I like Jesse Kornbluth on HeadButler.com, so I wanted to read his novel. You can enjoy the good & plenty sex scenes in the first half of the book, which wouldn't be out of place on Literotica.com; or you can enjoy the social commentary on Manhattanites -- I'm not sure Kornbluth is as satirical as he might have been, but he's very good at characterizations and has a good eye for detail. Almost every time the characters go flat, Kornbluth tries to fill them out again.
However, sometimes he thinks the detail has told use more than it has. It connects to something he has in mind about a character or plot line, but we don't get the connection. Remarks aren't literature: Kornbluth's many cultural references, quotations, and allusions are a kind of of anthology of his Head Butler recommendations, but they can't make up for a lack of narrative craft.
The story is about a seemingly very happily married couple -- almost Tracy & Hepburn -- who have a seemingly happily sexy threesome with a happily sexy woman, and then -- Well. Moral of the story: Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it. Also: "You mustn't force sex to do the work of love, or love to do the work of sex" (Mary McCarthy).
Some flaws: The wife, Blair, seems vengeful, not just questing for self-realization, but also projecting blame for reasons not quite clear, as though her sexual confusion is her husband's fault. The husband, David, is unfailingly uxorious -- he adores everything about his wife -- but also passive, easily chastened, even timid, accepting rebukes from his wife, his law partner, his daughter, and himself. Their lover, Jean, seems something of the mythical unicorn in these situations, not entirely realistically motivated, so at the end she becomes either pathetic or nearly villainous, instead of being an irresistible attraction.
The second half of the book feels somewhat rough-cut, unfinished, the parts laid out but not quite fully assembled. You expect more out of Blair and David's conversations, expect some connections to be made, some things to be resolved regarding their personal growth or understanding, instead of just left hanging. As someone on Goodreads.com said, we want more -- more sex, more of what the characters are thinking and feeling, esp. Blair. It's all right for characters to be confused, but not the novelist. And it's all right for characters to conceal things from each other, but here, half the story is concealed from the reader. It's as though part of the book was cut out. Our expectations are thwarted. Love stories are supposed to end in certain ways: death, marriage, reunion -- one way or another we see what happens to the lovers. But Kornbluth doesn't do that, simply shuts things down.
Was Kornbluth leaving room for the movie version to make some changes? The ending seems rushed -- there's an awkward timing issue with Jean's final meeting with David, a kind of glaring error which Kornbluth just ignores. Did he just stop working on the second half once the book was optioned for film or hastening to finish it? Did he try to stuff in some leftovers from an earlier, abandoned film script about a divorce lawyer, and so squeezed out the details needed for this story?
There are several stray threads in the second half, scenes or passages that don't seem to belong to the characters or even don't belong in the story at all, and lines of dialog out of place. For example, at one point, Blair refers to a Pema Chodron anecdote saying she's choosing to feed her marriage. This is absurd, because at the time she has her marriage on a starvation diet: she's left David and is staying with Jean.
In several places Kornbluth seems to be probing, testing possible lines, as though he's unsure, still drafting. And there are some cringe-worthy scenes, such as David's use of a sex-assignation web site, rather improbable for a savvy lawyer. Seems to be just part of Kornbluth's nerdy interest in technology. Likewise a political digression in the middle of David & Blair's discussion about Jean.
Frustratingly the book doesn't live up to its promise, and easily could have. Blair leaves David for a 6-wk fling with Jean because the threesome has detonated a sexual attraction and a recognition of her unhappiness with her life, with her marriage, with herself; so, presumably, she hopes Jean, the dedicated artist and independent woman, will guide her journey to the "wilder shores of love" just as Blair tells her students at the start of the book. But we really don't see this transformation in her -- we don't see her relationship with Jean, their attraction, their conflicts, Blair's "growth." We never see how Jean helps Blair -- other than revenge sex -- and never learn why Blair stays with Jean for 6 wks, apparently unhappily, even after she and David seem to make a kind of peace. Presumably, she's simply in love with Jean. But Kornbluth wants her to be punitive and angry. This is key point: why Blair stays with Jean puzzles David, even puzzles Jean, so Kornbluth must have had something in mind. We don't see it.
Every objection David has about Blair's going off with Jean is reasonable, and her counter-arguments seem like clichés about self-realization, a way to excuse having an affair. Everything he says to her about reconciling also seems reasonable, but she dismisses or ignores, and remains hostile and accusative. The characters' behavior doesn't come out of what we know of them, but out of the author's driving the plot. Was Kornbluth unsure of the motives to assign to Blair -- revenge or self-realization? He turns away from her story to focus on David's self-recrimination and remorse. We get punished, deprived of Blair, just like David.
