Wednesday, May 04, 2005
DOWD / Love Lit 101 By MAUREEN DOWD
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
WASHINGTON — There are many angles for romance.
In the movie “Silk Stockings,” Fred Astaire uses geography. He croons to the leggy Soviet apparatchik Cyd Charisse that he loves “the east, west, north, and the south of you.”
In “My Little Chickadee,” Mae West rolls her hips and eyes and goes with arithmetic. “A man has $100 and you leave him with $2,” she lectures a class of schoolchildren. “That’s subtraction.”
Physics, of course. As an old boyfriend used to say: “It’s all electromagnetic.”
And then there’s my favorite: the alphabetical approach.
I once had a crush on a guy who told me he was reading great works of literature from A to Z, and had gotten as far as K. So I went to a bookstore and picked out classics from L to Z and sent them to him. I couldn’t find one for X, so I stuck in a tape of “The X Files.” He liked the present, but the romance never went east, west or north. Just south.
Still, my ears perked up when I recently heard the tale of a New York journalist who gave his wife an unusual birthday present: a list of books from A to Z that would help her better understand him.
I decided to adapt the idea for Valentine’s Day, and get some lucky guy the books from A to Z that would help him better understand me.
I prowled Borders, but the more I looked, the more I fretted. I could start with “All the King’s Men,” but it’s pretty obvious that I’m interested in the nexus between politics and dishonesty.
I love Shakespeare, but if I put in “The Taming of the Shrew,” would I send the wrong message?
Everything suddenly seemed fraught. What inferences would he draw from “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”? Would he find me stuffy if I included “Ethan Frome”? Pretentious if I threw in Ovid? Mirthless if I chose the shame-spiraling “House of Mirth”? Hostile if I picked “Be Honest — You’re Not That Into Him Either”?
High-maintenance if I selected “Empty Promises,” Ann Rule’s true stories of love affairs that ended with a horrible crime? Scheming if I put in Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seminal treatise: “How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, How to Get Rid of a Man”? Needy if I chose the Deepak Chopra cookbook to nourish body and soul, unlock the hidden dimensions in your life and harness the infinite power of coincidence? Pandering if I stacked the deck with guy-lit like Nick Hornby, Frederick Exley’s “A Fan’s Notes,” John Keegan’s “The Face of Battle” and my Mom’s recommendation, “365 Ways to Cook Hamburger and Other Ground Meats”?
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed not only risky, but the height of presumption to expect someone to devote that many hours to fathoming someone else’s psyche. What guy would drag himself away from ESPN’s “SportsCenter” to read “Sense and Sensibility” or from beer and pizza to devour “Cakes and Ale”?
It strikes me that there must be a gender difference here. From my own unscientific sampling, I think it’s far rarer for women to ask men to read their stuff than it is for men to ask women to read their stuff. Poor Condi Rice couldn’t even get George W. Bush to read her presentation of his foreign policy goals in Foreign Affairs during his 2000 campaign.
While I hardly ever hear from female readers who want me to read something, male readers are constantly e-mailing and sending me stuff to read: op-ed pieces, essays, letters to the editor or letters they’ve written to friends, e-mail messages their girlfriends or wives or buddies have written about me, original poetry, lists of favorite CDs and books, unpublished manuscripts, novels, jokes, business advice books, plays, TV sitcom treatments, recipes for cranberry orange nut bread. One guy even sent me his script for “George W. Bush: The Musical.” (Georgie sings to Big Daddy: “Any war you can start, I can make bigger; I can make any war bigger than you.”)
One reader sent me his latest humor column, “Have Pity on the December Baby” — “a look into the lonely world of living in Santa’s shadow” — and said to call if I wanted to discuss his publication fee.
Sometimes, if I don’t read their work and write back, the authors send me snarky notes complaining about my insensitivity.
While I could never give a guy I was dating the A to Z on me, I’d love to read the A to Z that guy would choose to give me on himself. I just hope it includes “The X Files.”
