The Married Man

Rating:
Summary: "PARIS IS A LONELY TOWN"
Review: To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Edmund White is the writer of our age, or at least one of the strongest among some tough contenders. In THE MARRIED MAN he proves that he has his finger on the emotional and sociological pulse however erratic it may be. Even putting aside the obvious fact that the novel traces White's autobiographical map, it is fitting that he sets his main character, primly settled in a 90s way, in Paris, only to bring him home later on in a dramatic and thoroughly shocking scene which depicts how alienating it is to be home sweet home in the USA. He is unrelenting in alternately entertaining and frustrating the reader with the Paris social set-ups. However personal they may be it's still Paris; I found his Parisian friends to be warm and wonderfully human, surviving beautifully at the end of the millennium in a mix both European traditions and present day trends.

Against this background, he describes an ultimately heartbreaking and mysterious love affair with Julien whose demise is eminent from the get-go. The destructive spiral of the AIDS disease is so pervasive that I lose all perspective whenever I am confronted with its story. This case is no exception: the struggle to stay alive from day-to-day and cope with the slow, searing disintegration, and the physical and emotional caprice, is a nightmare. How Julien and Austin manage this path is not up for judgment, the story stands alone and defies anyone to ask if there was a better way to cope.

This is a exceptional book. It pitches perceptive and vital characters beautifully enunciated by fine writing against the tragic destruction of disease and early death. This is not easy to read about and causes fire in the heart (if the strong reactions of my fellow reviewers are any indication) but it is also deeply enlightening.

Rating:
Summary: Growing Pains
Review: White's book is an interesting journey. I liked the personal growth of the main character, Austin. He starts off as a self-centered shallow character, but through the experiences of his relationships with Peter and Julien, he grows. This is brought home in the last chapter when Austin flies in an airplane with George, a character not too far removed from where he was at the start of the book. Through this plot device, we get a "circle of life" feel and see how far Austin has come on his journey. Early in the text, I nearly stopped reading because of some of the graphic description. I'm glad I continued. Of particular interest is the way our picture of Julien telescopes larger after his death through the description of his brother and grandmother. We learn, as does Austin, about how he saw the world. While Edmund White's description helps to make the locales in France, Rhode Island, Georgia, Florida and Morocco quite real, at times bogs down the story. As a character study in growth and maturity, this book succeeds. As a page burner, it wavers. Ultimately, I found it worth the time.

Rating:
Summary: three strikes and he's out
Review: Edmund White's brand of gay fiction first came to my notice with "A Boy's Own Story" perhaps his bestselling novel to date. I couldn't get through it. I came across a copy of "The Beautiful Room Is Empty" picking it up because I liked the imagery of its title. Again, couldn't finish it; what I read I found vaguely distasteful. So it was with some trepidation yet hope that I picked up a library copy of his latest fictional work, "The Married Man."

This novel I did read from cover to cover. Not that the narrative was so gripping, I was waiting for the story to start. Instead, I was treated to a character study of a 50-ish, pudgy, gay white man (probably like White himself) who still has an appeal to younger, handsomer and slimmer men than himself. (Is this also wishful thinking on White's part?) Unfortunately, this novel has nothing new to convey. I encountered all the classic cliches American authors (for example, Diane Johnson in her novels "Le Mariage" and "Le Divorce") tend to trot out about the French. Both men and women can do wicked sartorial things with scarves; the women are viewed as being almost uniformly "beautiful" and everyone seems to chain smoke. In White's defense, unlike Diane Johnson, he does restrain himself from peppering his prose with French phrases that may be unintelligible to the often mono-lingual American audience.

In an obvious bid to be topical, White details the harrowing experience of witnessing a loved one perish from AIDS-related maladies. It seems the latter half of the novel is little more than a clinical study of what illnesses could infect an HIV-positive gay man. Rather than being affecting, the narrative's ending was merely inevitable and pat.

More disturbing were the sidelong racist digs White makes (through his characters, of course) at blacks. They are mentioned obliquely, objectified as the sexual conquests of a professed "dinge queen." In one direct passage, the Austin character describes American black young men as "homeboys.... who wear baggy clothes and beat white people." Really!

In all, this novel wasn't worth reading. For lack of a better term, there was just something nasty about it. Never before have I tried so hard to like an author's work. But no more Edmund White.

Rating:
Summary: Realistic portrayal of coping with impending death
Review: Much can be said in this book's favor -- the understated but descriptive prose and the projection of the subtle nuances of relationships come most readily to mind. What I enjoyed most, though, was how accurately Austin was portrayed as a man coping with the loss of a lover. He was very devoted and loving, to be sure, but he also had periods of frustration and anger, followed by guilt and regrets. Although I never had close family or friends succumb to AIDS, I have lost several family members to cancer, and my real experiences and feelings were very much like Austin's fictional ones. Julien and Peter, too, I thought were depicted honestly and without varnish as men facing death before their time. A great novel, both in its own right and as a book to help people with their grief.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth making it to the end--even if you could!
Review: Even if you are able to hack your way through Mr. White's slovenly prose, haphazard and random plotting, and hilarious pretentions to being a 'European' writer (this book is full of snide putdowns of American culture, but I guess the author's years abroad as an American in Paris entitle him to those, eh?)--why bother? The gay couple at the center of this book consists of two men so small-minded, self-involved, and unpersuasive that it's hard to imagine anyone caring what happens to them. White seems to think that by merely invoking the AIDS disaster, he can make this book be 'about' something; but I hope the gay community is beyond the point where we're supposed to be committed to a book or an author simply because it, or he, presses the right buttons. Judged as a literary work (as opposed to a poster for gay 'issues'), this is a total and inexcusable failure.

