FIND A HUSBAND AFTER 35 USING WHAT I LEARNED AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL: A SIMPLE 15-STEP ACTION PROGRAM
By Rachel Greenwald (Ballantine, $22.95)
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From: lcassidy@seattleweekly.com
To: kmillbauer@seattleweekly.com
Subject: stupid harvard-bizness-skool- grad-program book
Never mind the bus; I had to take the jacket off this thing in order to read it in front of myself. Seriously, it's so awful. And embarrassing. It's embarrassingly awful. Having been wed once myself, all this "Ladies, we need to get ourselves married" crap really pisses me off. There's no chapter (never mind a book) about how having a husband doesn't make all your problems go away.
kmillbauer: She lost me on the cover. "Using What I learned at Harvard Business School"? Since when were relationships reducible to statistics? And she calls her method a "simple" 15-step action program. Where I come from, 15 steps ain't so simple. And Greenwald treats being single after 35 as a code-red emergency. If I were unmarried after 35 (and I'm not there yet), I think I'd find her attitude insulting. She acts on the assumption that women are lost or empty without men.
lcassidy: Then there's Greenwald's intro, the stupid instruction to literally "bury your baggage" and just forget all the unattractive things that make you who you are. I can't accept this. I strongly, strongly believe that you can't make a meaningful connection with someone unless you're honest about yourself and your past, baggage and otherwise. She might as well be saying, "Be someone you're not," or, "Assume a false identity." Is that what they're teaching at Harvard B-School these days? It might explain Enron.
kmillbauer: It seems like she's asking women to be deceptive and manipulative first to themselves; then to their friends, mentors, and others in their "network"; then to men. The whole time I was reading this book, I got a really creeped-out feeling. Greenwald's program is so cold and calculated.
lcassidy: In that regard, her program feels thoroughly completeif you're willing to abandon your heart and soul. Any empty shell of a woman should secure the mate of her empty, meaningless dreams via Greenwald's plan. If you're willing to trade in your personality, hobbies, friends, family, and past in order to get itI'm pretty sure this program will work. But what a house of cards.
kmillbauer: But if you strip down her program, cut out all the telemarketing, branding, and interviewing, I think there is some simple, useful advice here. Her notions of "casting a wider net" and considering men beyond a woman's usual "type" or age range seem wise, as does a pared-down version of the program's marketing blitzjust casually letting friends and family know that you're in the market for a man.
lcassidy: Don't tell me you're buying into this crap.
kmillbauer: No, but in her "Man"agement chapter, her advice to regularly evaluate an existing relationship to determine whether it has marriage potential (and then dump him if it doesn't), so as not to get stuck in a long-term relationship that's not going anywhere, is sound, especially as the biological clock ticks away after 35. Her no-tolerance dating policydump him and move on if he forgets to do the dishes one nightis ridiculous, but a low-tolerance dating policy seems reasonable.
lcassidy: Still, if I saw it on a girlfriend's bookshelf, I'd set it on fire and take that girl out for some stiff drinks and frank conversation.
kmillbauer: Does that mean you're buying?
lcassidy: See you at Rama in 10 minutes. LAURA CASSIDY and KATIE MILLBAUER
Rachel Greenwald will appear at Third Place Books (17171 Bothell Way N.E., 206-366-3333), 7 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 16.
MONSTER OF GOD: THE MAN-EATING PREDATOR IN THE JUNGLES OF HISTORY AND THE MIND
By David Quammen (Norton, $25.95)
Here's a book that ends with a thud. For 437 pages, David Quammen explores the rich, tangled, and not always malign role of what he calls "alpha predators"critters able to kill and eat humansin our history and culture. Then he seals his argument and rings the grand finale with . . . a glowing six-page synopsis of the Alien movies.
The effect is deflatingdoesn't this sort of familiar pop-culture ploy belong at the start of a serious book, not at the end? And Quammen is a serious alpha-nature writer, whose Natural Acts column was for years the best thing in Outside. He can tell a yarn; synthesize complex biological and cultural data; and say interesting and important things about evolution, extinction, and the ways human evolution spells extinction for so much else.
Yet he really does love the Alien flicks, from which he draws two lessons. First, we shouldn't forget the costs of living with alpha predatorsand who pays those costs. If you can't imagine yourself a Romanian shepherd watching for brown bears, an Aboriginal fisherman trying not to become a crocodile's next lunch, or a Maldhari herdsman sharing the woods (and an occasional cow) with Asia's last beleaguered lions, "at least try imagining yourself aboard the Nostromo [with] an alien that covets your bodily meat." And second, "the success of the Alien series, like the durability of Beowulf and Gilgamesh, reflects not just our fear of homicidal monsters but also our need and desire for them."
