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expendablemudge's review
3.0
Rating: 3.5* of five
This was one of the funniest experiences I ever had reading a book. My mother was a big [a:Max Shulman|84997|Max Shulman|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] fan from the moment she fell for his book [b:Barefoot Boy with Cheek|22067378|Barefoot Boy with Cheek|Max Shulman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1399815949s/22067378.jpg|141677]. She bought every one of his books from that point on, so we had them around the house. I liked the jackets, they looked wacky and fun. I didn't think much of the books as books because they weren't particularly inviting to a kid...a story about old people (!) being married and having problems and blahblahblah wasn't enough like my own world but too much like my family to call to me.
Then I saw the movie starring Paul Newman. Before home video was available on every streetcorner in Murrika via Blockbuster and every, but EVERY, home had a VCR (snazzy people had Betamaxes), the only way to see foreign/obscure/old movies was to date boys from the local film school. (There might have been other ways but they didn't interest me as much as college boys did so I remained unaware of them.) Offered the proper incentives, the aforementioned boys would sneak a friend into the occasional class viewing of something good. They'd take suggestions for themed film days. And they'd show all these marvies at the readily-accessible-by-city-bus campus of the university!
One of the themes I'd suggested to the film student of the moment was Cold War Comedies. He liked that idea for its spurious veneer of sociological inquiry and its actual purpose of giving us hours of campy hoots at the outfits, hairdos, and coded homoeroticism of Hollyweird in the 1950s and middle 1960s. He included this film in the fest, and there was Paul Newman being Paul Newman and what's not to love about that? I mentioned my mother had the novel, was dispatched forthwith to return with it, and we spent a few lovely afternoons reading it to each other while chuckling. (That particular lad was the reason I spent most of my sophomore year of high school absent...there was sex to be had, laughs to be laughed, drinks to be drunk! It's a wonder I wasn't caught.)
The adventures of Harry Bannerman as he "grows up" to be what his formidable wife Grace desires for him to be (a really, really boring middle-aged Husband) were fun to read:
Pretty Young Thing and I laughed ourselves into hiccups at this, and swore we'd never fall into this trap, or the gay version thereof; I didn't and he, sadly, drank himself to death at 36.
His brush with infidelity with Angela Hoffa made Harry more appealing to me. At least he wasn't completely neutered by the experience of being married to the masterful, nay overbearing, Blondezilla that is Grace. Joanne Woodward was pitch-perfect in this role. Her Grace is the All-American Wife and Mother. It wasn't unclear to me even then that Grace was intended to be an archetype, and Woodward used the material to create a stereotype in a satirical vein. The performance was excellent, I suppose. It cemented my determination to avoid at all costs a life of heterosexual bliss.
On the page, however, Angela was more vibrant and alive than on the screen. She was a desperate woman in search of love and connection, things her husband would never understand still less offer. The way her radar brought her to Harry, nebbishy but still able to dream and therefore feel, was sexism at its most unrepentant. Women exist only through men and Angela needs a man so she takes someone else's just to score more points on the Woman Scale. Gross. But also relatable, more so than Grace's iron-jawed determination to manipulate and mold Harry into A Man. Angela's motivation for stealing Harry from Grace has layers. Grace isn't given layers. She isn't given to thinking about layers, either.
So why think about this experience so many years later? Sophomore year was 42 years ago. Pretty Young Thing's been dead since 1986. I ran across Melki's review again today is why, and got a hankerin' to rewatch the film. It, and the book, are strictly for us older folks. They are of their time, their assumptions and worldview eerily similar to today's funhouse mirror of the USA I thought I lived in, but in the ways that no one really wants to look at any too closely.