Rating:
Summary: love in its undisguised state
Review: "The Married Man" is Edmund White's finest. It's moving, lyrical (as his novels always are), passionate--and even has a plot (not to say I didn't enjoy his books that seemed to lack a plot). Never one to avoid or sugar-coat life's realities, in this novel White explores the challenges of a sero-discordant couple, the problems encountered when a former lover and a current one can't stand each other, and the issues that face couples of divergent ages, incomes, national origins, and native tongues. Anyone who's ever been in love knows that a romance is built on details, but White focuses on the details that matter: a nickname, a glance, how friends view the beloved, how anger or indifference or frustration affect the relationship. White's characters are never one-dimensional, but finely nuanced, alive and seared into memory.

In my opinion, no one writes place descriptions as vividly as White: One can almost imagine oneself at the café in Paris alongside his characters, listening to the haughty waiters spewing French, smelling the ubiquitous cigarette smoke, tasting the heavenly flavors of paté, a fine Sauternes, a delicate pastry. Winter in Providence never seemed so bleak or Key West so relentlessly sunny. And few writers can pack so much eroticism into one sentence (page 131 in case you want to check).

I was struck by the similarities between White's protagonist couple Austin and Julien and his own life with his former lover Hubert Sorin (as detailed in their co-authored book "Our Paris"). Both Julien and Hubert were French, similar in age, former architects, and each gave up his wife, his job, and his country to move to the States with his leading man. Austin's and Julien's trip to Morocco paralleled White's and Sorin's final trip; even their beloved basset hounds played a starring role (Ajax in "The Married Man"; Fred in real life). These similarities made the book even more moving as I realized how heartwrenching it must have been for White to relive so many memories.

This novel is by turns provocative, funny, maddening and heartbreaking. White delves deeper into human emotion and motivation than any writer I know of. What he reveals is not always pleasant or expected, but when you put down one of his novels--especially this one--you know you've been touched to the core.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite banality
Review: I think White is a marvelous writer, his sentences and imagery are superb. Now if only his plots could sustain them. The story of one lover caring for another through AIDS is not entirely new, but here White presents it in a more unflinching way than possibly previously read. For most of the novel, I found myself swinging from bored by the slow-moving story to enraptured by the language, but when I reached the last third of the novel I became more involved with the characters and the story, where I couldn't put down the novel. White's lack of chronological timekeeping is a nuisance, by the way. Like some works of art, the novel is quite beautiful, but inaccesible to a lot of people. I didn't get what all other readers are getting from this novel. Yes, it's beautiful. But it's also tedious and lacking.

Rating:
Summary: Boring and Sad
Review: I was surprised that I finished this book. Although the first Edmund White book I have read, I think it will be my last. The characters were so unlikable that I could hardly find one that I even cared about. I am about the age of Austin but my life has been far different. Much more full of meaning and less about sex with young selfish men.

Rating:
Summary: Read this and weep
Review: I loved this book and learned a lot from it. What somehow didn't ring true was Austin's apparently bottomless bank account which enabled him to jet back and forth across the Atlantic (many times), live high on the hog in Paris, and underwrite many trips to far-away places with strange-sounding names -- all while essentially unemployed. Aside from that, it was a wonderful story of love, though not a "love story" for those who prefer the Erich Segal genre.

Rating:
Summary: A difficult, but insightful novel about caring for PWAs
Review: I found it hard to get through this novel, mostly because I have seen the horrors of AIDS up close and don't really want to be reminded of it by reading about the agonies for the person with AIDS and his caregivers. I was also frustrated by the third-person narration. (It's fine for a first-person narrator not to understand what makes a major character tick, but if the perspective is one character's, I think it should be told in first person.)

I also thought there was too much pseudo-sociological comment about differences between Latino and Anglo ways of living and seeing the world, that this should be shown, not told.

However, I also thought there were many insights -- insights into characters, locales (especially the exotic one of American universities for the long-expatriated author/protagonist), and the ways of love.

I found the anonymous (typically anonymous!) Ohio reviewer's statement "The characters changed their morals as quickly as they changed their shirt" deeply and viciously wrong. Austin continues to support both the "lover" with whom he's not having sex (and has not known very long before his jealth problems begin) and an ex-lover with whom he has not had sex in many years. Austin is deeply loyal to those he has loved and takes on HUGE responsibilities for two EXCEPTIONALLY demanding dying men. That he has other desires is not a variation from his morality, which is to try to enhance the quality of life and experience of those he cares about. I am quite sure that I would not want to meet someone for whom this is less important than ensuring the monogamy of erotic imagining!