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What Is This Thing Called Love?
For a romantic, it’s life’s ultimate question: What is This Thing Called Love? Actor and novelist Gene Wilder explores twelve possible answers in this emotionally involving book about different kinds of love: star-crossed, intense, needy, eternal, unrequited and even comical. With delicacy of feeling and a simple style that adds to the power of his fiction, Wilder creates memorable lovers and silly suitors, unexpected attraction and careful courting. What is This Thing Called Love? is for anyone who has ever yearned for a deep connection, made a study of love, and spent their life trying to find the real thing.
“A lighthearted reminder of love’s potential (requited, even unrequited) to make a life worthwhile.”—Los Angeles Times
132 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
16 people are currently reading
472 people want to read
About the author
Gene Wilder
26 books193 followersGene Wilder was an American Emmy Award-winning and twice Academy Award-nominated stage and screen comic actor, screenwriter, film director, and author.
Wilder began his career on stage, making his screen debut in the film Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. His first major role was as Leo Bloom in the 1968 film, The Producers. This was the first in a series of prolific collaborations with writer/director Mel Brooks, including 1974's Young Frankenstein, the script of which garnered the pair an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Wilder was known for his portrayal of Willy Wonka on Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and for his four films with Richard Pryor: Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989), and Another You (1991). Wilder directed and wrote several of his films, including The Woman in Red (1984).
His marriage to actress Gilda Radner, who died from ovarian cancer, led to his active involvement in promoting cancer awareness and treatment, helping found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center in Los Angeles and co-founding Gilda's Club.
In more recent years, Wilder turned his attention to writing, producing a memoir in 2005, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art, and the novels My French Whore (2007) and The Woman Who Wouldn't (2008).
Wilder began his career on stage, making his screen debut in the film Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. His first major role was as Leo Bloom in the 1968 film, The Producers. This was the first in a series of prolific collaborations with writer/director Mel Brooks, including 1974's Young Frankenstein, the script of which garnered the pair an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Wilder was known for his portrayal of Willy Wonka on Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and for his four films with Richard Pryor: Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989), and Another You (1991). Wilder directed and wrote several of his films, including The Woman in Red (1984).
His marriage to actress Gilda Radner, who died from ovarian cancer, led to his active involvement in promoting cancer awareness and treatment, helping found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center in Los Angeles and co-founding Gilda's Club.
In more recent years, Wilder turned his attention to writing, producing a memoir in 2005, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art, and the novels My French Whore (2007) and The Woman Who Wouldn't (2008).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
June 8, 2015
Added 10/25/11. Short stories.
I read this book in June 2015. Very enjoyable stories. You can almost picture Gene Wilder telling these stories. He's so entertaining!
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"With a delicacy of feeling and a simple style that adds to the power of his fiction, Wilder creates memorable lovers and silly suitors, unexpected attraction and careful courting."
---from the book jacket
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I read this book in June 2015. Very enjoyable stories. You can almost picture Gene Wilder telling these stories. He's so entertaining!
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"With a delicacy of feeling and a simple style that adds to the power of his fiction, Wilder creates memorable lovers and silly suitors, unexpected attraction and careful courting."
---from the book jacket
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November 17, 2010
I read better stories in my Intro to Nonfiction class in college. There are fleeting, fleeting moments of promise, but mostly these short stories are dull to the point of insult.
July 1, 2023
Bellissimi questi 12 racconti.
June 17, 2021
I'm glad the stories were short, because I could not wait to finish each one. --I found them on the dull side. Knowing of Gene Wilder's reputation and work, I was hoping they would be poignant. Not his best book for drawing people in.
October 18, 2014
More likely than not you know him as Willy Wonka (hopefully better than that Johnny Depp/Michael Jackson abomination). You might also know him as the Waco Kid or Young Frankenstein (Fronk-en-steen!). Whatever the case, chances are you know Gene Wilder. What you might not know is he has retired from acting he has turned his attentions to painting and writing. In 2005 he published his memoir Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art. He followed that up with two novels, My French Whore, a love story set during WWI, and The Woman Who Wouldn't, another European romance. What Is This Thing Called Love? is a collection of short stories about love published earlier this year. So, how good is this product of Wilder's world of pure imagination?
Sorry to carry on the Wonka puns, but if I had to describe this book in two words they'd be 'bad chocolate.' Or maybe not bad, just mediocre. You know what I'm talking about. Chocolate is all made of the same basic stuff, but there's still chocolate that's good (Cadbury's) and chocolate that's bad-to-middling (Hershey's). However, unlike chocolate, these stories aren't very filling. They are all pretty short, and they look at love from a variety of angles. The stories are charming, but are all lacking in something, usually substance but sometimes poignancy or a decent ending as well.
