Max Shulman: Love is a Fallacy 

Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute—I was all of these. 
My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, precise as a chemist’s scales, as penetrating as a 
scalpel. And—think of it!—I only eighteen.  
It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Bellows, 
my roommate at the university. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice 
enough fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. 
Impressionable. Worst of all, a faddist. Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason. To be 
swept up in every new craze that comes along, to surrender oneself to idiocy just because 
everybody else is doing it—this, to me, is the acme of mindlessness. Not, however, to Petey.  
One  afternoon  I found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such distress on his face 
that  I  immediately  diagnosed  appendicitis.  “Don’t  move,” I said, “Don’t take a laxative. I’ll 
get a doctor.”  
“Raccoon,” he mumbled thickly.  
“Raccoon?” I said, pausing in my flight.  
“I want a raccoon coat,” he wailed.  
I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but mental. “Why do you want a raccoon coat?”  
“I should have known it,” he cried, pounding his temples. “I should have known they’d come 
back when the Charleston came back. Like a fool I spent all my money for textbooks, and 
now I can’t get a raccoon coat.”  
“Can you mean,” I said incredulously, “that people are actually wearing raccoon coats 
again?” “All the Big Men on Campus are wearing them. Where’ve you been?”  
“In the library,” I said, naming a place not frequented by Big Men on Campus.  
He leaped from the bed and paced the room. “I’ve got to have a raccoon coat,” he said 
passionately. “I’ve got to!”  
“Petey, why? Look at it rationally. Raccoon coats are unsanitary. They shed. They smell bad. 
They weigh too much. They’re unsightly. They—”  
“You don’t understand,” he interrupted impatiently. “It’s the thing to do. Don’t you want to 
be in the swim?”  
“No,” I said truthfully.  
“Well, I do,” he declared. “I’d give anything for a raccoon coat. Anything!”  
My brain, that precision instrument, slipped into high gear. “Anything?” I asked, looking at 
him narrowly.  
“Anything,” he affirmed in ringing tones.  
I stroked my chin thoughtfully. It so happened that I knew where to get my hands on a 
raccoon coat. My father had had one in his undergraduate days; it lay now in a trunk in the 
attic back home. It also happened that Petey had something I wanted. He didn’t ​have ​it 
exactly, but at least he had first rights on it. I refer to his girl, Polly Espy.  
I had long coveted Polly Espy. Let me emphasize that my desire for this young woman was 
not emotional in nature. She was, to be sure, a girl who excited the emotions, but I was not  
one to let my heart rule my head. I wanted Polly for a shrewdly calculated, entirely cerebral 
reason.  
I was a freshman in law school. In a few years I would be out in practice. I was well aware of 
the importance of the right kind of wife in furthering a lawyer’s career. The successful 
lawyers I had observed were, almost without exception, married to beautiful, gracious, 
intelligent women. With one omission, Polly fitted these specifications perfectly.  
Beautiful she was. She was not yet of pin-up proportions, but I felt that time would supply the 
lack. She already had the makings.  
Gracious she was. By gracious I mean full of graces. She had an erectness of carriage, an ease 
of bearing, a poise that clearly indicated the best of breeding. At table her manners were 
exquisite. I had seen her at the Kozy Kampus Korner eating the specialty of the house—a 
sandwich that contained scraps of pot roast, gravy, chopped nuts, and a dipper of sauerkraut— 
without even getting her fingers moist.  
Intelligent she was not. In fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But I believed that under 
my guidance she would smarten up. At any rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all, easier to 
make a beautiful dumb girl smart than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful.  
“Petey,” I said, “are you in love with Polly Espy?”  
“I think she’s a keen kid,” he replied, “but I don’t know if you’d call it love. Why?”  
“Do you,” I asked, “have any kind of formal arrangement with her? I mean are you going 
steady or anything like that?”  
“No. We see each other quite a bit, but we both have other dates. Why?” “Is 
there,” I asked, “any other man for whom she has a particular fondness?” 
“Not that I know of. Why?”  
