“Gone with the Wind,” color, 1939, happens to be starting on Turner Classic Movies as I write this article. I wondered what Margaret Mitchell, the author of the novel on which the movie was based, thought of the film so I did a little Google search.

According to Biography.com, Ms. Mitchell hated her ponderous thousand-page book. I did not know that. This is from the Bio website:

‘Gone With The Wind’

“Mitchell started writing the book that made her famous out of boredom as she recovered from a leg injury. She had to be goaded into showing it to an editor and was reluctant to have it published. She stated on several occasions that it was ‘a rotten book’ and that she hated the act of writing. Gone With The Wind would be her only novel. She received a Pulitzer Prize for the book in 1937, and it was adapted to film in 1939.”

Wow. Just wow. If she hated it so much, I’m frankly surprised, my dear, that she finished the damned thing. You win a hundred points if you know why I wrote that last sentence the way I did.