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The 158-Pound Marriage

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 158-Pound Marriage
The 158-Pound Marriage book cover
First edition
AuthorJohn Irving
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublisherRandom House
Publication date
August 12, 1974
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages245 pp
ISBN0-394-48414-2
OCLC914828
813/.5/4
LC ClassPZ4.I714 On PS3559.R8
Preceded byThe Water-Method Man 
Followed byThe World According to Garp 

The 158-Pound Marriage is the third novel by American author John Irving. The book explores the sexual revolution-era trend of "swinging" (partner-swapping) via a glimpse into the lives of two couples in a small New England college town who enter casually into such an affair, with disastrous consequences.[1][2]

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  • John Irving | Part 1 | May 24, 2012 | Appel Salon

Transcription

Tina Srebotnjak: It's a great pleasure to welcome John Irving to the stage. [applause] TS: So, great. Are mics on? This is a question we always have to ask at the beginning. Can everybody hear? Yes? John Irving: Me too. Can you hear? [chuckle] TS: I thought we might start with the title "In One Person," which is a great title and comes from Shakespeare. Can you talk about that? JI: Well, that phrase you said "Crushes on The Wrong People," that would have served as a title for this novel had I not known Richard the Second, and that line the doomed king says, Act five Scene five, "Thus play I in one person many people and none contented." That seemed to meet a suit, not just Billy Abbot the bisexual narrator and main character of this novel, but it seemed it just suits some of his friends and acquaintances along the way. But, perhaps "Crushes on The Wrong People" would also have sufficed. It's a chapter title. Sometimes you have a surfeit of titles, sometimes you have... The Cider House Rules could easily have been called "The Boy Who Belonged to Saint Clouds," which ended up being the title of the first chapter, but which was the working title for that book for many years, and other times, you just don't ever like the one you get. [chuckle] JI: I hated the title "The World According to Garp". I still don't like it. I always imagined that it was just a working title and that there would be a better title for that novel and a less stupid name for that main character. So... [laughter] TS: And what happened? One never surfaced. JI: Well, what happened was I made a young writer's mistake which is I showed that book to my editor before I was properly finished with it, the title business included. And a part of the reason for that was that I was changing publishers, but that still wasn't a good enough reason because once you do that and it's somebody that you're gonna be working with and someone you have to have a kind of mutual respect with, of course once he read it he said, "Well, it is the world according to Garp. What else could it be?" And so I just gave up. I just said, "Oh, well. Okay." TS: Oh, well. If it's gonna become a bestseller, why not stick with it. But interesting you bring up Garp because you have written three books before Garp, and when Garp hit, it was the monster hit that we all know about. Now, in your mind, was that book substantially different from the three you'd written earlier? Or I guess what I'm saying is what was it about Garp that seemed to catch the wave the way the previous three had not? JI: Well, I don't think a writer is the best judge of what it is about a specific book that his or her readers like or like less well. I don't think I really know altogether why that happened. It's easy with hindsight to see that there are many elements in "The World According to Garp" which I was already writing about in those first three novels. It's easy to say as the tailor who makes the suit that it is a better made version of those first three novels too, it's simply better constructed. But, it's also I think obvious over time, it is the first political novel of those first four novels and one of only four political novels, what I would call political novels, of the 13. As "The World According to Garp" being in my judgement political certainly "The Cider House Rules", "A Prayer for Owen Meany", and this book "In One Person", and without making a big to do of it, I would simply say that these are novels that take sides. They take a side of an issue. They take the feminist side in "The World According to Garp". JI: They take the abortion right side in "The Cider House Rules". They pick a side and they become an advocate, they are polemical novels. And it's no surprise to me that in the case of each of the four they have had both as I would expect, my best reviews and my worst. And it is strictly because you can't pick a side or be an advocate of something, you can't be polemical and write a novel and not make some people very happy and piss other people off, that's just understandable. TS: So, political books obviously. I think you need a push to write them, something must say to you, "I wanna write this story." So, what was it about the... Perhaps it was the times we live in although, I was gonna bring up Obama. He's just come out in favour of gay marriage, which I think most people would say is a great thing. Are these times calling for a book pleading for sexual tolerance, for tolerance of sexual diversity? JI: Well, I think as a writer I'm the last person who could take credit or be blamed for being either timely or out of date. Since my novels usually sit around so long waiting to be written, for a considerable number of years before I choose them as the next book I'm going to write in the case of "In One Person", I didn't begin to write this novel until June of 2009, but it had already existed, pretty much fully formed as a novel I was going to write for as many as six, almost seven years before that. So, looking back to when this was a fully formed idea, all was a story about sexual boy who falls in love with an older woman who he doesn't know is a transgender woman and waiting for him, like a bookend at the end of this novel, is a young boy who doesn't want to have been a born a boy. A young boy who is a transgender in progress, who is in progress toward becoming a young woman. That was always the story. JI: And when I know what the end of the novel is, I know most of the rest of it. And frankly, 10-12 years ago, this novel didn't look that timely then. The only thing that makes "In One Person" timely now are the dinosaurs who continue to resist and stand in our position to sexual equality issues. It's not