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The Loving Couple
A topsy-turvy book with two versions to read about the humorous life of a married couple.
269 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1956
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 22, 2021
Did you love Mad Men as much as I did? Then you'll love this. If you didn't catch Mad Men - I pity you - you might still love it.
Picture a sunny morning and a gracious home in an exclusive and wealthy Manhattan suburb along the Hudson river, circa 1958. John and Mary, the beautiful couple within (I of course pictured Betty and Don Draper) are having a vicious, bitter, screaming, marriage-ending whopper of a fight. The husband storms out.
The following day from hell is then described in two parts, first from his perspective and then hers.
This is a fast, funny and gleefully nasty read. Patrick Dennis can be hilarious and there were times that I laughed out loud, but the overall tone is very misanthropic - filled with awful characters, and skewering pretty much every aspect of New York society. What happens to John and Mary? Read it and find out for yourself! - this book is available for free from archive.org. Many thanks to Rebekah for bringing this one to my attention!
Picture a sunny morning and a gracious home in an exclusive and wealthy Manhattan suburb along the Hudson river, circa 1958. John and Mary, the beautiful couple within (I of course pictured Betty and Don Draper) are having a vicious, bitter, screaming, marriage-ending whopper of a fight. The husband storms out.
The following day from hell is then described in two parts, first from his perspective and then hers.
This is a fast, funny and gleefully nasty read. Patrick Dennis can be hilarious and there were times that I laughed out loud, but the overall tone is very misanthropic - filled with awful characters, and skewering pretty much every aspect of New York society. What happens to John and Mary? Read it and find out for yourself! - this book is available for free from archive.org. Many thanks to Rebekah for bringing this one to my attention!
October 17, 2021
Despite Patrick Dennis's trenchant and sometimes problematic skewering of 1950s New York society and their behavior and attitudes, this was, at its heart a sweet story. The young married couple in whose company we spend almost all of our time is good, kind, smart yet rather innocent, and thoroughly decent. They are the only people in the book who escape the authors cruel yet funny barbs.
The book begins with an epic quarrel between John and Mary, once very happy and in love, and now dissatisfied. Their 6-year marriage changed a year ago when John gave up his writing career, took a high-paying job, and moved to Riveredge, an exclusive suburban mecca for affluent New Yorkers of a certain status and income.
Here is the ideal Riveredge couple as described by the author:
John has stormed out of his house and left Mary. He spends the day on his own meeting old friends, visiting old haunts, spending time with his shady and vulgar boss of one year, and almost cheating on his wife with the boss’s evil daughter. After a series of appalling encounters and painful adventures, He realizes that his wife is the only decent person in New York City and environs.
Meanwhile, Mary, his lovely wife, is having a similar set of horrific experiences throughout her day. She goes to the city in the clutches of her “friend”, Fran, to escape her big sister Alice a relentless scold and bully.
By the time John and Mary coincidentally meet up at the end of the night outside the old apartment in which they were so happy, they have been through the gauntlet, are ready to fall into each other's arms in relief and gratitude. They are more than ready to start a new life, or rather, return to their old one.
Patrick Dennis wittily leaves no section of the populace unscathed. Many of his descriptions of the people and their antics are laugh-out-loud funny, but most are pretty bitter as well. He saves his most stinging barbs for…well everybody gets pretty well raked over the coals. The unconscious and casual racism is a little hard to take even if you can keep it in the context of its times. It is quite similar in tone and structure to The Joyous Season, but some of his zingers in that novel come off gentler, funnier, and less corrosive coming from the first-person narration of a formidable but lovable 10-year-old boy.
https://rebekahsreadingsandwatchings....
The book begins with an epic quarrel between John and Mary, once very happy and in love, and now dissatisfied. Their 6-year marriage changed a year ago when John gave up his writing career, took a high-paying job, and moved to Riveredge, an exclusive suburban mecca for affluent New Yorkers of a certain status and income.
Here is the ideal Riveredge couple as described by the author:
Together they deplored reactionaries, Hollywood and Miami, bright colors, communism and fascism, jukeboxes, slums, child labor, strong labor unions, vulgarity, social climbers, snobs, comic books, tabloids, the Reader's Digest, Life, and the Book-of-the-Month Club—although they solemnly agreed that anything that instilled the reading habit among those less fortunately endowed couldn't be entirely bad. You could hardly wonder that everybody loved the Martins.