That lack of poignancy is sometimes the most surprising thing that's missing. A few of the stories are about widowers. Wilder's wife Gilda Radner died in 1989. You would think that someone who had been through that experience might show how heartbreaking it is, but I'm not sure that Wilder quite gets there. Most of the time the widower will say his wife died a few years ago and not mention her again. However, there is one story titled "The Anniversary" which is about a man waiting to meet his wife at a restaurant for their 17th anniversary before a waiter reminds him that his wife died a year ago. This would be more poignant, perhaps, if the reader was given some indication that the man was in wny way forgetful, but he seems to remember everything, including a pair of earrings his wife liked "weeks and weeks ago" and what country the maitre d' is from, except for the fact that his wife is dead. It just comes across as a cheap twist, like in "The Hollywood Producer," when a man spends the second half of a story hitting on someone, only to find at the very end that she's a transvestite.
There are few instances of truly bad writing, though, and usually they're in stories about young love. In the story "The Kiss" a teenage girl says that she's in love with a twenty-something writer and her father responds "YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LOVE! You're too young and that's it and that's all!" Later after he meets the man they have an awkward conversation that ends with the father saying "YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LOVE MY DAUGHTER, and that's it and that's all" (emphasis Wilder's). Anyone at all familiar with melodrama knows this story will end with them getting married. Another story ends with a girl writing letters to her mother to tell her about her sexual experiences with her first lover. I could be wrong, but I don't think girls actually do this.
Usually the stories aren't that awkwardly bad, but they never quite rise to being good, either. I'll admit that I bought this book because I saw it was by Gene Wilder and I wanted to see what one of my favorite actors of my youth had written about love. I don't totally regret that decision, but I didn't get much out of it, either, except for the feeling that I've read these stories before, and done better.
Mediocre, yes. Scrumdiddlyumptious? No.
Sorry to carry on the Wonka puns, but if I had to describe this book in two words they'd be 'bad chocolate.' Or maybe not bad, just mediocre. You know what I'm talking about. Chocolate is all made of the same basic stuff, but there's still chocolate that's good (Cadbury's) and chocolate that's bad-to-middling (Hershey's). However, unlike chocolate, these stories aren't very filling. They are all pretty short, and they look at love from a variety of angles. The stories are charming, but are all lacking in something, usually substance but sometimes poignancy or a decent ending as well.
That lack of poignancy is sometimes the most surprising thing that's missing. A few of the stories are about widowers. Wilder's wife Gilda Radner died in 1989. You would think that someone who had been through that experience might show how heartbreaking it is, but I'm not sure that Wilder quite gets there. Most of the time the widower will say his wife died a few years ago and not mention her again. However, there is one story titled "The Anniversary" which is about a man waiting to meet his wife at a restaurant for their 17th anniversary before a waiter reminds him that his wife died a year ago. This would be more poignant, perhaps, if the reader was given some indication that the man was in wny way forgetful, but he seems to remember everything, including a pair of earrings his wife liked "weeks and weeks ago" and what country the maitre d' is from, except for the fact that his wife is dead. It just comes across as a cheap twist, like in "The Hollywood Producer," when a man spends the second half of a story hitting on someone, only to find at the very end that she's a transvestite.
There are few instances of truly bad writing, though, and usually they're in stories about young love. In the story "The Kiss" a teenage girl says that she's in love with a twenty-something writer and her father responds "YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LOVE! You're too young and that's it and that's all!" Later after he meets the man they have an awkward conversation that ends with the father saying "YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LOVE MY DAUGHTER, and that's it and that's all" (emphasis Wilder's). Anyone at all familiar with melodrama knows this story will end with them getting married. Another story ends with a girl writing letters to her mother to tell her about her sexual experiences with her first lover. I could be wrong, but I don't think girls actually do this.
Usually the stories aren't that awkwardly bad, but they never quite rise to being good, either. I'll admit that I bought this book because I saw it was by Gene Wilder and I wanted to see what one of my favorite actors of my youth had written about love. I don't totally regret that decision, but I didn't get much out of it, either, except for the feeling that I've read these stories before, and done better.
Mediocre, yes. Scrumdiddlyumptious? No.
