Say It With Bricks/say It With Oil by Ring Lardner

Nina Wilcox Putnam turns marriage into a fast, funny battleground of memory, manners, and mutual exasperation. Prompted by a publisher's dare and her husband George's alarmed objections, she delivers a sharp, conversational monologue that skewers husbands' bad grooming, repetitive stories, car trouble, and uncanny talent for making wives wait. But the satire stays affectionate, finding comedy in the ordinary give-and-take of domestic life. Putnam contrasts husbands' selective memory with wives' overloaded responsibilities, jokes that managing a husband is excellent training for diplomacy, and even argues that a former husband can be a useful weapon in argument. The companion half of the volume mirrors that joke from the other side, with a mock-serious defense of husbands and a comic counterattack on wives, drawn from everyday scenes of meals, trains, ball games, social outings, bills, children, and household chaos. Together, the two halves form a novelty book of gender-swapped satire, built on playful stereotypes, brisk banter, and the uneasy truth that marriage is both absurd and indispensable. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.