Dial Tones & Disasters: Eight Romantic Comedies, 19561999: 2

Dating was getting modern. Romantic confusion was keeping up just fine. New York City, 1956. Beverly Madden likes Raymond Conti. Raymond likes Beverly. Everybody around them seems convinced they are practically going steady. There is only one problem: Beverly and Raymond have never actually agreed to that. Their increasingly complicated attempt to define their own relationship begins Dial Tones & Disasters, eight complete romantic comedies following American dating from 1956 to 1999-as courtship moves from family telephone lines and blind dates toward computers, recorded profiles, voice mailboxes, and the internet. A computer promises to calculate compatibility. Friends insist they know exactly who should meet whom. A New York blackout strands two competitive singles together. Video dating turns romance into a performance. An answering machine complicates a relationship one message at a time. Telephone personals offer more choices than anyone knows what to do with. And by 1999, two people can connect through a computer while tying up the household phone line in the process. Every new invention makes finding someone easier. None of them makes knowing what to do once you find them any simpler. Warm, witty, nostalgic, and romance-forward, Dial Tones & Disasters is the second volume in The Great American Dating Experiment, a chronological romantic-comedy trilogy about the changing ways Americans meet, date, match, communicate, and fall in love. Each story delivers a complete romance, and each volume can be enjoyed on its own. The tools change. The rules change. The confusion remains.