Remembering ‘The Summer of ’42’ by Herman Raucher
This bitter-sweet movie written by Herman Raucher based on his memoir scored big at the box office when it appeared in 1971 and became quite a sensation with young men who wished the film had been about them: teenager meets a grieving war widow and they end up in bed.
Some critics like Roger Ebert didn’t like the sentimentality. According to Wikipedia, “Vincent Canby of The New York Times expressed that Hermie’s encounter with Dorothy is ‘a good deal more common in novels and screenplays (and in the Hermie-like fantasies of middle-aged writers) than in real life’, but praised the film’s ‘reticent quality of its romanticism’ and its actors. Canby concluded the ‘foreground is mostly accurate, in which sexual panic and fist fights and nose bleeds are treated with the great comic respect they deserve.'” The tone of the movie was greatly enhanced by Michel Legrand’s score which won an Oscar.
I read the book, saw the movie, and liked both. I liked them because the story was well told and because–as Vincent Canby noted–meeting “Dorothy” was a prospective rite of passage that seldom happened, and ended badly if it did happen, though these realities didn’t stop numerous young men from dreaming and fantasizing about such an encounter. Freudian psychiatrists probably have a lot to say about such fantasies.
From the Book Publisher
“A chronicle of one summer in a boy’s coming of age”—the international bestselling classic that became the basis for the Oscar-winning film (Medium).
“Captivating and evocative, Herman Raucher’s semi-autobiographical tale has been made into a record-breaking Academy Award-winning hit movie, adapted for the stage, and enchanted readers for generations.
“In the summer of 1942, Hermie is fifteen. He is wildly obsessed with sex, and passionately in love with an “older woman” of twenty-two, whose husband is overseas and at war. Ambling through Nantucket Island with his friends, Hermie’s indelible narration chronicles his frantic efforts to become a man, especially one worthy of the lovely Dorothy, as well as his glorious and heartbreaking initiation into sex.”
from the Reviewers
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“Mr. Raucher scores most tellingly. His recall of nervous teen-age gaucheries is dead accurate, hilarious, tinged with sadness.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A charming and tender novel . . . The overall effect is one of high hilarity. Raucher is a comic-artist who is able to convey the fears and joys . . . of the boy and at the same time give older readers a wrench in the heart. ”—Publishers Weekly
