Book Review: Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Duo

My editions of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes are together within the same bound book, and I read them consecutively as if they were one novel, so I’m going to review each together, referring to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as GPB, and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes as BGMB. 

I thought the novels themselves were occasionally amusing, GPB more so than BGMB, but neither overly clever. Though perhaps clever isn’t the right word, since I do think Loos had to have been clever in order to come up with such humorously dumb characters, so perhaps underwhelming is a more appropriate word. And I think this is more of a fault of the genre than the actual novel, because for some reason, satire never does it for me. I just went through all the passages I underlined, and I was chuckling through GPB, so it crossed my mind that I judged the book too harshly to begin with. But I can’t deny that the overall reading experience of the novel just didn’t hit the spot. 

Both novels are written by the blonde Lorelai, but GPB is the diary of her own life, while BGMB chronicles her best friend’s life: the brunette Dorothy. Due to both novels having the same author, both are from a dense narrator, who misspells words, starts every other sentence with “I mean” and “So,” thinks that “Louie the sixteenth [is] in the anteek furniture business,” and believes an acceptable way of breaking off an engagement of marriage is via letter and a “maybe see you later” right before she leaves the country. Lorelai may not fully grasp the nuances of a situation, but she is still able to manipulate most of them to her advantage since she has a different sort of intelligence—one that makes her perfectly suited for gold digging. 

But since the books are about two different girls, they have a different tone. GPB is lighter, more ditzy, while BGMB takes on a more bitter, sardonic quality. Dorothy arguably has more intelligence than Lorelai, but doesn’t have the same cold skill of avoiding bad situations or getting herself out of them once there. She also has bad taste in men: egotistical, abusive, and always poor, the latter for which Lorelai is constantly ridiculing her. I think at the time of reading, Dorothy’s story in BGMB struck me more, perhaps because it was more “literary,” if that even makes sense, but Lorelai’s in GPB is definitely more memorable. I also annotated GPB a lot more because it had more amusing moments and one-liners. 

If you love satire, you’ll probably appreciate Loos’ Gentlemen Duo, GPB especially. For me, it fell a bit flat. 

(Short aside: I did read Loos’ introduction before diving into the novels, and apparently all the shortsighted stupid people originate from Little Rock, Arkansas. Which stood out to me, because that’s where my favorite cock-eyed optimist comes from, who just happens to also be blonde and to have married rich [Nellie from South Pacific].)