So the chief architectural flaw of the book is we're largely stuck inside David's head as he glumly, passively awaits Blair's return, while the important action, sexual and emotional, happens out of sight. He's unfailingly supportive of her -- never expresses anger even to himself, interprets her every word and action positively, and contritely accepts her criticisms which sort of come deus ex machina: we never learn how Blair arrives at her analysis of what's been wrong in their relationship or wrong with David. And like David, we simply have to accept what she says which is almost entirely remonstrative. He goes through all this suffering while she's with Jean, and then she tells him that when she comes back, there're all these faults in him to work on. It's not a reconciliation: it's a continuation of a kind of punishment, and it avoids the ethical question of whether one spouse simply declare a time-out and expect the other spouse to accept it?
One of the worst flaws in fiction is telling, not showing. We don't get enough of Blair. There's not much communication from her, so we miss her voice which was so appealing in the first half of the book. We really need to see, or hear from her, how she untangles and resolves her anger with David, her self-doubts, her understanding of the flaws in their marriage, in her husband, in herself. "You're not entitled to know," she tells him. Is this Kornbluth dodging out of writing difficult scenes? Why doesn't Blair tell David exactly what "it" has been like with Jean, how she arrived at her assessment of their marriage's problems, how being with Jean was "growth" and her "real" self. She should be saying, "Ask me anything, I'll tell you, no more secrets, but don't ask any question you don't want answered." Instead, she remains unknown -- for David and for us -- so we're left with a tale of a wife's revenge sex told from the perspective of the guilt-ridden husband.
Without getting Blair's story, what little she says sounds like complaint and accusation, not self-discovery. Why is she so joyless and angry even while she's on her journey with Jean? She has two people in love with her, but is pissed off about it -- why? Blair goes from being the most interesting and appealing character in the first part of the book to the least appealing in the second part -- the stereotype angry professor of women's studies who goes on a lesbian fling because it's a thing to do, while her self-effacing husband waits patiently for her return; and David goes from being a little icky and shallow to somewhat sympathetic or at least pitiable, if a little effete. Hard for a happy resolution with this kind of imbalance and disjunction.
And whatever changes in David is also poorly spec'd. At the end of the book, he seems to reject the crass, shallow greediness of the p eople who've been his law clients for years, but stops short of seeing how the crassness, shallowness, and greed are related to his sexual appetite -- he (or Kornbluth) doesn't connect the two. David blames himself for some sort of blindness toward Blair, but it's hard to make a case for that, given how he describes her holding things in or holding back, and given how he responds to her even after she leaves for her 6 wk stint with Jean.
David's story is an atonement, but the real sin isn't clear, nor is his reformation. Why doesn't he ever get angry or resentful? If he protested, if Blair had to face a conflict between her girl crush and the possible loss of her marriage, that would be a more interesting (and plausible) story. As it is, there's no real risk here, at least not for Blair who knows her husband is dutifully waiting for her to return. No risk for Kornbluth either: the narrative is simpler. He doesn't have to put himself into a female character's mind, just stays with David's guilt and penance.
Yeah, being more specific or more detailed has a risk of didacticism, of making the characters mere case studies, although in the end, that's sort of what Kornbluth does with David. But Blair and David are intelligent, articulate people whom we expect to explain themselves, to explain what breakthrough they've achieved during the 6 wks of separation. They simply don't communicate enough during their separation -- not with each other, not with the reader. As narrator, David tells us how hard it is for him to know what's on Blair's mind, and yet he never says this to her. Whatever self-discovery or self-improvement they achieve comes separately and without their communicating to each other. Clearly, he's hurt her, but she's also hurt him and never acknowledges that, never criticizes herself. Blair remains terse, angry, and punitive. Is that a deliberate choice by Kornbluth, or a limitation on his part?
So I wish we knew more of Blair's story, and that Blair's and David's respective self-discoveries were less murky and gloomy, their reconciliation a little clearer and more satisfying. During her stay with Jean, Blair communicates with David only three times, not counting his going to see her. She's terse, accusative, dismissive. This is wrong: it's not the character we saw in the first part of the book. The woman who tells her students about leading an honorable life never reconsiders her justification for her affair with Jean. Blair doesn't choose David or her marriage over Jean (or even in addition to).
