CLASHES BY NIGHT
Serwer, Arnold
Clashes by Night by ARNOLD SERWER WHILE the posses are out looking ™ for someone who is afraid of Virginia Woolf, they may run across a number of citizens who have begun to be afraid of Who's...
...He beckoned to the waiter to bring another round of 7 Up...
...She dropped to the floor in a heap...
...while married adults, the very group that is most impressionable, can enter the theatre and watch Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton tear each other apart verbally from midnight to dawn...
...Some of my colleagues might have suggested shock treatment...
...It is ludicrous," said Dr...
...Did it work...
...Before my wife sees it...
...Ludicrous that minors are barred from seeing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf...
...I asked...
...How do they react to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf...
...One of those who is most alarmed is my friend, Dr...
...von Wedlock, as we were discussing this latest threat to marriage over a cold bottle of 7 Up at The Stark Club, a place where people go for grim discussions of the bedrock problems of modern life...
...Just before I left the office my secretary told me that my wife had left word she was going with your wife to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf...
...On a par with her husband...
...A 14 Up, on the rocks...
...Worse, she became fiendishly skilled in the use of paradox...
...During Mrs...
...Did you hear me...
...Clashes by Night by ARNOLD SERWER WHILE the posses are out looking ™ for someone who is afraid of Virginia Woolf, they may run across a number of citizens who have begun to be afraid of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf...
...Poor fellow, he kept offering the feeble ripostes they once shared so happily, but what chance did Ts zat so?' have against his wife's plagiarisms of Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde...
...Such as having the husband wait quietly until his wife reaches an epigrammatic crescendo, then felling her with a baseball bat...
...Take the case of my client Carstairs, a husband who has had his differences with his wife over the years, but who still managed to keep the marriage going—with my help, of course...
...Rehearse what...
...Have one on me while I rehearse...
...One of my clients, an escapist, has moved his bed out to the garage where he sleeps behind locked doors...
...Teenagers don't identify with this sort of thing, but married couples, and particularly wives and husbands past thirty, often do...
...I don't know exactly how to break this to you," said my drinking com panion, "but I think you should know the stark truth...
...What about the husbands...
...This steamy saga of a husband and wife who spray each other with acid all night long has begun to be cause for alarm...
...Now his wife no longer can reach across the pillows and wake him up at two in the morning for a duel of dialogue, loser pays for the drinks...
...But Carstairs never strikes his spouse except in self-defense...
...None," I said...
...No marriage can last if the combatants are unevenly matched...
...It certainly is," said von Wedlock...
...That's simply terrible," I shuddered...
...What did you advise Carstairs to do...
...Her husband found out she was boning up at the library...
...It was like the scene where Burton destroys his wife's long-held fantasy of motherhood...
...They ought to ban the movie," I said sternly, "at least, for adults...
...Then he shrugged in the Gallic fashion and said with a flawless accent: eHoni soit qui mal y pense.' (Evil to him who evil thinks...
...Especially since the Prentices not only have a son, Tom, but also one called Tom-Tom, and a baby girl named Tom-Tom-Tom...
...They ought to burn the movie," I said angrily...
...Instead of employing the customary Carstairs' repartee in their quarrels such as Ts zat so?' and 'Sez you' and 'You should live so long,' she began to pepper him with epigrams and flay him with double entendres...
...The motion picture, I mean...
...He flatly denies there ever was such a son...
...Some are drinking more than they did before...
...Von Wedlock thought a moment...
...Bertrand von Wedlock, the eminent marriage counselor...
...So I advised another procedure, which he followed carefully...
...Carstairs saw the movie and about two weeks later her whole style began to change...
...Conversely, what could be more beautiful than the reverence with which Jack E. Leonard, the comedian, refers to his wife as 'My worthy opponent...
...Prentice the other day, and reports the strange behavior of her husband...
...We're in trouble...
...Carstairs' next witty tirade he waited for the moment when she paused for breath...
...Order me a double 7 Up," I said...
...He saw the film, and three days later, in the middle of an argument with her, he suddenly tries to kill the 'myth' that they have an only child named Tom...
...Honi soit qui mal y pense, honi soit qui mal y pense, honi soit...
...This, too, will pass away," said the good doctor, "but it will take time...
...They seem to feel that it will sharpen their wits for the new, slashing style of the domestic Donnybrooks that has been noted since the movie came out...
...Carstairs and I hope that when she comes out of her coma she will be her sweet, old, nasty, illterate self again...
...What makes you think so...
...Well, Mrs...
...After fifteen years of Is-zat-soes from her husband, 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' hit her like a baseball bat...
...A number of my clients—I won't give you their real names—have re cently told me that their spouses are trying to act out, in daily life, the roles of the leads played by Liz Taylor and Burton...
...Meanwhile, what does one advise when a client comes in, as did Mrs...
...Defensively, in most cases," said the marriage counselor...
Vol. 30 • October 1966 • No. 10