me that makes this novel look timely, it's the idiots in my country's Republican party and others that... [applause] JI: So, it's those people who if this is timely. When I first thought of this novel, I thought, "No, not again. I thought you were done with this." And I did think I was done with this. "The World According to Garp" is also a novel about our intolerance of sexual differences. It's a much more political novel, a much more radical novel, a much more satirical novel than, "In One Person" which is in comparison much more realistic as a novel. But it's the same damn subject. It's about people who hate one another for their sexual differences. JI: And I was naive enough in 1978 when I finished "The World According to Garp" that I actually imagined that this novel would soon look a historical relic. I imagined that those kind of intolerances would soon disappear. I had no such illusion about abortion rights, when I finished "The Cider House Rules" in 1985. In no way did I think the acceptance of abortion rights was gonna get easier or that the people who were entrenched in their opposition to those rights were ever going to go away. But I did imagine that we would overall become more sexually tolerant than we were in the '70s. Well, we are a little, but it's obviously not enough. TS: You also have a gay son, Everett, who is here with us tonight. Came from New York, sitting in the front row, handsome young man right here with his boyfriend, Patrick. And the reason I bring this up is although I know the book was formed in your mind, years and years ago, did the fact that you have a gay son propel you to maybe choose that book over another one that might have been percolating in your mind. Did you feel a sense of urgency about writing the book that obviously would have been close to your heart? JI: Well, that's a good question, but... Although I did feel a sense of urgency or I keenly wished that this book could be the one I wrote next as opposed to one of the the other two or three books that was sitting, waiting to be the next one. TS: In the station, you say they are right? In the station, waiting... JI: Well I see them as kinda... They are fully formed ideas, I know what the whole things are, I know what they are. And some of them have been sitting there for 20 years, others maybe only 10. Well, the truth was, I could do nothing to make this be the next one because the way I need to work it seems is that, the next novel among those boxcars uncoupled in the station, the next one, will be the one where I feel the most certain about the ending. It has little bearing to do with all the other things that I might want to write it for. Even someone who means as much to me as Everett, I don't feel secure about choosing that novel until I know verbatim how it ends. The words, every comma, the paragraphs, every sentence. I have to see it, hear it exactly. It comes in a voice and so far it hasn't changed. And so I did feel to use your word 'urgency' or 'a keen desire,' I did feel that, I had a perfect reader for this novel in Everett. Another way to say this is that I knew at least one person would like it. [laughter] JI: And it's always kinda good to know that before you begin. Everyone else might dump on it, but I knew that Everett would be partial toward it. That's a good feeling to have, but I really couldn't force it. I was just lucky that this ending did present itself. It's a dialogue ending and I've had three of those, and I love dialogue endings because in every case it's a repetition of a line of dialogue you the reader have heard before much earlier in the novel and often in a completely different context than you will hear it at the end. JI: But those endings are very comforting to me, because they are refrains, because they are repetitions. Because it takes you back to something you've already heard. But twice, this time in the case of "In One Person" and once before in the case of "Cider House" I was confused. I thought I was hearing the ending wrong. I didn't think I had it right. Because in the case of Cider House, it's a line of dialogue that the old doctor says to the orphans in benediction. It's that refrain he repeats to them, "princes of Maine, kings of New England" he called them. But I knew the doctor was dead. I knew the story, I always do. I knew the whole story and so I felt "Well, I guess that can't be the ending because Doctor Larch is dead." JI: It took me a while to realize that "No, no, it's Homer Wells who's repeating Doctor Larch's benediction." And in this case, I knew that the speaker over the ending of this line of dialogue also couldn't be there. And so I had to recognize that it was another speaker, it was another person. But "A Widow for One Year" was easy, it's the same person. Same line, same person, it's Marion both times 36 years later. But that slowed me up a little bit, but once I knew that ending and had that ending, I think knowing, thinking, seeing, Everett, feeling proud of a gay son and knowing that I had by coincidence, because it long pre-existed in my knowledge that Everett would be gay. By coincidence knowing that I had an ideal reader for this book. I think it made Billy a little angrier, frankly. And I think Billy's anger is a propelling property of his voice and of this narrative. He gets angrier and angrier as he goes. And every chapter is also structured that way. He begins very calmly and reasonably, and the end of every chapter he's angry, and he's got something to be angry about, and so do I. TS: And how did... JI: The other thing you have to remember is, it's a first person novel and I don't like that voice generally speaking. I don't choose that voice most of the time. I am much happier in the third person omniscient voice than I am in a first person narrator. I feel constrained by that voice, and as someone whose novels are longer than most other people's novels, you have to recognize about a first person narrator, that any story you tell in that voice is going to be longer than the same story in the third person because you have to account for how that narrator knows what he or she knows. There's more explanation, there's more exposition, it's slower. So I don't like it for that reason alone, I resisted, but it's no surprise. In every book where I've yielded to it and said, "Well this has to be a first person narrator." Think about it, "Every Time" is a sexually forbidden subject. JI: "Every time" is a sexually taboo story. "The 158-Pound Marriage" is about wife swapping. "The Hotel New Hampshire" is about a boy who's incestuously in love with his older sister, he will have sex with her. "A Prayer for Owen