I nodded with satisfaction. “In other words, if you were out of the picture, the field would be 
open. Is that right?”  
“I guess so. What are you getting at?”  
“Nothing , nothing,” I said innocently, and took my suitcase out the 
closet. “Where are you going?” asked Petey.  
“Home for weekend.” I threw a few things into the bag.  
“Listen,” he said, clutching my arm eagerly, “while you’re home, you couldn’t get some 
money from your old man, could you, and lend it to me so I can buy a raccoon coat?”  
“I may do better than that,” I said with a mysterious wink and closed my bag and left.  
“Look,” I said to Petey when I got back Monday morning. I threw open the suitcase and 
revealed the huge, hairy, gamy object that my father had worn in his Stutz Bearcat in 
1925.  
“Holy Toledo!” said Petey reverently. He plunged his hands into the raccoon coat and then his 
face. “Holy Toledo!” he repeated fifteen or twenty times.  
“Would you like it?” I asked.  
“Oh yes!” he cried, clutching the greasy pelt to him. Then a canny look came into his eyes. 
“What do you want for it?”  
“Your girl.” I said, mincing no words. 
“Polly?” he said in a horrified whisper. “You want Polly?”  
“That’s right.”  
He flung the coat from him. “Never,” he said stoutly.  
I shrugged. “Okay. If you don’t want to be in the swim, I guess it’s your business.”  
I sat down in a chair and pretended to read a book, but out of the corner of my eye I kept 
watching Petey. He was a torn man. First he looked at the coat with the expression of a waif at 
a bakery window. Then he turned away and set his jaw resolutely. Then he looked back at the 
coat, with even more longing in his face. Then he turned away, but with not so much 
resolution this time. Back and forth his head swiveled, desire waxing, resolution waning. 
Finally he didn’t turn away at all; he just stood and stared with mad lust at the coat.  
“It isn’t as though I was in love with Polly,” he said thickly. “Or going steady or anything like 
that.”  
“That’s right,” I murmured.  
“What’s Polly to me, or me to Polly?”  
“Not a thing,” said I.  
“It’s just been a casual kick—just a few laughs, that’s all.”  
“Try on the coat,” said I.  
He complied. The coat bunched high over his ears and dropped all the way down to his shoe 
tops. He looked like a mound of dead raccoons. “Fits fine,” he said happily.  
I rose from my chair. “Is it a deal?” I asked, extending my hand.  
He swallowed. “It’s a deal,” he said and shook my hand.  
I had my first date with Polly the following evening. This was in the nature of a survey; I 
wanted to find out just how much work I had to do to get her mind up to the standard I 
required. I took her first to dinner. “Gee, that was a delish dinner,” she said as we left the 
restaurant. Then I took her to a movie. “Gee, that was a marvy movie,” she said as we left the 
theatre. And then I took her home. “Gee, I had a sensaysh time,” she said as she bade me good 
night.  
I went back to my room with a heavy heart. I had gravely underestimated the size of my task. 
This girl’s lack of information was terrifying. Nor would it be enough merely to supply her 
with information. First she had to be taught to ​think.​ This loomed as a project of no small 
dimensions, and at first I was tempted to give her back to Petey. But then I got to thinking 
about her abundant physical charms and about the way she entered a room and the way she 
handled a knife and fork, and I decided to make an effort.  
I went about it, as in all things, systematically. I gave her a course in logic. It happened that I, 
as a law student, was taking a course in logic myself, so I had all the facts at my fingertips. 
“Poll’,” I said to her when I picked her up on our next date, “tonight we are going over to the 
Knoll and talk.”  
“Oo, terrif,” she replied. One thing I will say for this girl: you would go far to find another so 
agreeable.  
We went to the Knoll, the campus trysting place, and we sat down under an old oak, and she 
looked at me expectantly. “What are we going to talk about?” she asked.  
“Logic.” 
She thought this over for a minute and decided she liked it. “Magnif,” she said.  
“Logic,” I said, clearing my throat, “is the science of thinking. Before we can think correctly, 
we must first learn to recognize the common fallacies of logic. These we will take up 
tonight.”  
