{"id":74715,"date":"2014-07-30T16:26:53","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T20:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=74715"},"modified":"2014-07-31T09:36:28","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T13:36:28","slug":"repent-at-leisure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/30\/repent-at-leisure\/","title":{"rendered":"Repent at Leisure"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dagnan-Bouveret_Une_Noce_chez_le_photohraphe\"<\/a>

Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, Une noce chez le photographe<\/i>, 1879.<\/p><\/div>\n

My father is a great TV watcher, and he keeps me abreast of the state of American television<\/a>. Recently, he urged me to watch the U.S. reboot of the British reality show Married at First Sight<\/em>, which, as the title suggests, introduces two willing strangers at the altar and marries them, albeit with the input of shrinks, matchmakers, sexperts, and various other professionals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fascinating,\u201d my dad assured me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to watch that,\u201d I said. \u201cTo see people either that lonely or that desperate to be on TV would only make me sad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s that, of course,\u201d he conceded, \u201cbut when you think about it, that\u2019s how your great-grandparents met. And I\u2019ve often wished I could arrange marriages for you and Charlie.\u201d I prudently decided to not interpret this as a dig at any of our romantic partners. I suppose he wasn\u2019t wrong about the matchmakers, but it does seem that, with parties of identical upbringings and cultural mores\u2014not to mention not much premium placed on modern marital happiness\u2014the shtetl varietal had a somewhat easier time of it. <\/p>\n

Not that it was always so great.\u00a0In the case of my grandmother\u2019s parents, Great-Grandma Ida forced her husband to sleep on the floor of his shop and apparently taunted him with tales of her vastly superior, tall, handsome, old-country sweetheart.<\/p>\n

On the Stein side, things were more pacific, but it amazed everyone that this should be so: my great-grandfather was universally adored, while, even fifty years after her death, Great-Grandma Emma\u2019s daughters-in-law described her as a hideous termagant. As Woody Allen would have it, \u201cthe heart wants what it wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a recent subway ride, the female passengers were universally menaced by a creep who drifted around the car, stroking our hair and arms and then grinning broadly and pointing at his chest. His shirt read \u201cLet\u2019s Get Engaged.\u201d No one seemed tempted. And then some guys threw him off the train, which is\u00a0a little unfair when you consider that other people get TV shows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A footnote: After my great-grandfather\u2019s death, it turned out that the famous one-that-got-away had been living, all the time, a few Bronx blocks away, and was himself widowed. The day he came to call, Great-Grandma Ida\u2019s children gathered in fascination, eager to see this paragon. And? \u201cWell,\u201d said my great-aunt Rose, shortly before her death, \u201che was even shorter than Papa!\u201d Great-Grandma Ida was apparently similarly unimpressed, or he was; she remained a widow until her death.<\/p>\n

I wonder if one day I\u2019ll be reduced to telling my grandchildren, I had options, you know. I had choices. There was one man who proposed to me on the subway!\u00a0<\/em>I\u2019ve always wondered what might have happened if I\u2019d taken a chance and said yes \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My father is a great TV watcher, and he keeps me abreast of the state of American television. 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