Like me, he ran in the Boston marathon because neither of us was fast enough to run in the major meets. He became obsessed with running in high school and, like me, ran on the Harvard track team because everyone who came out for the team got a uniform. He went on to teach Greek and Latin literature at University of Munich, Princeton, Tel Aviv, Dartmouth and Oxford University. Erich was distraught that Yale did not give him tenure in 1972 and he was convinced that he was denied tenure because of his fame from his popular novel and movies. If he does not get tenure, he has to leave. In an Ivy-League school, a professor has only a few years to gain tenure or permanent appointment. He published some outstanding scholarly books on the Greek tragedian Euripides and the comic Roman playwright Plautus and was offered a professorship at Yale where he had the largest class in the school, with more than 600 students enrolled. He received his masters and doctoral degrees at Harvard also. At Harvard he was the class poet and the Latin Salutatory Orator. He was born in 1937, in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of a rabbi, and studied Hebrew, German, French, Latin and Greek.

I believed every word I wrote.”Įarly Life, Education and Academic Career Erich Segal Segal said, “The reason people cried over Love Story is because I did. Just about everyone remembers “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” which is number 13 in the American Film Institute’s list of 100 Movie Quotes. The film grossed nearly $200 million and received seven Academy Award nominations. He wrote the screenplay for the movie of the same name, starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw, that was the top box office attraction of 1970 and gained him an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. Of not being remembered, not counting.”Īt age 33, he wrote his best-known novel, Love Story, that sold more than 21 million copies, was the top selling work of fiction for 1970 in the United States and has been translated into more than 33 languages.

But what lies beneath that fear is the terror of insignificance.

A line in one of his novels, The Class, described both of us: “Fear of death is universal. Both of us were mediocre runners trying to prove ourselves. Erich Segal was on the track team with me at Harvard and ran the Boston Marathon with me several times.

Love Story by Erich Segal