"Well, you're out bright and early," Whitney said, his tortoiseshell glasses and splendid white teeth sparkling in the sunlight. Whitney's statement, while cordial, also managed to convey surprise, criticism and hope for reform.
John has stormed out of his house and left Mary. He spends the day on his own meeting old friends, visiting old haunts, spending time with his shady and vulgar boss of one year, and almost cheating on his wife with the boss’s evil daughter. After a series of appalling encounters and painful adventures, He realizes that his wife is the only decent person in New York City and environs.
Meanwhile, Mary, his lovely wife, is having a similar set of horrific experiences throughout her day. She goes to the city in the clutches of her “friend”, Fran, to escape her big sister Alice a relentless scold and bully.
Alice was active in Planned Parenthood. A couple of decades earlier, Alice would most certainly have been jailed for passing out contraceptives on the cathedral steps. Today she took a more moderate, but no less ardent, stand. Alice believed that those who could afford children should have all the children they could afford and when they could afford them. Alice always said that it was the duty of superior people to bring forth superior offspring. So far Alice and Fred had produced two—a boy of seven, given to chronic nausea and bedwetting, and a girl of five with nineteen distinct allergies. Alice and Fred felt that they could now afford to treat mankind to yet another superior being, and its birth had been as carefully plotted as the Invasion of Normandy.
By the time John and Mary coincidentally meet up at the end of the night outside the old apartment in which they were so happy, they have been through the gauntlet, are ready to fall into each other's arms in relief and gratitude. They are more than ready to start a new life, or rather, return to their old one.
Patrick Dennis wittily leaves no section of the populace unscathed. Many of his descriptions of the people and their antics are laugh-out-loud funny, but most are pretty bitter as well. He saves his most stinging barbs for…well everybody gets pretty well raked over the coals. The unconscious and casual racism is a little hard to take even if you can keep it in the context of its times. It is quite similar in tone and structure to The Joyous Season, but some of his zingers in that novel come off gentler, funnier, and less corrosive coming from the first-person narration of a formidable but lovable 10-year-old boy.
https://rebekahsreadingsandwatchings....
April 4, 2017
Our Virginia Rowans, who wrote "The Loving Couple" is actually Patrick Dennis. "Auntie Mame" author and a great writer. The book is in two parts. "His Story" and "Her Story." One side of the book is upside down, and it makes no difference which one you read first. The story takes place all in one day, and it starts off with the husband leaving the wife after an argument - and what happens afterward is both of their narratives that will eventually meet up in the end.
A Patrick Dennis novel is not perfect. What is perfect is his bitchy commentary on not only on the main two characters but all the side characters in this book as well. His observations on 1950s Manhattan/New York is priceless, and fascinating in how he breaks down the social/economic world down. In that sense, he reminds me a bit of Fassbinder's film work. What they have in common is their ability to make a comment on society, in a manner that is both entertaining as well as being politically aware of how such a culture works.
I read "his story" first, and I think the only reason I did so is that I'm a male. That alone is interesting to me. I wonder if everyone who read this novel started off with their gender. As mentioned, you don't have to. The structure of the novel seems gimmicky at first, but the big difference between the two parts is that even though the narrative is the same, you're getting different descriptions of the characters involved with the story.
Patrick Dennis would make an excellent study for a novelist who is trying to figure out the nature of fiction and how to write well. He's very structured, and his books are always a page turner. He has a formula that works well. If I were teaching a writing class, I would for sure make my students read Dennis' novels. Especially this one, because again, it's not a great story, but it clearly captures individuals in a particular situation and class in America. Or in 1950s Manhattan. If one is a fan of "Mad Man" TV series, they for sure will go for this novel.
A Patrick Dennis novel is not perfect. What is perfect is his bitchy commentary on not only on the main two characters but all the side characters in this book as well. His observations on 1950s Manhattan/New York is priceless, and fascinating in how he breaks down the social/economic world down. In that sense, he reminds me a bit of Fassbinder's film work. What they have in common is their ability to make a comment on society, in a manner that is both entertaining as well as being politically aware of how such a culture works.
I read "his story" first, and I think the only reason I did so is that I'm a male. That alone is interesting to me. I wonder if everyone who read this novel started off with their gender. As mentioned, you don't have to. The structure of the novel seems gimmicky at first, but the big difference between the two parts is that even though the narrative is the same, you're getting different descriptions of the characters involved with the story.