October 29, 2016
This book actually made me laugh a couple of times. It was heart warming and fun to read. If your looking for something light this is good. It looks at different aspect of love through several different stories that don't seem to connect in anyway but each still just as good. A gem of a book. -A
June 27, 2017
Let me tell you how primed I was to love this book. I'm a fan of Gene Wilder. I was vaguely aware that he had done some writing, but I hadn't read anything by him, and I stumbled on this collection of short stories in a used bookstore for $3.00. For that price, I'll give it a shot, right? After I bought it, I cracked it open and found--get this--it's signed. By Gene freakin' Wilder. Wouldn't the perfect end to this story be that it's also a really good read?
...Well, it isn't.
It is desperately, aggressively bland. With the exception of the three stories about "Buddy," the protagonist of each story is the same vaguely shy, lonely, self doubting persona. The women are either "plain looking and serious" or attractive and unfathomable. The stories revolve around love found, or love lost, or missed opportunities for love. There is the rare moment of inspired creativity in the substance of a story, but Wilder's prose is never up to the task. It has the stylistic flair of an evening news report.
It's very disappointing.
...Well, it isn't.
It is desperately, aggressively bland. With the exception of the three stories about "Buddy," the protagonist of each story is the same vaguely shy, lonely, self doubting persona. The women are either "plain looking and serious" or attractive and unfathomable. The stories revolve around love found, or love lost, or missed opportunities for love. There is the rare moment of inspired creativity in the substance of a story, but Wilder's prose is never up to the task. It has the stylistic flair of an evening news report.
It's very disappointing.
July 14, 2024
Perhaps it’s because the book is older but most of the men have terrible personalities. Buddy Silberman will not have my love at all.
There were two stories I really enjoyed. One was “the anniversary” it made me sad at the end, but I love how the husband describes his wife and you can really tell he loved her. The other story was “the kiss” the relationship between Robert and Boris was what I lived for. It was such a sweet relationship from Boris going from you can’t date my daughter because you can’t feed her to here let me feed you and nourish you because you’re starving to having Becky marry Robert. Though I am a little cross that Becky left Robert for a random guy she knew for like 3 weeks and then was surprised that he was a terrible person and she just went back to Robert like she wasn’t flaky.
Anyways those two stories were wonderful but the rest didn’t really give me feelings of love just confusion, anger, and disgust.
There were two stories I really enjoyed. One was “the anniversary” it made me sad at the end, but I love how the husband describes his wife and you can really tell he loved her. The other story was “the kiss” the relationship between Robert and Boris was what I lived for. It was such a sweet relationship from Boris going from you can’t date my daughter because you can’t feed her to here let me feed you and nourish you because you’re starving to having Becky marry Robert. Though I am a little cross that Becky left Robert for a random guy she knew for like 3 weeks and then was surprised that he was a terrible person and she just went back to Robert like she wasn’t flaky.
Anyways those two stories were wonderful but the rest didn’t really give me feelings of love just confusion, anger, and disgust.
December 4, 2019
Decent but scattered, this pales in comparison to his other masterpieces (My French Whore being one, for example). No one can read anything by Gene Wilder and not be touched or moved or bewildered or fascinated. He was brilliant, and even this collection of short stories shows how bright and heartfelt and cerebral and powerful he was.
March 10, 2018
Non so come Wilder riesca a emozionarmi ogni dannata volta, e qui con dei racconti apparentemente così semplici, ma tant'è. 'L'anniversario', 'Il bacio' e 'Passione' tre piccoli capolavori.
May 11, 2021
Very Interesting short stories about love and loss. Both in our time line and that of the early 20th century. Again beautifully written and keeps you wanting more.
January 2, 2022
An enjoyable book of short stories by Gene Wilder.
Not my normal type of stories, but enjoyable.
Not my normal type of stories, but enjoyable.
December 29, 2025
Another cute and easy. Sweet stories
July 3, 2015
What Is This Thing Called Love? by Gene Wilder
This is a collection of short stories written by the Waco Kid, Gene Wilder. And though Wilder has shown incredible writing ability in his memoir "Kiss Me Like a Stranger," this book does not deliver.
The short stories are all about love, which is nice, but after a certain point they all feel the same. Boy meets a girl, they hit it off, they have sex. Or, in the alternate version of the story, they don't have sex and the relationship abruptly ends.
Also, Gene Wilder writes about sex. I don't have an issue reading about sex. It's just weird to imagine Willy Wonka typing passages about putting his finger on some girl's clit. It's hard for me to disconnect the author from his work.
And that's what makes this book disappointing. I love Gene Wilder. I, a 26-year-old man, wrote him a fan letter after reading "Kiss Me Like a Stranger." But, it's hard for this mediocre work to live up to the legend that is Gene Wilder.
Stick with "Kiss Me Like a Stranger" and "Young Frankenstein" and you'll be better off.
