Home > Metrospective

Wordplay: 'Him Her Him Again The End of Him'
'Him Her' relies on tragic comedy
By Geof Wollerman
gwollerm@mscd.edu

Him Her Him Again the End of Him by Patricia Marx 240 pages Scribner $24.00

There’s nothing worse than getting stuck in an unhealthy relationship. But what is it we see in potential partners that makes us rush into romantic disasters?

According to the anonymous narrator of Him Her Him Again The End of Him, by Patricia Marx, it’s Grecian good looks, pompous intellectualism and a healthy streak of smarmy humor. Never mind that he’s married with a kid, and all your friends hate him.

“You know what I think it really was?” the narrator muses early on. “He was a narcissist. I love narcissists – even more than they love themselves. You don’t have to buoy them up. They are their own razzle-dazzle show and you are blessed, favored with a front row seat.”

After falling for the object of her desire – dashing philosophy dork Eugene Obello – the narrator loses sight of her priorities, struggles to finish her vaguely defined thesis at Cambridge and eventually moves back to the United States. All the while she dodges the well-intentioned influences of her parents and the honest but indifferent advice of her friends.

“You know how everyone is always saying go with your heart, trust your instinct, have the courage of your convictions? My advice to you is not to listen to those people,” one of her friends remarks after the narrator discovers Obello is apparently in love with someone else.

Nonetheless, she forges ahead, convinced she is Obello’s one true love. Though she portrays them otherwise, her romantic infractions can hardly be described as criminal. She just doesn’t know when to give up. Everyone seems to know about her ongoing affair, but no one seems to care. The narrator’s biggest deception comes when she lies to her parents about an out-of-state job interview in Detroit – in reality a weekend with Obello, who constantly showers her with absurd pet names, such as “my cloudless day” and “my little peach pit.”

One of the clever things about Marx’s novel is how her protagonist dwells on inconsequential facts and barely mentions crucial details – the way somebody might if she were avoiding the truth. Unfortunately, her life is comical, but so mundane as to be unbelievable. If it weren’t for the self-deprecation running thick throughout the novel, its lack of plot might lead the average reader to believe he or she had stumbled upon the diary of a grown woman stuck in adolescence. Fortunately, the reader is every so often reminded that the narrator is not necessarily reliable.

Marx’s attention to – and dependence on – comic detail carries the novel and yet somehow undermines it at the same time. With no real progression of events, other than one awkward romantic interlude after another, the novel is more tragic than funny. There is no doubt that Marx – a former writer for Saturday Night Live – has a knack for crafting comedic scenes. But the question readers are left with after the end of her novel is: Why do we care? Is it because we are human? Anyone who has felt the folly and sting of love unrequited will recognize a bit of himself or herself in Marx’s quixotic narrator – she is a good reminder that we all play the fool at times. Him Her Him Again The End of Him illustrates with comic – and sometimes redundant – clarity that when it comes to the illusion of love, we are all our own best magicians.