I loved Gretta the Movie so much that I had to check out Gretta the Book. And to speak very succinctly, it is beyond my wildest dreams, for the simple reason that it enhances the experience of watching Gretta the Movie exponentially. The movie has nothing to do with this book. There's a Gretta, sure. Both stories have a Glen. But otherwise, they are completely different beasts. For Gretta the Movie to audaciously stamp writer Caldwell's name on the title card is probably the most hilarious thing I've seen in a while, because after getting through Gretta's 144 pages I found not one plot point, not one in the whole book, that it shared with the movie, aside from the fact that people have a lot of sex.
Gretta is a young woman who seems eager to meet as many men as possible. She wants love, but she knows that sex is a very quick path to love for some men. We follow her through her erotic adventures until she meets Dr. Glen Kenworthy, with whom she strikes up what is a nearly perfect relationship. Then one of the men from her past comes back, Dr. Royd Fillmore, who engages in lengthy creepy near-rape scenes with her throughout the book's middle. When she rejects him totally, he kills himself, and this brings scandal to the Kenworthys' marriage. The hospital director calls Glen into his office to basically call his wife a whore to his face; consequentially, Glen finds himself liking Gretta less and less. This is even after he finds out that Gretta's lustful ways and desire to find true love are an attempt to patch a hole in her heart after a molestation incident at the age of ten.
I would have never heard of Erskine Caldwell if it wasn't for Gretta the Movie, but my copy of Gretta the Book says the Faulkner himself included Caldwell in his top five writer's list. I laugh at that because this book has more sex in it than some of the smut paperbacks I've done in the past for the Book Club of Desolation...and it's a good deal sexier than those, too. The book is actually pretty well written, being above the usual romance paperback fare. Sure, there are people blushing and gushing and fainting, but we're a long way from Danielle Steele, especially since as far as I know Danielle Steele doesn't really put pedophilia flashbacks into her works. The prose never gets tiresome and for a relatively soapy Valley of the Dolls-style potboiler it held my attention surprisingly well. In fact, I'd be interested in checking out some of Caldwell's other works, as I feel like there are some writing tricks I could pick up from him.
It was really fun, until I reached about the halfway mark, to try to see if the book was going to diverge into a narrative about people with past experiences with death who give themselves near-death experiences on purpose out of nostalgia. Or when Gretta was going to become a transgender piano player named Charlie White. As I said above, none of this happens, and indeed, it's baffling at times to consider where John Carr could have gotten even the faintest inkling for what would become Gretta the Movie from this novel. The two Grettas are similar to a point, though Film!Gretta gets paid for her sex work while Novel!Gretta considers that to be whoring; the two Glens are not similar at all, because Novel!Glen lacks Film!Glen's dedication to Gretta. Royd Fillmore is kind of like George Youngmeyer, in that he's kind of an evil bastard, but again, once you progress past the most basic of details the two become distinct and separate. Gretta the Movie is really just a fucked-up, all-original gem, and in its own way, so is this book--albeit to a lesser extent in my mind. But that's just because Gretta the Movie is tough to top.
Things get even more complicated when you recall that Gretta the Movie was cut into one of several incoherent short pieces in the utterly batshit anthology film Night Train to Terror, which I will definitely have to talk about at some point. When I rewatch that flick for my inevitable review, I'll have to see if they credit Erskine Caldwell as a writer. That would be astonishing indeed. I wonder if Caldwell ever saw either film based off of his work.
If you like realistic paperbacks or romance novels, I think you'll find Gretta to be one of the better examples of a literary-inclined drama. If you want some great amusement, though, read the book in conjunction with watching the film. The stark contrast is a comedic marvel in and of itself.
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