If one is willing to slow down to an ambling pace, this superficially Americanized version of a British humorist's view of marriage can be insidiously amusing. Basil Boothroyd--an improbable but enchanting byline--has been rolling out jollies for Punch over the past quarter century and his prose reflects a more leisurely, less concentrated method of attack than present day mass media forms of staccato fun permit. The subject is marriage--and the perils and pitfalls which lead to the ever-popular divorce. Interviewing in turn Mr. and Mrs. A., the questioner evokes a garrulous response: there was the episode of the squirrel (one day being fed chicken stock; on another being fired at with an air gun by a determined Mrs. A.); shopping (a mad flurry of directions); vacations (Mr. A's conviction that he had caught Burger's disease only slightly weakened when his bleeding espadrilles were firmly removed by Mrs. A.); money; social life, sickness, etc. Britishisms remain (""lead"" for leash, ""cloverleaf"" and lots of ""darlings"") but if one is not in fief to Alan King's buckshot approach, this is clever nonsense.