Patrick Dennis would make an excellent study for a novelist who is trying to figure out the nature of fiction and how to write well. He's very structured, and his books are always a page turner. He has a formula that works well. If I were teaching a writing class, I would for sure make my students read Dennis' novels. Especially this one, because again, it's not a great story, but it clearly captures individuals in a particular situation and class in America. Or in 1950s Manhattan. If one is a fan of "Mad Man" TV series, they for sure will go for this novel.
Read
July 17, 2021thaaaaaaat's the stuff. wonderful wedding was fun but pure candy; this is full-on black tar patrick dennis. half of the book is "his story" and half is "her story" (upside down, starting from the opposite corner). where i had expected a rashomon style 2-accounts-of-the-same-events type situation, the book actually drives the couple apart immediately via a big blowout fight over a coffeemaker & sends them each on a dantean tour of "terrible people:" gigolos, parvenus, blackmailers, wealthy misers, trendhoppers, smugglers masquerading as titans of industry, etc. the tearing off of masks & deflating of pretensions will be v familiar if this isn't your 1st p-denz rodeo & actually in "his story" the char toby is like a dry run for his later novel tony (which you should also read). house party, falling b/w this & wonderful wedding chronologically, is gonna be an interesting one to check out!
October 9, 2012
The Loving Couple is the third of four novels by Patrick Dennis (Edward Everett Tanner III) written under the pseudonym of Virginia Rowans. Upon its publication, it became a bestseller at the same time as Dennis’ Auntie Mame and Guestward Ho!, making Patrick Dennis the first author ever to have three books simultaneously on the bestseller list.
The Loving Couple—which contrary to the title, is about the disintegration of the marriage between a young suburban couple—is written as two separate novellas, both covering the same twenty-four hours in the disintegration of a suburban marriage. The two tales were published back-to-back starting from each end of the book, so that when a reader had completed one side of the story, he could flip the book around and upside-down and consume the other half.
"His Story" details nearly twenty-four hours in the life of the young husband after he storms out of his nearly six-year marriage, as he spends a day coping with shabby college friends and a men's club he's long outgrown, his vulgar and tasteless employers, and a starlet as ravenous as she is without morals. "Her Story" begins the moment the husband has slammed the door behind him, and the wife finds herself fending off the sympathies of her superior older sister, the unfortunate interest of a man-hungry neighbor, and the attentions of a Southern gigolo on the make. The two stories meet, tangle, and climax in the nightclubs and streets of a mid-century Manhattan that's decidedly seedier and more piss-elegant than what's succeeded it.
Although he's writing under a pseudonym (a pseudonym that's different from his Patrick Dennis pseudonym, anyway), Dennis is aiming some of his most highly-corrosive satire at his usual targets in The Loving Couple. The suburbia of Westchester County comes under fire, but so do the residents of Manhattan, and more especially those of Queens and New Jersey. He sends poison jabs in the directions of television, and advertising, and kitsch-obsessed America; his fascination with and derision for sexually-ambiguous young men motivates a huge chunk of both novellas' plots. So acid is Dennis in this particular volume that I suspect most readers will only find appealing the Loving Couple of its title because the rest of the book's characters are so awful that the separated suburbanites smell sweet only in comparison.
But the book is funny, and razor-sharp in its insights. It's a shame The Loving Couple is barely known even to aficionados of Dennis, because it's a clever and ambitious conceit—and to his credit, he pulls it off.
The Loving Couple—which contrary to the title, is about the disintegration of the marriage between a young suburban couple—is written as two separate novellas, both covering the same twenty-four hours in the disintegration of a suburban marriage. The two tales were published back-to-back starting from each end of the book, so that when a reader had completed one side of the story, he could flip the book around and upside-down and consume the other half.
"His Story" details nearly twenty-four hours in the life of the young husband after he storms out of his nearly six-year marriage, as he spends a day coping with shabby college friends and a men's club he's long outgrown, his vulgar and tasteless employers, and a starlet as ravenous as she is without morals. "Her Story" begins the moment the husband has slammed the door behind him, and the wife finds herself fending off the sympathies of her superior older sister, the unfortunate interest of a man-hungry neighbor, and the attentions of a Southern gigolo on the make. The two stories meet, tangle, and climax in the nightclubs and streets of a mid-century Manhattan that's decidedly seedier and more piss-elegant than what's succeeded it.