This was one of the funniest experiences I ever had reading a book. My mother was a big [a:Max Shulman|84997|Max Shulman|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] fan from the moment she fell for his book [b:Barefoot Boy with Cheek|22067378|Barefoot Boy with Cheek|Max Shulman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1399815949s/22067378.jpg|141677]. She bought every one of his books from that point on, so we had them around the house. I liked the jackets, they looked wacky and fun. I didn't think much of the books as books because they weren't particularly inviting to a kid...a story about old people (!) being married and having problems and blahblahblah wasn't enough like my own world but too much like my family to call to me.
Then I saw the movie starring Paul Newman. Before home video was available on every streetcorner in Murrika via Blockbuster and every, but EVERY, home had a VCR (snazzy people had Betamaxes), the only way to see foreign/obscure/old movies was to date boys from the local film school. (There might have been other ways but they didn't interest me as much as college boys did so I remained unaware of them.) Offered the proper incentives, the aforementioned boys would sneak a friend into the occasional class viewing of something good. They'd take suggestions for themed film days. And they'd show all these marvies at the readily-accessible-by-city-bus campus of the university!
One of the themes I'd suggested to the film student of the moment was Cold War Comedies. He liked that idea for its spurious veneer of sociological inquiry and its actual purpose of giving us hours of campy hoots at the outfits, hairdos, and coded homoeroticism of Hollyweird in the 1950s and middle 1960s. He included this film in the fest, and there was Paul Newman being Paul Newman and what's not to love about that? I mentioned my mother had the novel, was dispatched forthwith to return with it, and we spent a few lovely afternoons reading it to each other while chuckling. (That particular lad was the reason I spent most of my sophomore year of high school absent...there was sex to be had, laughs to be laughed, drinks to be drunk! It's a wonder I wasn't caught.)
The adventures of Harry Bannerman as he "grows up" to be what his formidable wife Grace desires for him to be (a really, really boring middle-aged Husband) were fun to read:
If it wasn’t a meeting, a caucus, a rally, or a lecture, then it was a quiet evening at home licking envelopes. Or else it was a party where you ate cubes of cheese on toothpicks and talked about plywood, mortgages, mulches, and children. Or it was amateur theatricals. Or ringing doorbells for worthy causes. Or umpiring Little League games. Or setting tulip bulbs. Or sticking decals on cribs. Or trimming hedges. Or reading Dr. Spock. Or barbecuing hamburgers. Or increasing your life insurance. Or doing anything in the whole wide world except sitting on a pouf with a soft and loving girl and listening to Rodgers and Hart.
Pretty Young Thing and I laughed ourselves into hiccups at this, and swore we'd never fall into this trap, or the gay version thereof; I didn't and he, sadly, drank himself to death at 36.
His brush with infidelity with Angela Hoffa made Harry more appealing to me. At least he wasn't completely neutered by the experience of being married to the masterful, nay overbearing, Blondezilla that is Grace. Joanne Woodward was pitch-perfect in this role. Her Grace is the All-American Wife and Mother. It wasn't unclear to me even then that Grace was intended to be an archetype, and Woodward used the material to create a stereotype in a satirical vein. The performance was excellent, I suppose. It cemented my determination to avoid at all costs a life of heterosexual bliss.
On the page, however, Angela was more vibrant and alive than on the screen. She was a desperate woman in search of love and connection, things her husband would never understand still less offer. The way her radar brought her to Harry, nebbishy but still able to dream and therefore feel, was sexism at its most unrepentant. Women exist only through men and Angela needs a man so she takes someone else's just to score more points on the Woman Scale. Gross. But also relatable, more so than Grace's iron-jawed determination to manipulate and mold Harry into A Man. Angela's motivation for stealing Harry from Grace has layers. Grace isn't given layers. She isn't given to thinking about layers, either.
So why think about this experience so many years later? Sophomore year was 42 years ago. Pretty Young Thing's been dead since 1986. I ran across Melki's review again today is why, and got a hankerin' to rewatch the film. It, and the book, are strictly for us older folks. They are of their time, their assumptions and worldview eerily similar to today's funhouse mirror of the USA I thought I lived in, but in the ways that no one really wants to look at any too closely.