"James E. Gunn - The Misogynist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

Misogynist
by JAMES E. GUNN

A woman who sees no humor in this story isтАФhm, would she be likely to read it at all?

Illustrated by KARL ROGERS

HARRY is a wit. Someone has defined a wit as a person who can tell a funny story without cracking
a smile. That's Harry.
"You know," Steve said at the office one day, "I'll bet Harry will walk right up to the flaming gates of
Hell, keeping the Devil in stitches all the time, and never change expression."
That's the kind of fellow Harry is. A great guy to have around the office. Makes you laugh just to see
him, thinking about the last story he told. Smart, too. Keeps at a thing, digging away, piling up facts and
stuff until you finally see something straight for the first time. Everybody says he's going places.
But the kind of story Harry likesтАФhe likes them long. They start kind of slow, you know, and sort of
build up with a tickle here and a tickle there until each new touch makes you helpless, you're so weak
with laughter. The kind of story you take home to your wife and you get part way through, laughing like a
fool, and you notice she's just sitting there, sort of patient and martyred, thinking maybe about
tomorrow's dinner or the dress sale downtown, and you stop laughing and sigh and say, "It must be the
way he tells it" or "Nobody can tell stories like Harry."
But then women don't think Harry's funny.
Take the other night, for instance. Harry and I were sitting in his living room while the
womenтАФLucille and JaneтАФwere out in the kitchen, whipping up something after the last rubber, and
Harry started this story. Only at first I didn't know it was a story.
"Did you ever stop to think," Harry said, "about what strange creatures women really are? The way
they change, I mean, after you marry them. You know, they stop hanging on your words, they stop
catering to your likes and dislikes, they stop laughing at your jokes."
I have a minor reputation as a humorist myselfтАФoh, nothing in Harry's class, but ready with quip or
pun, if you know what I mean. I came in with a laugh and said, "So the honeymoon is over," Harry and
Lucille being married only a month or so.
"Yes," said Harry seriously. "Yes, I guess you could say that. The honeymoon is over."
"Tough," I said, feeling sorry for the guy. "The girl you marry and the woman you're married to are
two different people."
"Oh, no," Harry disagreed, shaking his head. "They're not. That's just the point."
"The point?" I asked, getting an inkling that Harry's thoughtful face hid a purpose not entirely serious.
"You mean there is a point?"
"Of course. It's not just a matter of superficial differences, you see. It's something fundamental.
Women think differently, their methods are different, their goals are different. So different, in fact, that
they are entirely incomprehensible."
"I gave up trying to understand them a long time ago."
"That's where we make our mistake," Harry said soberly. "We accept when we should try to
understand. We must understand why. As the Scotch say: `All are good lasses, but whe come the ill
wives?' "
"Why?" I wanted to know, a little puzzled. "They're built differently, and not just outside. Glands,
bearing children тАФ all kinds of differences."
"That's their excuse," said Harry, sneering, "and it's not good enough. They should do best what their
differences best fit them for. But their greatest career is marriageтАФand their greatest failure. A man to
them is only the necessary evil they must have before they can get the other things they want."
"Like the black widow spider and her mate?" I suggested. "In a way. And yet not entirely. The
spiders, at least, are of the same species."