Is dating dead, a casualty of the hookup culture? So the media periodically declare, before abruptly reversing course and celebrating the proliferation of online dating apps and options.
What happens, though, when dating is merely window shopping? Who benefits, and at what cost? Distraught after a break-up, serial monogamist Perry decides to break his normal pattern by romancing and bedding a variety of women.
His goals are to shed his nice-guy reticence, heal from heartbreak, shore up his confidence, collect new experiences — and, not least, have abundant sex. The hard part, predictably enough, is achieving those aims without exploiting, wounding or disappointing the women involved.
But, in tandem, they offer useful perspectives on dating as both an art and a historical construct. Like Perry, Weigel takes her personal experience as a starting point.
Weigel is writing a history, but with a thematic bent. It brings strangers together and enables them to connect. Weigel suggests that dating in the United States her sole focus originated around the turn of the 20th century, as women began to leave the domestic sphere and stream into cities and workplaces. Before that, the middle-class norm was chaperoned courtship, with suitors visiting young women in their homes.
