A guy's guy sportingly answers chick lit with 'Love'
By April Umminger, USA TODAY - August 7, 2003
What was he thinking?
This age-old question hit mainstream America less than a decade ago when Bridget Jones shared her diary and Fox let us inside Ally McBeal's head. Since then, we've seen Sex and the City, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, just to name a few.
It seems fitting for a man named John Dearie to write a
novel that counters the analyzing and hypothesizing of his female contemporaries. Love
and Other Recreational Sports, his first book, is the male take on single
life. (Related item: Read an excerpt from Love and Other Recreational Sports.)
"We've been hearing an awful lot in recent years about single, young, professional women," he says. "I had to ask myself, 'Where are the guys?' One of my main reasons for writing this was to give voice to the male experience."
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Jack Lafferty is the main character who acts as Dearie's mouthpiece. He is a 35-year-old professional banker who still lives in an efficiency and sleeps on a pull-out sofa in Manhattan.
When Jack's fiancée cheats on him three weeks before their wedding, he halfheartedly swears off booze and women, proclaiming, "They cost too much and are more trouble than they're worth."
Sarah Mitchell walks into Jack's life on this paved statement. She is, naturally, the perfect woman. Funny without being obnoxious, accomplished without being intimidating and interested in Jack without being over-the-top. He, of course, wants nothing to do with her. And the game begins.
When Jack is not accidentally bumping into Sarah around Manhattan and beyond, he talks about love and, well, sports with a handful of friends.
"Relationships are one of the only ways that men can show their vulnerability without risking their masculinity," Dearie says. "There's a common misperception that all men do is grunt at each other when they get together. I wanted to show that there is emotion and feeling beneath the surface. It's like a type of code, but it's there between men."
This softer side is comically unearthed when Jack's womanizing best friend, Alex, meets him — arms folded and stiff-lipped — at an outdoor cafe to discuss an emergency situation: Alex is going bald.
The suggestion of thinning on top provides a glimpse of what it must be like in the locker room after the team has lost the game. Alex frantically evaluates his life and casual relationships with women in an emotional outpouring that leaves Jack squirming in his seat.
However, this talk is taken to heart by Jack and inspires him to attempt a daring play to win Sarah's affection.
Love and Other Recreational Sports isn't a fictional map into the psyches of men. If anything, this lighthearted read revives the rules of dating, otherwise known as "playing games." Be coy. Play hard to get. Don't put out on the first date. And a new one: Don't let your hair fall out over love.
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