident that will make my eye sockets ache to recount. The Becky character is different-and 15. Gilbert is 24. Uhm, ick. Also, the events surrounding Mr. Carver's demise were condensed and made much more sense in the movie. Mr. Carver asks Gilbert to come over and show his kids that a trampoline is fun? Don't really get it.

(I did like Mrs. Carver leaving him the trampoline. You can see it being used in the movie at Arnie's party but they never explain how it got there.)

Gilbert is more like Holden Caulfield than the movie character. Maybe that is why I don't quite click with this book as I'm one of maybe ten people (pearl clutchers excepted) who didn't love Catcher in the Rye. Gilbert is a miserable stoical character who speaks little which is just as well since most of what he would say is insulting. He does like his boss Mr. Lamson and his sister Amy. More than anything, he deplores emotion and hasn't cried since his father hung himself. He meets Becky and has a nightmare that this girl will make him cry. And she does eventually. I get it understand why people would love this book, I just didn't myself.

Here are a few snippets of Gilbert's musings:

I'm staring at her trying to decide the most discrete way to murder.

If Amy's so worried about the floor, why did she back Momma an entire meat loaf?

I dream about pretty people and fast cars, and I dream I'm still me but my family is someone else. I dream I'm still me.

Momma says a person shows their gratitude by action, not by words. So I guess that means she thanks me by smoking every cigarette in every pack.

Momma stops, her big tongue pushes out of her mouth like on the National Geographic specials when a whale rises out of the water for air.

All I know is that Arnie's big eighteenth birthday is going to be something else. And if Momma hasn't fallen through the floor and if Arnie hasn't died in his sleep and if Ellen isn't pregnant and if the other Grapes haven't gone further off the edge, maybe, maybe we'll be okay.

I should thank Lance for giving Arnie the next-president award. But I make a point to not say thanks.

I find Mr. Carver in his wife's station wagon, rolling down his window in a panic, shouting, "Gilbert! Gilbert! Gilbert!" The moment has finally come. Mrs. Carver has told him everything and he has come to remove my genitalia with a hacksaw.

(on newly widowed Mrs. Carver)

Her fingers are afraid. This is more interesting than whether she's a murderess. To me, the man deserved death but perhaps a more violent, gruesome end would have been more appropriate.

"Everything is great," I say. "Everything is peachy. I've got a mother who would eat her arm is she had enough barbecue sauce, a dorkass older brother and a wicked sister who got out of this town, a little bitch of a sister who very likely made love to Jesus last night, an ever-fattening older sister who deserves a decent man, and a retard brother who, we have reason to believe, has gone into hiding and is once again terrified of water."