THE ART OF WOOING: A Guide to Love and Romance

Outerbridge has the right idea--""we all want to be wooed""; but, a few tender thoughts apart, he makes almost nothing of it. Much of this slim book is sawdust. A chapter on the history of wooing has long excerpts from Ovid to show that the ancients didn't woo, they sought to conquer--plus material on medieval courtship from Morton Hunt's The History of Love. The minuscule, off-center point: today's romance fiction fulfills the sexually-lierated woman's courtship fantasies. A chapter on ""Fear of Wooing"" tells us not to be afraid of inadequacy or rejection: it's not all that hard to meet people, or to get a conversation going. The core chapter, ""The Elements of Wooing,"" starts off promisingly with remarks on Giving (""It can be only a charged look""--or courtesy) and on Impulse--like sending roses for-no-reason or ""bearing a huge wheel of Cheshire cheese"" to a party. (""For the rest of the evening, even as she talks with others and especially as she watches them munching on the cheese, she thinks of him. . . ."") But that wheel of Cheshire is Outerbridge's best shot in the wooing line: succeeding ""elements"" are mostly variations on such shopworn themes as being attentive and using your eyes, not measuring beauty by appearance or ""sexual happiness"" by penis size. Outerbridge sounds like a sweet guy: ""An element of wooing [is] to assume all the responsibilities; to guard against an unnecessary tear, a lonely frightened hour. . . ."" But dulcet phrases will only go so far as a substitute for content.