Two Marriages [Hardcover]

Phillip Lopate (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 2008

Selected as one of Oprah.com’s 20 Tantalizing Beach Reads

Celebrated essayist Phillip Lopate proves himself a master of the short novel form in this inspired pairing of novellas portraying two less-than-perfect unions.The Stoic’s Marriage chronicles the life of newlyweds Gordon and Rita. Well-off, idle Gordon, a lifelong student of philosophy who has always had “a stunted capacity for happiness,” first meets the enchanting Rita when she comes to his home as a nurse’s aid sent to care for his dying mother. The attraction is instant and a marriage proposal ensues. Gordon turns to his diary to record his uxoriousness and to expound on the merits of Stoicism, the philosophy he’s adopted as his “substitute religion.” When Rita’s cousin from the Philippines arrives one Christmas, setting in motion an outrageous and hilarious sequence of events, both Gordon’s stoicism and marriage vows are put to the test.

Eleanor, or, The Second Marriage recounts one seemingly golden weekend in the lives of Eleanor and Frank, whose Brooklyn townhouse is a gathering place for their circle of cultured, cosmopolitan friends.It is Saturday morning, and Frank and Eleanor are planning the dinner they will host to celebrate the visit of a famous actor friend. These preparations are interrupted by the arrival of Frank’s son, a young man deeply troubled by his own aimlessness. Other guests arrive, and in the midst of great conviviality, simmering tensions erupt into raucous emotional dramas.

Elegant, concise, and comically devastating, Two Marriages illuminates the ways in which love is inseparable from deceit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While best known for his engaging personal essay collections (Being with Children, etc.), Lopate is also the author of two novels (including The Rug Merchant); here he turns in a pair of lively novellas. Taking the form of a self-conscious diary, The Stoic's Marriage opens as Gordon, a pretentious intellectual, records the perfection of his marriage to Rita, a former home aide from the Philippines. When her relatives arrive unexpectedly, his postures of generosity toward his wife's family make his farcical unreliability as a narrator abundantly clear. Eleanor, or, The Second Marriage offers a bird's-eye view of a middle-aged couple's bourgeois complacency as they host a party, complete with gourmet food, a Charlie Chaplin screening (from real film, natch) and urbane banter. The characters seem pulled from a lifestyle issue of New York magazine, and a shattering secret, when revealed, doesn't have much to push against—but that's Lopate's point. The novella form tends to work against these tales, which feel like underdeveloped novels, but Lopate gets in some good jabs at the chattering classes. (Sept.)
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From The New Yorker

All marriages are a gamble: how well do you need to understand your partner before you jump in the game? In this pair of novellas, Lopate examines the question first with humor, and then with melancholy. In the opening one, a middle-aged academic with a private income marries the Filipino nurse�s aide who cared for his dying mother. True, he knows almost nothing about her past, but does that really matter, if he is madly in love? In the second, a middle-aged couple, whose town house in Brooklyn is perpetually filled with good food, good wine, and good conversation, consider themselves well armed against the threats of their previous relationships, but do they know one another�s secrets�and, for that matter, should they? Lopate brings considerable psychological insight to these questions but fails to make us feel the risks in our gut. We may be titillated by this high-stakes game, but we have no difficulty walking away from the table.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Other Press; First Edition edition (September 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590512987
• ISBN-13: 978-1590512982
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,312,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Charming, great writing, September 6, 2009

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Seattle Reader (Washington) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Two Marriages (Hardcover)

Philip Lopate is a fantastic writer. These two stories are quite different from each other. The first one is hilarious and escalates into fabulous madness. The second, wonderfully observed, is strangely disturbing. This book really delivers.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Skillfully written prose, thoughtful, introspective, April 3, 2009

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Anon. "Cheyenne" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Two Marriages (Hardcover)

Two Marriages juxtaposes two different relationships and consists of two novellas. The author has an exquisite ability to descibe the interior landscape of his protagonists. Within each novella, they describe internal conflict, anger, confusion, regret, doubt, and so on. I like that fact that two novellas are juxtaposed within one book. Thoughtfully written, definitely recommended.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Two Marriages: Divorce Yourself, November 13, 2008

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alldayReader "readallday" - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Two Marriages (Hardcover)

Phillip Lopate's two novellas about marriage in his book Two Marriages read like writing group exercises gone bad. Both are facile and trivial and uninspired.

The first, "The Stoic's Marriage", uses the narrator's diary (I can just imagine the writing instructor saying: "today we'll tell a story using diary entries") to tell us the pathetic story of a "middle aged fart" (an incredibly accurate insult lodged at the narrator) who marries a young Filipino nurse. Everything in this novella is either unbelievable or offensive , and too often, both. There are no flashes of humor to lighten the load of reading, there is no new insight offered into the too-well recorded phenomenon of supposedly intelligent older men going for younger, less educated women. Lopate has his narrator accuse himself often of laziness (maybe he is but his character is so flatly drawn by Lopate that we only know he is lazy because he calls himself so); but Lopate is the truly lazy one, rattling off words to tell a linear and boring tale told many times before. Lopate is lazy in his use of clichés and has his poor narrator apologize for all the clichés: forget the apology and instead give me some genuine writing! Lopate is lazy ( and so predictable) in his treatment of Filipinos and Filipino culture, of women in general, of Italian neighborhoods in Brooklyn, of academics, and of marriage. Was this novella supposed to be a farce? Only it wasn't funny. And why the allusions to Unamumo, and to Epictetus and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius? I've read Unamumo and he has nothing to do with what Lopate presents here. The Stoics are purportedly the reason why the poor narrator is in the pickle he's in but guess what? I could have grabbed quotes from the Epicureans or the Nihilists or the Existentialists (much as Lopate must have gone to "Idiot's Guide to Best Quotations from the Stoics" to grab his) and they could have worked too; the characters here are so flat, any philosophy could be rolled over them. It was not stoicism that made me finish reading "The Stoic's Marriage, it was self-flagellating masochism.

In Lopate's second novella, "Eleanor, or, The Second Marriage" (come on, Lopate, choose one title, please), he followed the writing maxim, "write what you know" but he forgot everything about making it interesting and alive. For a story to move there must be a threat, an action, the protagonists working for or against that action: in other words, something must happen, and nothing does here. Or maybe I was sleeping when it happened, Lopate's prose can result in snoozing. When I woke up a pseudo-crisis was splattered across the page but I didn't care, nor did I care how it was resolved.

Lopate's characters are flat: we are given names, some physical attributes, and then a few inane descriptions like "smiled mysteriously" or "sat silent, inscrutable" or "with a dazzlingly persuasive smile." All the characters speak the same way, as if all words were coming from the same mouth, formed by the same brain, but it is not a real brain: it is a badly imagined brain spouting unrealistic dialog. Lopate switches point of view awkwardly and unsuccessfully, and again all the points of view sound the same, the reminiscences of someone much older than anyone in the story. It's very weird how often a character refers to things happening long ago, and things being different back then, when we are only talking about twenty years ago at most. Maybe the story would have worked better being told from the husband or the wife's point of view, but I doubt it. There is nothing in this story worth telling.