“Wow-dow!” she cried, clapping her hands delightedly.  
I winced, but went bravely on. “First let us examine the fallacy called Dicto 
Simpliciter.” “By all means,” she urged, batting her lashes eagerly.  
“Dicto Simpliciter means an argument based on an unqualified generalization. For example: 
Exercise is good. Therefore everybody should exercise.”  
“I agree,” said Polly earnestly. “I mean exercise is wonderful. I mean it builds the body and 
everything.”  
“Polly,” I said gently, “the argument is a fallacy. ​Exercise is good ​is an unqualified 
generalization. For instance, if you have heart disease, exercise is bad, not good. Many people 
are ordered by their doctors ​not ​to exercise. You must ​qualify t​ he generalization. You must 
say exercise is ​usually ​good, or exercise is good ​for most people.​ Otherwise you have 
committed a Dicto Simpliciter. Do you see?”  
“No,” she confessed. “But this is marvy. Do more! Do more!”  
“It will be better if you stop tugging at my sleeve,” I told her, and when she desisted, I 
continued. “Next we take up a fallacy called Hasty Generalization. Listen carefully: You can’t 
speak French. Petey Bellows can’t speak French. I must therefore conclude that nobody at the 
University of Minnesota can speak French.”  
“Really?” said Polly, amazed. “​Nobody?​”  
I hid my exasperation. “Polly, it’s a fallacy. The generalization is reached too hastily. There 
are too few instances to support such a conclusion.”  
“Know any more fallacies?” she asked breathlessly. “This is more fun than dancing even.”  
I fought off a wave of despair. I was getting nowhere with this girl, absolutely nowhere. Still, 
I am nothing if not persistent. I continued. “Next comes Post Hoc. Listen to this: Let’s not 
take Bill on our picnic. Every time we take him out with us, it rains.”  
“I know somebody just like that,” she exclaimed. “A girl back home—Eula Becker, her name 
is. It never fails. Every single time we take her on a picnic—”  
“Polly,” I said sharply, “it’s a fallacy. Eula Becker doesn’t ​cause t​ he rain. She has no 
connection with the rain. You are guilty of Post Hoc if you blame Eula Becker.”  
“I’ll never do it again,” she promised contritely. “Are you mad at me?”  
I sighed. “No, Polly, I’m not mad.”  
“Then tell me some more fallacies.”  
“All right. Let’s try Contradictory Premises.”  
“Yes, let’s,” she chirped, blinking her eyes happily.  
I frowned, but plunged ahead. “Here’s an example of Contradictory Premises: If God can do 
anything, can He make a stone so heavy that He won’t be able to lift it?”  
“Of course,” she replied promptly. 
“But if He can do anything, He can lift the stone,” I pointed out.  
“Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “Well, then I guess He can’t make the 
stone.” “But He can do anything,” I reminded her.  
She scratched her pretty, empty head. “I’m all confused,” she admitted.  
“Of course you are. Because when the premises of an argument contradict each other, there 
can be no argument. If there is an irresistible force, there can be no immovable object. If there 
is an immovable object, there can be no irresistible force. Get it?”  
“Tell me more of this keen stuff,” she said eagerly.  
I consulted my watch. “I think we’d better call it a night. I’ll take you home now, and you go 
over all the things you’ve learned. We’ll have another session tomorrow night.”  
I deposited her at the girls’ dormitory, where she assured me that she had had a perfectly terrif 
evening, and I went glumly home to my room. Petey lay snoring in his bed, the raccoon coat 
huddled like a great hairy beast at his feet. For a moment I considered waking him and telling 
him that he could have his girl back. It seemed clear that my project was doomed to failure. 
The girl simply had a logic-proof head.  
But then I reconsidered. I had wasted one evening; I might as well waste another. Who knew? 
Maybe somewhere in the extinct crater of her mind a few members still smoldered. Maybe 
somehow I could fan them into flame. Admittedly it was not a prospect fraught with hope, but 
I decided to give it one more try.  
Seated under the oak the next evening I said, “Our first fallacy tonight is called Ad 
Misericordiam.”  
She quivered with delight.  
“Listen closely,” I said. “A man applies for a job. When the boss asks him what his 
qualifications are, he replies that he has a wife and six children at home, the wife is a helpless 
cripple, the children have nothing to eat, no clothes to wear, no shoes on their feet, there are 
no beds in the house, no coal in the cellar, and winter is coming.”  
A tear rolled down each of Polly’s pink cheeks. “Oh, this is awful, awful,” she sobbed.  
“Yes, it’s awful,” I agreed, “but it’s no argument. The man never answered the boss’s 
question about his qualifications. Instead he appealed to the boss’s sympathy. He committed 
the fallacy of Ad Misericordiam. Do you understand?”  
“Have you got a handkerchief?” she blubbered.  
I handed her a handkerchief and tried to keep from screaming while she wiped her eyes. 
“Next,” I said in a carefully controlled tone, “we will discuss False Analogy. Here is an 
example: Students should be allowed to look at their textbooks during examinations. After all, 
surgeons have X-rays to guide them during an operation, lawyers have briefs to guide them 
during a trial, carpenters have blueprints to guide them when they are building a house. Why, 
then, shouldn’t students be allowed to look at their textbooks during an examination?”  
“There now,” she said enthusiastically, “is the most marvy idea I’ve heard in years.”  
“Polly,” I said testily, “the argument is all wrong. Doctors, lawyers, and carpenters aren’t 
taking a test to see how much they have learned, but students are. The situations are altogether 
different, and you can’t make an analogy between them.”  
“I still think it’s a good idea,” said Polly. 
“Nuts,” I muttered. Doggedly I pressed on. “Next we’ll try Hypothesis Contrary to 
Fact.” “Sounds yummy,” was Polly’s reaction.  
“Listen: If Madame Curie had not happened to leave a photographic plate in a drawer with a 
chunk of pitchblende, the world today would not know about radium.”  
“True, true,” said Polly, nodding her head “Did you see the movie? Oh, it just knocked me 
out. That Walter Pidgeon is so dreamy. I mean he fractures me.”  
“If you can forget Mr. Pidgeon for a moment,” I said coldly, “I would like to point out that 
statement is a fallacy. Maybe Madame Curie would have discovered radium at some later 
date. Maybe somebody else would have discovered it. Maybe any number of things would   
have happened. You can’t start with a hypothesis that is not true and then draw any 
supportable conclusions from it.”  
“They ought to put Walter Pidgeon in more pictures,” said Polly, “I hardly ever see him any 
more.”  
One more chance, I decided. But just one more. There is a limit to what flesh and blood can 
bear. “The next fallacy is called Poisoning the Well.”  
“How cute!” she gurgled.  
“Two men are having a debate. The first one gets up and says, ‘My opponent is a notorious 
liar. You can’t believe a word that he is going to say.’ … Now, Polly, think. Think hard. 
What’s wrong?”  
I watched her closely as she knit her creamy brow in concentration. Suddenly a glimmer of 
intelligence—the first I had seen—came into her eyes. “It’s not fair,” she said with 
indignation. “It’s not a bit fair. What chance has the second man got if the first man calls him 
a liar before he even begins talking?”  
“Right!” I cried exultantly. “One hundred per cent right. It’s not fair. The first man has 
poisoned the well ​before anybody could drink from it. He has hamstrung his opponent 
before he could even start … Polly, I’m proud of you.”  
“Pshaws,” she murmured, blushing with pleasure.  
“You see, my dear, these things aren’t so hard. All you have to do is concentrate. 
Think— examine—evaluate. Come now, let’s review everything we have learned.”  
“Fire away,” she said with an airy wave of her hand.  
Heartened by the knowledge that Polly was not altogether a cretin, I began a long, patient 
review of all I had told her. Over and over and over again I cited instances, pointed out flaws, 
kept hammering away without letup. It was like digging a tunnel. At first, everything was 
work, sweat, and darkness. I had no idea when I would reach the light, or even if I would. But 
I persisted. I pounded and clawed and scraped, and finally I was rewarded. I saw a chink of 
light. And then the chink got bigger and the sun came pouring in and all was bright.  