This is a collection of short stories written by the Waco Kid, Gene Wilder. And though Wilder has shown incredible writing ability in his memoir "Kiss Me Like a Stranger," this book does not deliver.
The short stories are all about love, which is nice, but after a certain point they all feel the same. Boy meets a girl, they hit it off, they have sex. Or, in the alternate version of the story, they don't have sex and the relationship abruptly ends.
Also, Gene Wilder writes about sex. I don't have an issue reading about sex. It's just weird to imagine Willy Wonka typing passages about putting his finger on some girl's clit. It's hard for me to disconnect the author from his work.
And that's what makes this book disappointing. I love Gene Wilder. I, a 26-year-old man, wrote him a fan letter after reading "Kiss Me Like a Stranger." But, it's hard for this mediocre work to live up to the legend that is Gene Wilder.
Stick with "Kiss Me Like a Stranger" and "Young Frankenstein" and you'll be better off.
December 29, 2015
A great director of classic Hollywood movies, Ernst Lubitsch, was famous for saying a lot with a single image; no dialogue necessary. This was called the Lubitsch Touch. Gene Wilder has fashioned a second career for himself as a writer of books that take a Lubitsch-like subtlety to matters of the heart. In this collection of 12 stories he explores all kinds of love. This can be uneven but when it works (as in the stories "The Lady With the Red Hat" and "Passion") Wilder shows just how painful and happy love can make us, sometimes all at once.
June 27, 2010
Interesting collection of stories from Wilder surrounding the idiosyncrasies of love. Wilder paints men as desperate for love and companionship but often to dumb and selfish to see it for what it is. But he is also a romantic and understands that love breaks through and strikes when we often least expect it.
The stories are not particularly deep or literary but they have a lightness and a tragi-comic sense that comes from Wilder and makes them worth reading.
The stories are not particularly deep or literary but they have a lightness and a tragi-comic sense that comes from Wilder and makes them worth reading.
June 13, 2016
I found this collection of short stories incredibly charming. Short, sweet, and simple to read, Wilder’s collection was very relaxing. His stories weren’t frantic or formulaic. They were a breath of fresh air in the world of melodramatic dramas and fluff-tastic chick lit.
They deal with the idiosyncrasies of love and the various forms it comes in. Humans are flawed and so is the way we love. Wilder dealt with that better than many other writers I’ve read. Definitely worth a try.
They deal with the idiosyncrasies of love and the various forms it comes in. Humans are flawed and so is the way we love. Wilder dealt with that better than many other writers I’ve read. Definitely worth a try.
July 14, 2010
I have always enjoyed Gene Wilder movies. This book definitely was written by him. A collection of short stories. The stories deal with two types of men: One type is stupid and doesn't realize when he has a good thing. The other type isn't quite so stupid and eventually realizes that he has a good thing and holds on to it. Women who like to laugh at male stupidity should like the book.
May 13, 2011
Some great short stories...my sweet husband gave me this book for Valentine's Day. I finally read it in April. Gave me nice sweet loving thoughts and enjoyed all of the stories. Wished it had gone on longer! But then it wouldn't have been SHORT stories! Great to have along to read while waiting for an appointment or such things where it's nice to get a good story while waiting!
October 19, 2014
Well, it's written by Gene Wilder, who has a beautiful and simple writers voice, so of course I like it. Short stories are not my favorite format, though. And these all seem a bit abrupt. I feel like Mr. Wilder writes a better story when he has more time and space to elaborate on it. I love his novels. His short stories are just okay to me.
May 16, 2010
Gene hit it out of the park with this one. Perfect reading for someone needing a short story to fall relax prior to sleep at night. The stories were captivating and revealed just how romantic this man can be. Gene, when are we going out for that wine?
May 18, 2011
This is probably more of a 4.5 but I love Gene Wilder so I rounded up!
August 8, 2011
I like the stories. I think they are well-written without being lofty, and they hold a simple charm and humor.
December 19, 2011
My first gene wilder. Not really in love with it. Not even in like with it. Very average storytelling.
June 3, 2012
I really enjoyed this book. Gene Wilder is an excellent writer and has written some excellent short stories here.
November 30, 2012
Every time I make a bad book choice I feel like shooting myself in the cranium. Yeah, that bad.
August 18, 2013
Surprisingly sweet/sad/funny little short stories.
April 4, 2014
A fun collection of short stories with a romantic theme. Not as awesome as Wilder's more famous work, 'My French Whore,' but enjoyable nonetheless.
May 6, 2015
Completely sappy and I loved it!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews