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5.0 out of 5 stars
Serial Monogamy--Bay Area Writer Considers Why Marriage Does, April 27, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: A Much-Married Man, A Novel (Paperback)
Half the adults in America know first-hand what it's like to be maritally
committed to someone and to fall short of one's partner's, or one's own,
expectations. But what of a maritally impaired, maritally challenged,
veteran of five shots at wedded bliss? In A Much-Married Man, poet and
novelist Robert Sward takes a provocative, serio-comic look at the life and
loves of ex-baseball player Noah Newmark, a 47-year-old serial monogamist
struggling to keep his fifth and current marriage alive.
For twenty-five years Noah has been trying to live up to his own
expectations and those of his partners, and four times his adventures in
marriage have failed. Still, bemused and befuddled, a little dense perhaps,
Noah has refused to quit. "Divorce suits, court appearances, child custody
cases, alimony, support payments, nothing served to dampen his ardor," Sward writes. "Having paid up, having made amends, and, typically, with the
blessings of all concerned, the word Amor! on his lips, the banner of love
flapping in the breeze, he'd ride off again on a quest for the beloved."
When fifth wife Holly, a day-time, TV soap star threatens to leave,
Noah realizes that he is unwilling to go through yet another divorce. The
reader is re-acquainted with the social-sexual history of the last four
decades as Noah tries to save his current marriage by coming to terms with
his previous ones - revisiting the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, and those decades'
spouses, Shelley, Anna, Dolores, and Natasha.
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In the flashbacks that follow, Sward, author of twelve books of poetry,
pokes fun at the romantic impulse even as Noah relives his quest for mystery
and romance. Equal parts Don Juan, Don Quixote, amoral, obsessed sexual
explorer and deluded romantic, Noah is a throwback to the courtly (and
somewhat loony) lovers of a bygone era, capable of an almost Arthurian
devotion to each beloved.
Sward's novel is set at Mt. Chakra, the socially hierarchical Yoga Country
Club where Noah examines his past with the aid of Rama P. Rama, a silent East Indian physician. Playful and stern, mystical and practical, the 101-year-old guru is one of A Much-Married Man's delights, quizzing Noah about his marital history by chalking questions and answers on a small slate.
"You practiced the yoga of self-deception," he writes, after Noah details marriages #1 and #2. "Very popular yoga."
Even Holly, eager to escape Mt. Chakra, responds favorably to the man she calls Rama Pajama. "I like what he says about money," she remarks. "He's more worldly than you think. He says, 'The answer is money. What is the
question? Everything.' Now that's what I call enlightenment."
Seemingly independent, Noah may strike some readers as a man who can't live without women. That's a misconception, though Noah's father, a stand-up comedian, does criticize him for his impulse to marry every woman he has sex with, and macho character though Sward's creation may seem, he is nothing if not a romantic. Each time this strangely ingenuous individual marries, he expects matrimony to bring joy.
While reading this novel, I found myself compelled to look up the word "romantic" in the dictionary, and to my surprise, Webster had little good to say about the word. Romantic: "...not compatible with reality." Words used by lexicographers to define the romantic impulse include: Utopian, unrealistic, idealistic, quixotic, starry-eyed, and visionary. Webster suggests it is a state brought on by regarding or imbuing someone with affected or exaggerated emotion.
If anyone believes in happy endings, it is Noah Newmark. The holy grail, Sward seems to suggest, is a long-term, workable union between two loving people. But this is a poet's novel, after all, and Noah's quest for the heart of marriage culminates not in a reunion with Holly but in an hallucinatory vision: five women dancing on an airplane's wing at 30,000 feet, the five muses who have left a record of love on his heart. In marrying five remarkable women, Noah realizes, he has found five different ways of
being married to himself, and ends up regarding himself "the luckiest man in
the world." He concludes, "Wherever it is I'm going, I'm married, I'm
married still, and I'm staying married to every one of them. Life can divorce me if it likes, and Holly too, but I'm not divorcing anyone."
Under cover of Sward's sharp wit and good humor, A Much-Married Man reaches for nothing less than the heart of marriage. It succeeds in some very
entertaining and unexpected ways, and readers may well find themselves
regarding marriage - and divorce - from a new perspective.
Freelance writer Elissa Alford has published articles and features in The San Francisco Chronicle; Glamour Magazine; and the Blue Penny Quarterly.
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