Five grueling nights with this took, but it was worth it. I had made a logician out of Polly; I 
had taught her to think. My job was done. She was worthy of me, at last. She was a fit wife 
for me, a proper hostess for my many mansions, a suitable mother for my well-heeled 
children.  
It must not be thought that I was without love for this girl. Quite the contrary. Just as 
Pygmalion loved the perfect woman he had fashioned, so I loved mine. I decided to acquaint  
her with my feelings at our very next meeting. The time had come to change our relationship 
from academic to romantic.  
“Polly,” I said when next we sat beneath our oak, “tonight we will not discuss 
fallacies.” “Aw, gee,” she said, disappointed.  
“My dear,” I said, favoring her with a smile, “we have now spent five evenings together. We 
have gotten along splendidly. It is clear that we are well matched.”  
“Hasty Generalization,” said Polly brightly.  
“I beg your pardon,” said I.  
“Hasty Generalization,” she repeated. “How can you say that we are well matched on the 
basis of only five dates?”  
I chuckled with amusement. The dear child had learned her lessons well. “My dear,” I said, 
patting her hand in a tolerant manner, “five dates is plenty. After all, you don’t have to eat a 
whole cake to know that it’s good.”  
“False Analogy,” said Polly promptly. “I’m not a cake. I’m a girl.”  
I chuckled with somewhat less amusement. The dear child had learned her lessons perhaps too 
well. I decided to change tactics. Obviously the best approach was a simple, strong, direct 
declaration of love. I paused for a moment while my massive brain chose the proper word. 
Then I began:  
“Polly, I love you. You are the whole world to me, the moon and the stars and the 
constellations of outer space. Please, my darling, say that you will go steady with me, for if 
you will not, life will be meaningless. I will languish. I will refuse my meals. I will wander 
the face of the earth, a shambling, hollow-eyed hulk.”  
There, I thought, folding my arms, that ought to do it.  
“Ad Misericordiam,” said Polly.  
I ground my teeth. I was not Pygmalion; I was Frankenstein, and my monster had me by the 
throat. Frantically I fought back the tide of panic surging through me; at all costs I had to keep 
cool.  
“Well, Polly,” I said, forcing a smile, “you certainly have learned your 
fallacies.” “You’re darn right,” she said with a vigorous nod.  
“And who taught them to you, Polly?”  
“You did.”  
“That’s right. So you do owe me something, don’t you, my dear? If I hadn’t come along you 
never would have learned about fallacies.”  
“Hypothesis Contrary to Fact,” she said instantly.  
I dashed perspiration from my brow. “Polly,” I croaked, “you mustn’t take all these things so 
literally. I mean this is just classroom stuff. You know that the things you learn in school 
don’t have anything to do with life.”  
“Dicto Simpliciter,” she said, wagging her finger at me playfully.  
That did it. I leaped to my feet, bellowing like a bull. “Will you or will you not go steady with 
me?” 
“I will not,” she replied.  
“Why not?” I demanded.  
“Because this afternoon I promised Petey Bellows that I would go steady with him.”  
I reeled back, overcome with the infamy of it. After he promised, after he made a deal, after 
he shook my hand! “The rat!” I shrieked, kicking up great chunks of turf. “You can’t go with 
him, Polly. He’s a liar. He’s a cheat. He’s a rat.”  
“Poisoning the Well ,” said Polly, “and stop shouting. I think shouting must be a fallacy too.”  
With an immense effort of will, I modulated my voice. “All right,” I said. “You’re a logician. 
Let’s look at this thing logically. How could you choose Petey Bellows over me? Look at 
me—a brilliant student, a tremendous intellectual, a man with an assured future. Look at 
Petey—a knothead, a jitterbug, a guy who’ll never know where his next meal is coming from. 
Can you give me one logical reason why you should go steady with Petey Bellows?”  
“I certainly can,” declared Polly. “He’s got a raccoon coat.”