Topical Guide 548
Mark Dorset
Characters and Characterization
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 7, B. W. Beath to Matthew:
Let’s go on. Next on my list is your obsession. […] Your lust, Matthew. […] Let me ask you something, Matthew. Why do you always make them fall in love with you — in these fantasies? I mean, excuse me, but what difference does it make? […] [T[his — nobility you’re claiming is a fake. It’s really just timidity. Timidity in disguise.
Malcolm Jones, Jr., “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” Newsweek:
B. W. by night, Matthew by day is a middle-aged toy designer. He is unhappy, unloved and utterly unsure. Though no less snobbish than the devilish B.W., Matthew so lacks his alter ego’s self-assurance that he gauges his teeth against a plastic card with color gradients running from white to yellow, the better to measure the effectiveness of his peroxide gargle.
Like Matthew’s teeth, the novel gets darker as it goes along. From the outset, he is plainly a mite screwy: he has a whole wall of his trendy apartment demolished to locate an odor that only he can smell. By the end, having all but lost his soul to the Sybaritic B. W., he is clearly going mad.
See also:
Characters and Characterization TG 538, TG 540, TG 544
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