Although he's writing under a pseudonym (a pseudonym that's different from his Patrick Dennis pseudonym, anyway), Dennis is aiming some of his most highly-corrosive satire at his usual targets in The Loving Couple. The suburbia of Westchester County comes under fire, but so do the residents of Manhattan, and more especially those of Queens and New Jersey. He sends poison jabs in the directions of television, and advertising, and kitsch-obsessed America; his fascination with and derision for sexually-ambiguous young men motivates a huge chunk of both novellas' plots. So acid is Dennis in this particular volume that I suspect most readers will only find appealing the Loving Couple of its title because the rest of the book's characters are so awful that the separated suburbanites smell sweet only in comparison.
But the book is funny, and razor-sharp in its insights. It's a shame The Loving Couple is barely known even to aficionados of Dennis, because it's a clever and ambitious conceit—and to his credit, he pulls it off.
August 11, 2012
Being a modest gay man possessing flawless literary tastes, I adore anything written by the late Patrick Dennis. This early novel of his written under the pseudonym of Virginia Rowans details an argument by a young married couple. The events of the entire book takes place in the space of one exceedingly long day.
I like to think I’m fairly well read but I have to be honest and tell you that no book has ever sent me running to my dictionary so often to look up the definitions of words as much as The Loving Couple. Historically, it was really interesting to experience the type of mid-century chit-chat one would have heard from a member of New York’s literary scene at that time.
Patrick Dennis really pulled out all the stops when he wrote this book and flexed his literary muscles. Yes, there is mucho conceit (and a firm belief in his own genius) behind the writing of The Loving Couple. Patrick Dennis is definitely showing off and trying to “wow” his readers and in my opinion he does succeed in that endeavor.
It took me almost two months to finish this book. The Loving Couple isn’t for everyone and honestly, I didn’t particularly find it to be a fun reading experience but if you’re already a Patrick Dennis fan, you’ll enjoy it.
I like to think I’m fairly well read but I have to be honest and tell you that no book has ever sent me running to my dictionary so often to look up the definitions of words as much as The Loving Couple. Historically, it was really interesting to experience the type of mid-century chit-chat one would have heard from a member of New York’s literary scene at that time.
Patrick Dennis really pulled out all the stops when he wrote this book and flexed his literary muscles. Yes, there is mucho conceit (and a firm belief in his own genius) behind the writing of The Loving Couple. Patrick Dennis is definitely showing off and trying to “wow” his readers and in my opinion he does succeed in that endeavor.
It took me almost two months to finish this book. The Loving Couple isn’t for everyone and honestly, I didn’t particularly find it to be a fun reading experience but if you’re already a Patrick Dennis fan, you’ll enjoy it.
December 29, 2017
The Loving Couple: His/Her Story (1956)
Storia della giornata di una coppia, raccontata secondo il doppio punto di vista di lui e lei, in una New York anni '50 di faccendieri, avventurieri, parenti fastidiosi e vicini molesti. Non mi è dispiaciuto ma nemmeno piaciuto del tutto, troppo gne gne in alcuni punti.
Virginia Rowans è uno pseudonimo di Edward Everett Tanner III (l'altro è Patrick Dennis)
Storia della giornata di una coppia, raccontata secondo il doppio punto di vista di lui e lei, in una New York anni '50 di faccendieri, avventurieri, parenti fastidiosi e vicini molesti. Non mi è dispiaciuto ma nemmeno piaciuto del tutto, troppo gne gne in alcuni punti.
Virginia Rowans è uno pseudonimo di Edward Everett Tanner III (l'altro è Patrick Dennis)
August 7, 2019
Could not get into this one. Every plot point felt disjointed. Nothing really connected with each other, and the way the characters came in and out was annoying.
September 9, 2013
il racconto di una giornata (iniziata con un clamoroso litigio) raccontata da john e mary, giovane coppia benestante e residente in un lussuoso sobborgo di new york, in due storie staccate. divertente, frivolo- ma meno di quel che sembra, spietato, a tratti cattivo. con zuccheroso (e doverosissimo) happy ending.
August 5, 2011
This was an interesting read by the author of
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews