Husbands and Wives evaluation action
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Rain: I just think that maybe I... I could've been threatened by certain things in the book.
Gabe: Like what, you know...?
Rain: Um, some of the attitudes towards women and your ideas on life.
Gabe: You told me you love the book.
Rain: I do. I do love it, yeah.
Gabe: What were your criticisms?
Rain: Um, nothing.
Gabe: No, tell me. Tell me what your criticisms were.
Rain: I was a little disappointed, I guess, with, ah, with some of your attitudes.
Gabe: Like what? What attitudes?
[Rain sighs]
Gabe: With what?
Rain: The way your people just casually have affairs like that, that's...
Gabe: Well, the book doesn't condone affairs. You know, I'm exaggerating for comic purposes.
Rain: Yeah, I mean but are our choices really between chronic dissatisfaction and suburban drudgery?
Gabe: No, but, you know, that's how I... I'm deliberately distorting it, you know, 'cause I'm trying to show how hard it is to be married and...
Rain: Well, you have to be careful not to trivialize with things like that.
Gabe: Well, Jesus, I... I hope I haven't.
Rain: Well, the way your... your lead character views women, it's so retrograde. It's so shallow, you know?
Gabe: What are you talking... You told me you... you know, that... you told me it was a great book.
Rain: Yeah, it's wonderful. And I never said great. I said it's brilliant, and it's alive, and... You know, that's not what I'm... We're not arguing about whether it's brilliant or not. I'm, you know... Triumph of the Will was a great movie, but you despise the ideas behind it.
Gabe: What... what are you saying, now? You despise my ideas?
Rain: No, I don't despise them. All right, that... that example was wrong.
[pause]
Rain: OK, isn't it beneath you as a mature thinker, I mean, to allow your lead character to waste so much of this emotional energy obsessing over this psychotic relationship with a woman that you fantasize as powerfully sexual and inspired when, in fact, she was pitifully sick?
Gabe: Look, let's stop this right now because I don't need a lecture on maturity or writing from a 20-year-old twit.
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[last lines]
Gabe Roth: Can I go? Is this over?