Drama that
becomes
real-life
I WAS re-reading some James Thurber (from another era) the other day and was particularly struck by the truth and accuracy of a particular passage that describes the start of a terrible row between a couple, that sadly ends up in complete and irreconcilable separation. I repeat an excerpt as a warning and admonishment to readers of both sexes.
"It all started one night at Leonardo's, after dinner, over their Benedictine. It started innocently enough, amiably even, with laughter from both of them, laughter that froze finally as the clock ran on and their words came out sharp and flat and stinging.
"They had been to see Camille. Gordon hadn't liked it very much. Marcia had been crazy about it because she's crazy about Greta Garbo. She belongs to that formidable army of Garbo admirers whose enchantment borders almost on fanaticism and sometimes even touches the edges of frenzy.
"I think that, before everything happened, Gordon admired Garbo too, but the depth of his wife's conviction that here was the greatest figure ever seen in our generation on sea or land, on screen or stage, exasperated him that night.
Gordon hates (or used to) exaggeration and he respects (or once did) detachment. It was his feeling that detachment is a necessary thread in the fabric of a woman's charm. He didn't like to see his wife get 'into a sweat' over anything and, that night at Leonardo's, he unfortunately used that expression and made that accusation.
Marcia responded, as I get it, by saying, a little loudly (they had gone on to Scotch and soda), that a man who had no abandon of feeling and no passion for anything was not altogether a man, and that his level of detachment simply covered up a lack of critical appreciation and understanding of the arts in general.
"Her sentences were becoming long and wavy, and her words formal. Gordon suddenly began to pooh-pooh her, he kept saying 'Pooh!' (an annoying mannerism of his, I have always thought). He wouldn't answer her arguments or even listen to them. That, of course, infuriated her.
"'Oh, pooh to you, too!' she finally more or less shouted.
"He snapped at her, 'Quiet, for God's sake! You're yelling like a prizefight manager!'
"Enraged at that, she had recourse to her eyes as weapons, and looked steadily at him for a while with the expression of one who is viewing a small and horrible animal, such as a horned toad.
"Then they sat in moody and brooding silence for a long time, without moving a muscle, at the end of which, getting a hold on herself, Marcia asked him, quietly enough, just exactly what actor, on the screen or on the stage, living or dead, he thought greater than Garbo.
"Gordon thought a moment and then said, as quietly as she had put the question, 'Donald Duck' …"
Quite apart from the superb writing, much in this is instructive.
Why, I once took a blonde lady to a dramatisation of PG Wodehouse (one of my favourites), at the Sneddon. It's still flung in my face from time to time – the way I laughed like a jackass at something totally unfunny, to her great embarrassment.
Yes, much that's instructive for both sexes.
Tailpiece
HE WAS fired as a theatre set designer because he did absolutely nothing. He didn't make a scene.
Last word
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored. - Evelyn Waugh
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