WINSTON GROOM: It was like being in a year-long car wreck. After college, he joined the Army and did a year in Vietnam, as he told NPR in 2016. LIMBONG: Author Winston Groom was born in Washington, D.C., but he was raised in Mobile, Ala. UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: (Reading) So whatever ails old General Forrest done, starting up that Klan thing was not a good idea. LIMBONG: What's played for a brief joke in the movie is, in the book, an almost William Faulkner-like metaphor for Southern history and familial baggage. And even my grandmama say they's a bunch of no-goods. And he was a great man, she'd say, except when he started up the Ku Klux Klan after the war was over. UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: (Reading) Mama always said we was kin to General Forrest's family some way. In the audio book, listen to the way the character reckons with his namesake, the notorious Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. NPR's Andrew Limbong has this appreciation.ĪNDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: The Forrest Gump from the book is bigger, burlier, a little rougher around the edges than Tom Hanks in the movie. TOM HANKS: (As Forrest Gump) My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get.ĬORNISH: Winston Groom died Wednesday in Fairhope, Ala., where he was remembered by the city's mayor as well as the state's governor. He wrote the novel 'Forrest Gump,' which of course eventually became the Oscar-winning hit movie starring Tom Hanks. It is something to mull over for a long time.Writer Winston Groom has died. There's a line in the movie wondering if everything is predestined or happens randomly or it's a combination of both. We love our cats and dogs for the same simplicity and always being in the moment. Granted, he achieves this only because he doesn't have the brains to think otherwise and actually have expectations, but so many of our problems are because we do have higher intellect and desires, which ironically makes us unhappy because we know what we are missing. I should read the novel to get the author's intention (I remember some people preferring the book and complaining that no one at the Academy Awards gave him any credit.) But rather than an implication that you should do what you're supposed to do and believe in God and you'll win in the end, I see it as zen-like, i.e., living in the moment and not having expectations or particular cravings (other than his loving Jenny.) So he ends up just stumbling into all the major historical events of the time. One comment I've never heard is that Forrest's simplicity is almost zen-like. Like others, I've seen this movie more than once. This is a powerful yet charming movie fun for its special effects and profound in how it keeps you thinking long after it's over.

ფორესტ გამპი by Winston Groom