Meany", the narrator Johnny Wheelwright is called behind his back, not once, not twice, but three times a nonpracticing homosexual. He is arguably in love with Owen Meany, he loves Owen Meany a little bit more than he loves him as a best friend, though he is so in the closet, he will never say so or ever admit it to himself. And here is Billy Abbott, who is bisexual and who is made to suffer a little bit for his sexual minority as a young man and once he comes to terms with it and knows who he is, he will suffer no fool gladly again. JI: Though in each case you see, it isn't someone who's... What's the word? Constrained to tell a story. It's someone who's kind of compelled to tell a story because they're talking about something that was laid on them as wrong, right? And they've had to bit it out, so to speak. And it's never my first choice, but the funny thing is that once I am in that voice, every novel I've written in that voice has been much more quickly forthcoming in the writing than any third-person novel ever is. JI: The third-person voice, it's harder because you always have to ask yourself who you're supposed to be, this detached, telescopic, all-seeing, omniscient narrator. Who the hell are you? And is it ever appropriate for you to use this or that four-letter word? Whereas if you're a narrator, if you're a first-person narrator, you're one of the actors in the play. You are also on stage, you're just another player and it's very easy to know how that narrator sounds because you know who his character is. Just as I know Johnny Wheelwright is repressed and is keeping things to himself. I know Billy Abbott isn't, right? In that sense, it's very easy because you're an actor. TS: So did... Can I ask Everett, did dad do a good job? Pretty good book? S?: I've always felt that way. TS: I'm assuming he was an early reader. Did you give him the book to... Not that, but did you give him the book to get a sense of how it feels? JI: Well I thought he was a pretty early reader. He was always someone who stayed up late always. [laughter] TS: Okay, let me ask you about some of the other... JI: I didn't ask him what he was doing. I just thought maybe he was reading, you know what I mean? [laughter] TS: Oh, I'm sure he was. [laughter] I'm sure it involved books or magazines. Yes, exactly. I wanted to ask you about some of the other things you've written and also about this book, although obviously it's about sexual tolerance and it's a plea for sexual tolerance, it's also about a love of literature and a love of books. Billy Abbott as a young boy, goes to the library and since we're celebrating libraries, we can talk about that. He goes to the library and discovers he's given by the librarian Miss Frost, who he later falls madly in love with. But I believe it's a Great Expectations she gives him or what's the first book she gives him, it's a Dickens novel isn't it? And it changes his life. It makes him think that there's a world out there he didn't know anything about. JI: Well those 19th century novels certainly changed my life. Those were the ones that made me want to be a writer if I could be a writer of that kind or in that way. Miss Frost doesn't begin with Dickens for Billy, she sort of makes him work up to Dickens, so to speak as she would put it. She starts him out with what she considers some more beginner affair Fielding and the Bronte Sisters. She begins with them and then she kind of ups the ante, so that when he confesses to her at first a little vaguely that his interest in finding something to read is to find stories that are about people who have crushes on the wrong people. He doesn't exactly come out and tell her which wrong people he has in mind or which wrong people he has crushes on, but when he later confesses that he's got a crush on this older boy at his boarding school she suddenly takes him from the 19th century to James Baldwin "Giovanni's Room" as she let's him have a look at that kind crush on that kind of wrong person. JI: Miss Frost is simply one of the people in this novel who knows who Billy is before Billy knows who Billy is. And to be fair, you have to realize that I've always like that construct in a novel. Think of how many of my books begin in the point of view if not always in the voice of a young person who is coming of age, of a young person who is not only sexually still innocent but in other ways not quite an adult yet he or she is about to become one. They are about to find something out that will initiate them to the adult world. I like that situation, it's very theatrical. I saw it first or learned about it first by watching plays before I was old enough to read those 19th century novels that made such an impression on me. But I've always loved a situation where you the audience or you the reader, you know more about what's about to happen to that character on stage or in that book than that poor character knows. JI: And that is very much the case in the "Early Going" with Billy Abbot. Everybody who reads this book will know that Miss Frost is a transsexual, Billy's gonna be the last to find it out. [laughter] I like those situations. I like those situations. I've always liked those situations and I got it from the theatre. You could be a 12-year-old with a less then partial understanding of Shakespeare's language, maybe you're picking up only a third of the actual language, but you could be a 12-year-old, you're first time in the audience of King Lear. And you know the story, you figure it out. Act one, Scene one, King Lear is a fool. He's an idiot. Everyone in the audience knows what he doesn't know. Everyone in the audience, even a 12-year-old knows. Cordelia is the daughter who loves you, you moron. [laughter] JI: And Regan and Goneril are bitches they don't. [laughter] There isn't a person in the audience who doesn't know that. And Lear's gonna have to go through five acts to figure it out? [laughter] But that's the story. That's the story and that's why you love it. Why then would you care about his old fool? Why do you care about him? Because he's gonna figure it out and he's gonna figure it out at a horrible time. He's going to learn that Cordelia loves him just before he gets to see her die. She dies before he does, just before, that's why you care. And that's set up too, it's called a plot. [laughter] TS: Well there's this... JI: And guess what? There was plot in Shakespeare, there was plot in Sophocles. Centuries before anybody wrote a novel, I didn't get plot from the 19th century novel. Plot is the engine that drives my stories. And plot is principally what I loved about those 19th century novels. "Ah ha, here's this again."

