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THE NUPTIALS by John Haase

THE NUPTIALS

By

Pub Date: June 1st, 1969
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

It's all quality, . . . Everything's quality."" From the imported champagne to the ten piece orchestra and the circulating samba trio. Harry and Sylvia Maltz are launching their maverick, beautiful, goyish-looking daughter in $20,000 wedding style. The author of Me and the Arch Kook Petulia approaches his Nuptials with a very jaundiced eye. Kip Maltz's fiancee, fat Bernie Nathan, comes down with an incurable attack of the hiccups; Rabbi Goldman's mood is ""seesawing rapidly from manic to depressive"" because he's secretly infatuated with Kip; cousin Alvin is almost killed while trying to fix the organ which breaks down and Kip herself is carefully underplaying anything that might arouse ardor in her intended. This whips through the previous private lives of the participants--sordid, sorry and occasionally funny moments as it wavers back and forth among the proceedings--Kip tries an unsuccessful last minute fling with the parking lot attendant; Rabbi Goldman proposes--but the inevitable knot is tied and in a last minute upbeat, husband and wife discover that they might like each other. In general, for the Upper Middle Class Jewish Masochist.