Title : "[T]he relationship at the very center of the story [is] a marriage between a neurotic perfectionist and a formidably patient man with much to criticize about him..."
link : "[T]he relationship at the very center of the story [is] a marriage between a neurotic perfectionist and a formidably patient man with much to criticize about him..."
"[T]he relationship at the very center of the story [is] a marriage between a neurotic perfectionist and a formidably patient man with much to criticize about him..."
"... from an annoyingly 'phlegmy' throat to a similarity to 'a heap of laundry: smelly, inert, useless, almost sentient but not quite.' And these are just his physical faults — or at least a sampling of them. Bill’s putative mental and emotional shortcomings could themselves fill a book. And they very nearly do. That the author has made her particular disgusts (and her generous way of occasionally overlooking them) the basis for a general treatise on matrimony is the abiding problem of 'Foreverland.' How well can an institution be explained by a single instance of it, and especially by one beset with problems that aren’t necessarily widely shared? Quite well, Havrilesky seems to feel, or else she wouldn’t start so many sentences with sweeping prefaces such as 'Marriage is' or 'Having a baby means' or 'The suburbs are' followed by blanket statements of what they are.... 'The suburbs are a place where people go to embrace the dominant paradigm, because the dominant paradigm makes them feel safe and comfortable.' A dominant paradigm? In today’s America?"
Writes Walter Kirn, in "Heather Havrilesky Compares Her Husband to a Heap of Laundry" (NYT)(reviewing "FOREVERLAND/On the Divine Tedium of Marriage").
I'm reading between the lines that Havrilesky is going for humor of the sort once purveyed by Erma Bombeck. It's fine not to consider that very funny, but I think you need to acknowledge that the author intends to be funny. That line about a pile of laundry telegraphs that humor is intended. Kirn seems offended by the woman-on-man insults, but I'm a little offended by Kirn's failure to consider that a woman is doing humor.
Which makes me wonder what Erma Bombeck wrote about her husband. Did she insult him? That's a bit hard to research, but I got far enough to discover that her husband's name was also Bill and that his favorite story of hers was "Daddy Doll Under the Bed." Excerpt:
My dad left the house every morning and always seemed glad to see everyone at night.... Whenever I played house, the mother doll had a lot to do. I never knew what to do with the daddy doll, so I had him say “I’m going off to work now” and threw him under the bed.
When I was nine years old, my father didn’t get up one morning to go to work. He went to the hospital and died the next day. There were a lot of people in the house who brought all kinds of good food and cakes. We never had so much company before. I went to my room and felt under the bed for the father doll. When I found him, I dusted him off and put him on my bed.
He never did anything. I didn’t know his leaving would hurt so much. I still don’t know why.
There's an interesting resonance between the husband as a pile of inert laundry on the floor and the daddy doll under the bed.
Thus articles "[T]he relationship at the very center of the story [is] a marriage between a neurotic perfectionist and a formidably patient man with much to criticize about him..."
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