OH CARELESS LOVE

Following the lead so relentlessly held by Peter De Vries, this posits Johnny in the midst of an acceptable marriage which is galling to his unfulfilled dreams -- and deposits him into a concatenation of events -- and women -- through which he carbonates into a fizzed-off solution. Wife and children, suburbia, work -- only add up to ambivalence of the maladjusted middle-class man -- and Johnny is ripe for the return of a hero-image classmate -- Algernon Stein -- who, in closer contact of daily life, eventually rubs off with tarnish. Johnny's early rebellion, known as The Sex Project, collapses through his irresolution and cowardice; his pursuit of available women takes him on a tour of the past and his break with A1 is paralleled by his break with his wife. And his solution is to keep his wife as his mistress so that the poison of marriage will cease to affect him. A giddy gambol, this may either amuse -- or annoy.