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Love is a Fallacy
Max Shulman
1 Charles Lamb, as merry and
enterprising a fellow as you will meet in a
month of Sundays, unfettered the
informal essay with his memorable Old China
and Dream's Children. There follows an
informal essay that ventures even
beyond Lamb's frontier, indeed,
describe this essay;
appropriate.
2 Vague though
its category, it is without doubt an essay. It
develops an
argument; it cites
instances; it reaches a conclusion. Could Carlyle
do more?
Could Ruskin ?
3 Read, then,
the following essay which undertakes to
demonstrate that logic,
far from being
a dry, pedantic discipline, is a living, breathing
thing, full of
beauty, passion, and
trauma --Author's Note
4 Cool was I and logical. Keen,
calculating, perspicacious, acute and
astute--I was all of these. My brain
was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a
chemist's scales, as penetrating as a
scalpel. And--think of it! --I was only
eighteen.
5 It is not often that one
so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for
example, Petey Butch, my roommate at
the University of Minnesota. Same age,
same background, but dumb as an ox. A
nice enough young fellow, you
understand, but nothing upstairs.
Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable.
Worst of all, a faddist. Fads, I
submit, are the very negation of reason. To be
swept up in every new craze that comes
along, to surrender yourself to idiocy
just because everybody else is doing it
--this, to me, is the acme of mindlessness.
Not, however, to Petey.
6 One afternoon I found
Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such
distress on his face that I immediately
diagnosed appendicitis.
said.
7
8
9
10
I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but
mental.
want a raccoon coat?
11
known they'd
come back when the Charleston came back. Like a
fool I spent all
my money for
textbooks, and now I can't get a raccoon
coat.
12
raccoon coats again?
13
14
Campus
15 He leaped
from the bed and paced the room,
coat,
16
shed. They smell bad.
They weight too much. They're unsightly.
They--
17
do. Don't you want to be in the
swim?
18
19
Anything!
20 My brain, that precision instrument,
slipped into high gear.
I asked,
looking at him narrowly.
21
22 I stroked my chin thoughtfully. It
so happened that I knew where to set
my
hands on a raccoon coat. My father had had one in
his undergraduate days;
it lay now in a
trunk in the attic back home. It also happened
that Petey had
something I wanted. He
didn't have it exactly, but at least he had first
rights on it.
I refer to his girl,
Polly Espy.
23
I had long coveted Polly Espy. Let me emphasize
that my desire for this
young woman was
not emotional in nature. She was, to be sure, a
girl who
excited the emotions but I was
not one to let my heart rule my head. I wanted
Polly for a shrewdly calculated,
entirely cerebral reason.
24 I was a freshman in law school. In a
few years I would be out in practice.
I
was well aware of the importance of the right kind
of wife in furthering a
lawyer's
career. The successful lawyers I had observed
were, almost without
exception, married
to beautiful, gracious, intelligent women. With
one omission,
Polly fitted these
specifications perfectly.
25 Beautiful she was. She was not yet
of pin-up proportions but I felt sure
that time would supply the lack She
already had the makings.
26 Gracious she was. By gracious I mean
full of graces. She had an erectness
of
carriage, an ease of bearing, a poise that clearly
indicated the best of breeding,
At
table her manners were exquisite. I had seen her
at the Kozy Kampus Korner
eating the
specialty of the house--a sandwich that contained
scraps of pot roast,
gravy, chopped
nuts, and a dipper of sauerkraut--without even
getting her
fingers moist.
27 Intelligent she was not.
in fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But
I
believed that under my guidance she
would smarten up. At any rate, it was
worth a try. It is, after all, easier
to make a beautiful dumb girl smart than to
make an ugly smart girl beautiful.
28
29
love.
Why?
30
mean are you going steady or anything
like that?
31
32
fondness?
33
34 I nodded with satisfaction.
the field would be open. Is that
right?
35
36
closet.
