NONFICTION - Feb. 13, 1994

PERFECT HUSBANDS (& Other Fairy Tales): Demystifying Marriage, Men and Romance by Regina Barreca. (Harmony Books: $20; 288 pp.) This, quite frankly, is why some people have a horror of self-help books. You turn to them, hoping against hope that there will be a gentle wisdom offered, a little humor to lift you out of your despair, a support group on paper. You ignore dumb covers, unappealing subtitles, and trite interchange between sitcom couples. Sometimes the situations are disturbingly familiar. But this woman, professor of English and feminist theory, delivers the kind of Uncle Morty shtick you see on late night television with stand up comedians: “I was raised to sing along at weddings to Tony Bennett’s “Take My Hand, I’m a Stranger in Paradise,” wondering whether Paradise was a suburb in New Jersey where newlyweds were headed and whether it was a good neighborhood.” Hahaha. AND IT DOESN’T LET UP. In between the jokes are ideas like; don’t expect your husband to do everything for you, don’t expect marriage to save your life, men are afraid of being trapped in domesticity, men are afraid of intimacy. Once in a while she quotes really helpful authors like Deborah Tannen (“You Just Don’t Understand: Women & Men In Conversation,” Ballantine), and the contrast between their sincere offerings and Barreca’s shtick stops the reader short. The moral is, if you want to be entertained and diverted, rent a video, like “Night of the Living Dead.”