Love Trouble Is My Business: New and Collected Work

by Veronica Geng

In this collection of satirical pieces and short humorous fiction, Veronica Geng turns up hilarities large and small in government-speak, gender relations, academia, the mass media, love lives, restaurants, airplanes, and baseball fans. "Often," Ian Frazier writes in his introduction, "her writing was the purest satire, in the sense that its preferred outcome would be for its object to fall down dead." Always attuned to the way things sound, Geng was a wicked parodist, a mimic of voices from Henry James to Chandler's private eyes, from LBJ to Pat Robertson. Love Trouble confirms Veronica Geng's place as one of our greatest humorists, who helped to carry the tradition of S.J. Perelman, James Thurber, and Robert Benchley to its illogical conclusion.

Genres: Humor, Essays

352 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1988

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good I wrote a sixty-page paper on it. Once you've tackled the endless supply of collections by other New Yorker writers, try this strange, hilarious compilation of one of the magazine's lesser-known but tremendously talented authors. Make sure to read "Love Trouble is My Business."

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Geng’s short story “Love Trouble Is My Business” via the New Yorker Fiction podcast. It was just ok for me. The story and the language of the story was very repetitive. Certain phrases were repeated too frequently in a short span of time for my liking. The discussion about the cultural impacts of Reaganism was interesting but it just reinforced my pre-existing feelings about the impacts of his policies on American society. My feelings towards all of the characters were mostly negative as none of them were people I could honestly root for. The author is highly skilled with language and clearly highly intelligent but this story just failed to connect with me as much as some of the other short stories I’ve read via the New Yorker Fictional podcast. As the piece was so short, I’m willing to try reading other works by this author to see if I enjoy other pieces she has written but there are other books stories and authors I will probably read first.

[Aaron Ambrose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well crafted pieces, but so unengaging. Each piece is followed by Geng’s commentary on the inspiration and the evolution of its writing, and each time I thought, Oh, I can see how that could’ve been interesting.

[Jeff Wilder · Rating 5 out of 5]

First became aware of Veronica Geng after reading the New Yorker humor anthology Fierce Pajamas. This made me hungry for more of her work so I tracked down this volume.

There are many books I give away or donate to the library after I read them. This is one book I keep and will re-read at least once a year.

Full of dry wit, obscure references and very biting satire this is one great collection. The only caveat I can give here is this: some of those obscure references may not make sense for some people and may send them tracking down the sources. But if you like this type of humor, give this a read.

[helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her Ivy League vocabulary and my poor understanding of '80s politics means I'll have to keep coming back to this one again and again before I'll have it even halfway figured out. The pieces that were better suited to my IQ, however, I loved. I wanted to read them aloud to other people on the subway. Especially the title piece, Love Trouble is my Business. Her sense of humor tends to be a bit absurd, but so are love and politics.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The angry, funny voice of Veronica Geng is no longer with us, but this superb collection (two books and a number of previously uncollected pieces) reminds us of what we've lost. A few pieces are dated, satirizing targets that have been generally forgotten, but most of them are as fresh as ever, since they target universal human foibles. A special bonus is the afterwords to the stories in the second collection, in which Geng explains something of what inspired each piece.

[Liza · Rating 4 out of 5]

So funny and adorable! I still think this is one of the best titles ever and the work lives up to it.