I can’t recall the first time I saw the countercultural classic movie Harold and Maude, but I’m sure that I was too young then to pick up on the film’s bittersweet, positive existentialist message except in very broad strokes.
Sometime around 2020 – peak pandemic – I became aware that English author Lucy Coleman Talbot had produced a limited-run book inspired by the movie’s themes, some four years previously. However, that book had been produced in a limited single-edition run to benefit a charity project, and by 2020 copies were as scarce as proverbial hen’s teeth.
So the situation remained – a book whose themes were clearly closely aligned with my own, but which I simply couldn’t lay my hands on – until February of this year, when I was contacted by someone who owned a copy of the Little Book and was willing to part with it. I offered to pay, but the owner was a believer in “be the change you wish to see in the world” and insisted on sending it as a gift (thanks again, if you should ever come across this post!)
As anticipated, the Little Book is instant canonical material. My copy now sits on the bookshelf alongside my Duende shrine, next to Colin Higgins’ novelization of the movie script. Profusely illustrated with sketches and paintings by a variety of artists, it proceeds through the storyline of the novel/movie, taking philosophical and aesthetic inspiration from events and set pieces, locations and dialog, and carefully drawing out Harold and Maude‘s profoundly subversive, death-positive message at every turn.
Recommended, if you can manage to get ahold of it … and if you can’t, yet, maybe it’s time to rewatch the movie.