Erich Segal's "Love Story" was one of those perfect little pop entertainment machines, gears greased by schmaltz, purring and clicking as it delivered simulated sentiments like a Swiss townhall clock parading its figurines on the stroke of the hour. It served up a love affair between a rich WASP Harvard jock and a pretty, poor, dirty-talking diluted-ethnic girl, in dialogue that was glib, contemporary-collegiate and sometimes funny. At the end the heroine expired in a death scene that suggested Oscar Wilde's dictum that "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing"—of a disease with the symptomology of a bad case of mono. Yet in the moment of bathos, most readers could no more resist tears than readers of "Jaws" could resist shivers. As Kurt Vonnegut said, the book was as hard to put down as a chocolate éclair….

Erich...