Without getting into it, I’ve reluctantly found myself with a lot more free time than I know what to do with, (a break-up if you must know). I’ve been walking in the coulees to get exercise and on occasion listening to audiobooks and podcasts.
Yesterday I took a trip into The States to pick up a package for my brother-in-law and listened to almost all of Forrest Gump, by Winston Groom. It’s the book that inspired the movie, and I use the word inspired loosely because while there are some similarities there are also a lot of unexpected differences.
In the book, Forrest is a lot bigger — huge actually, which makes more sense for him as a football star, he’s a savant at math, and many of his adventures are nothing like the movie. For instance, after throwing his medal of honour away and injuring a high level government employee, Forrest finds himself on a low earth orbit crashing toward earth, attacked by cannibals and head-hunters, later becoming a stampede wrestler, a chess champion, and during which time he adopts an escaped NASA orangutang as a drinking buddy. While the differences from the big screen adaptation make it an interesting read, I found the novel to be so outlandish and crazy that I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief. This is one of those rare exceptions that the movie outshines the book.
While on my walk yesterday, I was finishing up the book. Forrest inadvertently gets into some trouble and as a result Jenny breaks up with him. Although treated poorly for being mentally challenged his whole life, he says that losing Jenny was the first time he really knew what it was like to feel like an idiot. Losing Andrea, I feel like an idiot too.