Ira Levin, R.I.P.

Novelist Ira Levin died this week. More famous for the likes of The Stepford Wives and Rosemary's Baby, he also wrote a novel (which I have not read) which some libertarians I know consider a classic of pop-libertariana, a dystopia called This Perfect Day.

Comments

[Gene Berkman]

It turns out “This Perfect Day” is more rare than I thought. I just listed my first paperback edition @ http://www.renbook.com for $12.00 but I only have one.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

I actually read the Stepford Wives. It was terrible. This was one of the few cases where the movie was better than the book. And it wasn’t too shit hot, either.

Oh I’m on a roll. A plate of ribs, a bottle of wine, homemade fries, all of which are on my diet, and I’m good to go. Just waiting for Mrs TWC to fire up the Friday Movie.

[A Levin Reader]

You owe it to yourself to read This Perfect Day. It was the sole reason I signed up for a library card, since it’s so damn rare.

[Mad Max]

Neither the Stepford Wives movie nor the book had noticeable literary merit.

As between the book and the movie, I noticed the following differences:

– A few items in the book indicated that Levin was sympathetic to the idea of men replacing their wives with docile robots. The movie reframed it as a paranoid parable of heroic feminists struggling against a sexist establishment, complete with false-consciousness-having women.

-Levin used black people to fill his quota of minorities. The movie used a same-sex male couple, with the effiminate guy serving as the heroic woman, and the respectable guy in a suit serving as the sexist husband.

[Jennifer]

**SPOILER ALERT**
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I thought This Perfect Day was a bit unrealistic, myself. I liked the first part, which struck me as a jab at the day’s hippies, but the happy ending, where everything was made better literally overnight, struck me as the dystopian version of “You mean all I had to do was click my stupid heels together and I could’ve gone home anytime?”

[Schempf]

I remember seeing stepford wives in my young teens – man did I want one.