Switch Bitch

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Switch Bitch
SwitchBitch.jpg
First US edition
Author Roald Dahl
Cover artist Charles Shields (US)
Genre suspense, thriller
Publisher Michael Joseph (UK)
Alfred A. Knopf (US)
Publication date 1974
Media type print
Pages 140
ISBN 0-14-004179-6
OCLC 4800308
Switch Bitch (1974) is a book of adult short stories by British writer Roald Dahl.
Four stories, originally published in Playboy between 1965 and 1974,[1] are
collected. They are linked by themes of sexual deception: in each one some large
act of cunning, cruelty, or hedonism underpins the sexuality.

The book is notable for its introduction of the Uncle Oswald character, a wealthy
hobbyist and gadabout who stars in both the first and last stories. (Although the
first story seemingly presages his imminent decline and death.) He later appeared
in Dahl's comic novel for adults, My Uncle Oswald. Oswald is a male fantasy figure
described as "the greatest fornicator of all time", his adventures recounted by a
nephew who inherits his diaries and decides to edit them for publication. Despite
the stories in Switch Bitch being dark and cynical in tone, the Oswald tales are
also humorous and satirical, resembling crude comedic anecdotes.

Contents
1 Contents and introductions
1.1 "The Visitor"
1.2 "The Great Switcheroo"
1.3 "The Last Act"
1.4 "Bitch"
2 Reception
3 See also
4 References
Contents and introductions
"The Visitor"
Wealthy gadabout Oswald Hendryks Cornelius is stranded in Cairo when a Syrian
businessman picks him up by the side of the road and offers him a room for the
night in his desert mansion. While there Oswald meets the man's wife and daughter,
both of whom are extremely beautiful. A midnight liaison occurs and Oswald wonders
whom it was he spent the night with, when the businessman reveals to him new
information that could be fatal.

"The Great Switcheroo"

Two middle-class suburban men at a neighbourhood party devise a ruse whereby each
can sleep with the other's wife, without either wife realising the deception. They
compare sexual techniques beforehand, and one receives a rude awakening the morning
after.

"The Last Act"

After being widowed a woman reconnects with the man she left for her late husband
years ago. The man is a gynaecologist, recently separated, and unbeknownst to the
woman still harbours a grudge for her breaking off their relationship. He begins to
seduce her, and a terrible revenge ensues.

"Bitch"
Oswald Cornelius becomes entangled with a Belgian olfactory expert who claims to
have discovered an eighth smell-related nerve that, when stimulated, unlocks
certain aspects of human sexual experience. The expert develops a perfume to
stimulate the nerve, causing chaos when it is exposed during a high society dinner
for an American women's movement that Oswald is attending.

Reception
The stories have been criticised for their cruel and misogynistic elements. The
central conceit of "The Last Act", in particular, has been described by Jeremy
Treglown, Dahl's biographer, as having "no purpose as a mechanism other than to
lead to a crudely sensationalist conclusion", [2] and by British novelist Zoe
Heller as describing "in obscene detail the rape of a menopausal woman by a
gynecologist."[3] In the same article for The New Republic she commented generally
on Dahl's later adult stories: "the sexual sadism is at its crudest and the “wit”
at its most vestigial[; they] are almost unbearable to read."

Despite this negative reception, the stories have also been praised. Alfred
Hitchcock, for whose television programme Dahl's story "Man from the South" was
adapted, was fond of The Visitor and in later life recounted its plot on American
talk shows as a dark joke.[citation needed]