Plot summary

The narrator (who never identifies himself by name) is a college professor and a relatively unsuccessful author of historical novels. While doing research in Vienna, Austria, he met Utch, an orphaned survivor of the German occupation and the Russian siege at the end of World War II. At the opening of the novel, the narrator and Utch are married with two children and live a relatively placid existence until, at a faculty party, they become acquainted with Severin Winter, a Viennese-born professor of German and coach of the school's wrestling team, and his wife Edith, a WASP from a privileged background (she met her husband in Vienna while on a buying trip for MOMA) who is an aspiring fiction writer. The narrator begins a mentor-protégé relationship with Edith, and soon the couples are sharing dinners and arranging play dates for their children. As the narrator becomes more attracted to Edith, and Utch begins to fall for Severin, the couples begin trading spouses for sexual encounters at the end of their dinner dates. At first the affairs proceed smoothly, with emotional conflict submerged beneath sexual curiosity, but soon enough, obsessive love rears its ugly head, and the narrator begins to discover that the Winters have not been entirely honest with him and his wife about their motives for entering the affair.

It is ultimately revealed that sometime prior to the events of the novel Severin had an affair with a teacher at the school, and when Edith discovered this she became furious and depressed. In an attempt to provide her with some emotional leverage against him, Severin arranged for Edith to become sexually involved with the narrator, while he himself would sleep with Utch. This foursome soon thereafter fragments; Severin and Edith are able to repair their relationship and forgive each other for the pains they have inflicted on one another. The narrator and Utch, however, are a different story. The narrator had developed genuine feelings for Edith, and while she did seem to reciprocate them, at least to a small degree, he is left despondent after she ends their liaison to salvage her marriage to Severin. For her own part Utch had fallen completely in love with Severin, and she is left devastated upon learning he did not feel the same for her. Utch leaves and takes their children with her, returning to her native Austria to sort out her feelings; she also takes her husband's passport so he cannot follow her. Edith and Severin likewise move to Austria, though it is revealed through letters that Utch writes her husband that she and the Winters do not interact with each other. The novel ends with a small bit of hope for the narrator and Utch when she mails him his passport, indicating she is now ready to mend their relationship.

The sport of wrestling featured prominently—the novel's title refers to the 158-pound weight class, which Severin considers the most elite competitive weight—and a subplot eventually emerges involving Winter's protégé, a peculiar wrestling prodigy from Iowa who transfers to Winter's college because of its superior biology department and becomes a pawn in the fallout of the two couples' swinging relationship.

References

This page was last edited on 28 July 2023, at 21:40
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