37
38
39
couldn't get some money
from your old man, could you, and lend it to me so
I
can buy a raccoon coat?
40
bag and left.
41
the suitcase and revealed the huge,
hairy, gamy object that my father had worn
in his Stutz Bearcat in 1925.
42
raccoon coat and then his face.
times.
43
44
came into his eyes.
45
46
47
48 He flung the coat from him.
49 I shrugged.
business.
50 I sat down in a chair and pretended
to read a book, but out of the corner
of my eye I kept watching Petey. He was
a torn man. First he looked at the coat
with the expression of a waif at a
bakery window. Then he turned away and set
his jaw resolutely. Then he looked back
at the coat, with even more longing in his
face. Then he turned away, but with not
so much resolution this time. Back and
forth his head swiveled, desire waxing,
resolution waning . Finally he didn't turn
away at all; he just stood and stared
with mad lust at the coat.
51
steady or anything like
that.
52
53
54
55
56
57 He complied. The coat
bunched high over his ears and dropped all the
way down to his shoe tops. He looked
like a mound of dead raccoons.
he said
happily.
58 I
rose from my chair.
59 He swallowed.
60 I had my first date with
Polly the following evening. This was in the
nature of a survey; I wanted to find
out just how much work I had to do to get
her mind up to the standard I required.
I took her first to dinner.
a delish
（
=delicious
）
dinner,
to a movie.
theater. And then I took her home.
she said as she bade me good night.
61 I went back
to my room with a heavy heart. I had gravely
underestimated the size of my task.
This girl's lack of information was terrifying.
Nor would it be enough merely to supply
her with information First she had to
be taught to think. This loomed as a
project of no small dimensions, and at first I
was tempted to give her back to Petey.
But then I got to thinking about her
abundant physical charms and about the
way she entered a room and the way
she
handled a knife and fork, and I decided to make an
effort.
62 I
went about it, as in all things, systematically. I
gave her a course in logic.
It happened
that I, as a law student, was taking a course in
logic myself, so I had
all the facts at
my finger tips.
next date,
63
would go far
to find another so agreeable.
64 We went to the Knoll,
the campus trysting place, and we sat down under
an old oak, and she looked at me
expectantly.
about?
65
66 She thought this over for a minute
and decided she liked it.
(=magnificent),
67
can think correctly, we
must first learn to recognize the common fallacies
of logic.
These we will take up
tonight.
68
69 I winced,
but went bravely on.
Dicto
Simpliciter.
70
71,
generalization. For example: Exercise
is good. Therefore everybody should
exercise.
72
builds the body and
everything.
73
unqualified generalization.
For instance, if you have heart disease, exercise
is
bad, not good. Many people are
ordered by their doctors not to exercise. You
must qualify the generalization. You
must say exercise is usually good, or
exercise is good for most people.
Otherwise you have committed a Dicto
Simpliciter. Do you see?
Do
morel
75
she desisted, I continued:
Listen carefully: You can't speak
French. I can't speak French. Petey Burch
can't speak French. I must therefore
conclude that nobody at the University of
Minnesota can speak French.
76
77 I hid my exasperation.
too hastily. There are too few
instances to support such a conclusion.
78
than dancing
even.
79 I
fought off a wave of despair. I was getting
nowhere with this girl
absolutely
nowhere. Still, I am nothing if not persistent. I
continued.
80
Every time we take him out with us, it
rains.
81
Becker, her name is, it
never falls. Every single time we take her on a
picnic--
82
She has no connection with the rain.
You are guilty of Post Hoc if you blame
Eula Becker.
83
me?
84 I sighed deeply.
85
86
87
88 I frowned, but plunged ahead.
Premises: If God can do anything, can
He make a stone so heavy that He won't
be able to lift it?
89
90
91
stone.
92
93 She scratched her pretty, empty
head.
94
contradict each other, there can be no
argument. If there is an irresistible force,
there can be no immovable object. If
there is an immovable object, there can be
no irresistible force. Get
it?