Maureen Dowd is of The New York Times.
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WASHINGTON — There are many angles for romance.
In the movie “Silk Stockings,” Fred Astaire uses geography. He croons to the leggy Soviet apparatchik Cyd Charisse that he loves “the east, west, north, and the south of you.”
In “My Little Chickadee,” Mae West rolls her hips and eyes and goes with arithmetic. “A man has $100 and you leave him with $2,” she lectures a class of schoolchildren. “That’s subtraction.”
Physics, of course. As an old boyfriend used to say: “It’s all electromagnetic.”
And then there’s my favorite: the alphabetical approach.
I once had a crush on a guy who told me he was reading great works of literature from A to Z, and had gotten as far as K. So I went to a bookstore and picked out classics from L to Z and sent them to him. I couldn’t find one for X, so I stuck in a tape of “The X Files.” He liked the present, but the romance never went east, west or north. Just south.
Still, my ears perked up when I recently heard the tale of a New York journalist who gave his wife an unusual birthday present: a list of books from A to Z that would help her better understand him.
I decided to adapt the idea for Valentine’s Day, and get some lucky guy the books from A to Z that would help him better understand me.
I prowled Borders, but the more I looked, the more I fretted. I could start with “All the King’s Men,” but it’s pretty obvious that I’m interested in the nexus between politics and dishonesty.
I love Shakespeare, but if I put in “The Taming of the Shrew,” would I send the wrong message?
Everything suddenly seemed fraught. What inferences would he draw from “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”? Would he find me stuffy if I included “Ethan Frome”? Pretentious if I threw in Ovid? Mirthless if I chose the shame-spiraling “House of Mirth”? Hostile if I picked “Be Honest — You’re Not That Into Him Either”?
High-maintenance if I selected “Empty Promises,” Ann Rule’s true stories of love affairs that ended with a horrible crime? Scheming if I put in Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seminal treatise: “How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, How to Get Rid of a Man”? Needy if I chose the Deepak Chopra cookbook to nourish body and soul, unlock the hidden dimensions in your life and harness the infinite power of coincidence? Pandering if I stacked the deck with guy-lit like Nick Hornby, Frederick Exley’s “A Fan’s Notes,” John Keegan’s “The Face of Battle” and my Mom’s recommendation, “365 Ways to Cook Hamburger and Other Ground Meats”?
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed not only risky, but the height of presumption to expect someone to devote that many hours to fathoming someone else’s psyche. What guy would drag himself away from ESPN’s “SportsCenter” to read “Sense and Sensibility” or from beer and pizza to devour “Cakes and Ale”?
It strikes me that there must be a gender difference here. From my own unscientific sampling, I think it’s far rarer for women to ask men to read their stuff than it is for men to ask women to read their stuff. Poor Condi Rice couldn’t even get George W. Bush to read her presentation of his foreign policy goals in Foreign Affairs during his 2000 campaign.
While I hardly ever hear from female readers who want me to read something, male readers are constantly e-mailing and sending me stuff to read: op-ed pieces, essays, letters to the editor or letters they’ve written to friends, e-mail messages their girlfriends or wives or buddies have written about me, original poetry, lists of favorite CDs and books, unpublished manuscripts, novels, jokes, business advice books, plays, TV sitcom treatments, recipes for cranberry orange nut bread. One guy even sent me his script for “George W. Bush: The Musical.” (Georgie sings to Big Daddy: “Any war you can start, I can make bigger; I can make any war bigger than you.”)
One reader sent me his latest humor column, “Have Pity on the December Baby” — “a look into the lonely world of living in Santa’s shadow” — and said to call if I wanted to discuss his publication fee.
Sometimes, if I don’t read their work and write back, the authors send me snarky notes complaining about my insensitivity.
While I could never give a guy I was dating the A to Z on me, I’d love to read the A to Z that guy would choose to give me on himself. I just hope it includes “The X Files.”
Maureen Dowd is of The New York Times.
