You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up

December 14, 2009
Married for 13 years, Gurwitch and Kahn look back with laughter at the highs, the lows, and their “different marital needs.” Writer-actor Kahn (Curb Your Enthusiasm
) won an Emmy for scripting The Ben Stiller Show
; actress Gurwitch (Seinfeld
) produced a documentary adapted from her 2006 book Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, & Dismissed
. By teaming for this equally merry marriage memoir, the duo doubles the giggles and guffaws. Over many months, they have been doing readings and performances from this book in progress, when it had the working title, How Not to Have a Marriage Like Ours
. The book includes alternating “He Says”/”She Says” sections. Opening with Jeff’s pursuit of Annabelle, they write in a lighthearted fashion about dating, cats, living together, marriage, the honeymoon, and lots of sex: “In the beginning, there was sex and it was good. In the middle, it became something to schedule like a tennis lesson and flu shot.” A genuine crisis interrupted their comedic conflicts when their son was born with birth defects, a situation that affected their marriage: “We became each other’s psychological punching bags.” In the concluding chapter, they speculate on the future direction of their marriage, possibly “like the bonds of emperor penguins and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.” Readers will hope they stay together to write more heartfelt, funny books like this one.

January 21, 2010
As one would expect in a work co-written by two comedy writers, this hilarious relationship memoir told in alternating chapters by pragmatic, standoffish Gurwitch and her romantic, overeager suitor Kahn makes a mockery of traditional self-help relationship advice. The authors offer up their experience as a guide for other couples, though its usefulness as a relationship primer is questionable. However, true love really does trump all in this touching story, when what seems like a doomed relationship blossoms into a 13-year (and counting) marriage, withstanding even the stresses of raising a medically fragile child.-Lauren Gilbert, Cold Spring Harbor Lib. & Environmental Ctr., NY

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