Him Her Him *Again* The End of Him (and my library patron disgrace)

I finished Him Her Him Again The End of Him last week, the day before it was due back to the library. I went online to renew it so I could actually reference the book while I wrote this post, and I got this message from the Los Angeles Public Library system: "You owed us $50 once 2 years ago. Sure, yeah, you PAID it. But we can never trust you again. NO RENEWALS FOR YOU."

My shame, dear readers, it consumes me.

So let me try to remember something about this book that I read a million years ago last week.

This is like the Seinfeld of books: clever, hilarious, but ultimately about nothing in particular. Patricia Marx is a comic writer for Saturday Night Live, and that may have something to do with why her book reads like a collection of comedic sketches (but, like, funny ones).

"Her" is a neurotic, underachieving American undergraduate at Cambridge University. "Him" is narcissistic philosopher Eugene Obello, the guy she falls for to a MOST unhealthy degree. Her obsession with him isn't deterred by his repellent personality or eventual marriage to another woman or the birth of his child or the advice of everyone in her life to cease any and all future communications with him. She explains her fixation in this way:

"Don’t think I didn’t go out with other guys during those years. But that isn’t this story. And besides, none of the guys is worth telling you about. None had read Zeno in the ancient Greek. None had even read Zeno. None usually had a copy of the Magna Carta in his pocket. None spoke about the joys of reciting poetry while looking out o’er the prow of a boat. None had 'learn to play didgeridoo' on his To Do list. None could sing the rules of cricket. None had brown eyes with kind of yellow-specky things. None kissed the way Eugene did, which wasn’t that special, I have come to see, but this was before I came to see that. None put salt on his pizza." (p. 124)

I could tolerate these characters ONLY in a fictional universe. If I knew people like this in real life, I would not find them amusing. I would slap them repeatedly in the face and change my phone number.

I think the tone of the book is what keeps it in Entertain-Me-With-Your-Shenanigans World and out of I-Can't-Just-Stand-By-While-You-RUIN-YOUR-LIFE Land. I'm convinced that this is what Steve Martin was aiming for with Shopgirl. But where his characters are self-involved and unlikable and the narrator  pretentious and aloof, Marx's characters are self-involved and unlikable and the narrator adorably self-deprecating.

Look at her being all quirky and whatnot.

"We were having instant coffee, which I found delicious because it was Dutch. It didn’t bother me that the coffee contained specks of crud—all the more bohemian. I later realized I’d been drinking metal fragments from the electric kettle. I am including this detail in case I get a mysterious disease and the doctors need help with the diagnosis." (p. 13)

You're weird. But I like you.

And also this:

"My grandmother also told me that she—my grandmother—believes everyone has a determined number of footsteps to use up in a lifetime, and, therefore, it is foolhardy to exercise since you will only exhaust your quota sooner and die." (p. 4)

I can get behind that theory, because it means I will live FOREVER.

And look at this alternate cover art! 

It looks as though she's intending to END him with a book. This amuses me.

SOURCE: Marx, Patricia. (2007). Him Her Him Again The End of Him. New York: Scribner.

Happy belated borrowing to me!

I've lived in this apartment for more than 3 years, and I just now finally today went to the library down the street. Isn't that awful? You don't have to tell me. I KNOW.

But today I got off my lazy, book-buying butt and walked three blocks because I heard they just GIVE AWAY books there. FOR FREE.

I present to you the tiniest library in all of Los Angeles.

Isn't he cute? He was born in 1916.
And he's designed in the new Italian renaissance style. Fancy.

It may not look tiny on the outside, but inside, it's just one room . . . most of which is filled with DVDs and books in Chinese. The entire fiction collection is contained in one row, and some of the shelves in that row are empty . . . . and six of those shelves are filled with romance novellas (not even Danielle Steele).

But I managed to find three happy books to balance out the marathon of sadness that has been my reading life lately.

Shopgirl by Steve Martin. Claire Danes! Jason Schwartzman! Yeah, I know that's the movie adaptation. Leave me alone.

Him Her Him Again The End of Him by Patricia Marx. This book is orange. That's the reason it's in my living room right now and not on the sad fiction shelf down the street. The title is a tad inconvenient, but we'll give it a go.

Moral Disorder and Other Stories by Margaret Atwood. It's true . . . I've never read Atwood. Her books are long, and this came home with me because it is short. This could be my gateway Atwood.