David doesn't win back Blair, there's no loving reconciliation. Blair may not have been happy living with Jean, but she stays, and returns when Jean has left and their tryst has reached its time limit. And what will happen when Jean returns from Africa? Or with someone else? Blair's tangle of justifications for her going off with Jean -- her argument that one can take a time-out from marriage to requite some irresistible curiosity or attraction -- are never refuted or affirmed. Kornbluth just leaves the ethical questions unsettled. We never get an endorsement of monogamy, if that's what Kornbluth thinks the book is doing. Perhaps he's conflicted. Perhaps David is meant to be an unreliable narrator (see *The Good Soldier*) who's mistaken about Blair's return, mistaken about her being in love with Jean. Blair gives him a quote from Kundera about lovers starting off with a contract for their relationship, and David says at one point Blair is setting out a new contract. Well, maybe that new one is to allow either partner a kind of hall pass any time there's a claim of living one's "real" life.
We're sort of set up for an epistolary novel, two literate, articulate people at a distance, working their way back together, perhaps exploring some issues about sexuality, about fidelity to self and to another -- but we don't get that. Blair should be sending him more messages, working through her anger and confusion, and likewise some of what David tells the reader, he should telling her so that she gets to see how he's changed. David is a lawyer, Blair is a teacher: we expect them to talk a lot, to talk about themselves, to make a case, but Kornbluth doesn't have them do that. There are lots of issues to explore: female sexual fluidity, male sexual fantasy, conflicts between the demands of one's self and the obligations to one's marriage: Kornbluth instead opts for a confused psychobabble. Three characters who were appealingly smart in the first half of the book all seem to lower their IQs in the second half.
Also, the timeline is a little indistinct. Going backwards from Blair's last message to David to her first, we can sort of, kind of infer the end of her girl crush, but absent more from her, we still don't know why she stays with Jean, why she's so hostile towards David. Kornbluth just doesn't fill in enough details. Maybe he lived with the story and the characters for so long, he understands them in ways he doesn't manage to convey to the reader. All of Blair's explanations of what's been wrong in their marriage or their lives or in David could easily be reversed -- applied to her -- or replaced by some other explanations. They simply don't grow out of what we have seen of the characters, but seem grafted on.
Kornbluth remarked in an interview that the book has a happy, Hollywood ending. It doesn't. There's no emotional symmetry between Blair's leaving and her return. The ending is muted, muddled, and perhaps tentatively written, again as if he was testing possibilities in a draft, not setting out a conclusion, or not knowing what the resolution is. (Suggestion: Watch any number of Hallmark love stories on TV for the happy, Hollywood ending.)
What almost redeems the book is that it's so literate and cultured -- terrific allusions and citations of various books and music; and the characters are, initially, so appealing -- David is, presumably, Kornbluth's alter ego, and Blair is, initially, a kind of idealized figure. Those qualities have a kind of momentum which propels the book and perhaps blurs its flaws until you realize how, in the second half of the book, two smart people suddenly become stupid, and how an engaging story becomes a mess. There was an opportunity here for a smart book on sex and love: opportunity missed.
So it's not too harsh to give this précis: After David and Blair have a threesome with Jean and the two women end up smitten with each other, Blair announces that she's going to spend 6 wks with Jean, a sexual and emotional affair which he's obliged to accept, to stay home and wait for her, don't-call-me-I'll-call-you. When David tries to reconcile with Blair, she's grudging, hostile, dismissive, and self-focused; tells him that their marriage has been shallow, superficial, and tepid, and that he's timorous, almost unmanly, and sexually selfish. Despite his being supportive, conciliatory, and contrite, she expresses almost no fondness or affection and utterly no self-criticism. Her assessment of his failing is almost silly and doesn't connect with what we've seen of him. When she returns, it's not that she has chosen to go back to her husband, but simply the 6 wks are up and Jean has gone to Africa. There's no catharsis, no triumph of love over adversity, no re-discovery or other resolution, just her list of things she's decided are wrong with their marriage or with David.
One more thought: Is there a kind of semi-hidden agenda in the book -- a kind of deprecation of masculinity? The only male character besides David is a gay friend of Blair's. Another male friend is mentioned in an anecdote where he behaved badly and the friendship ends. When we finally get Blair's assessment of their marriage, and of David, she points out they're both cloistered, separated from the world of men -- she's a professor of women's studies at Barnard, he's a divorce lawyer who represents women, and, it appears, he's damaged by some hurt earlier in life which he seeks to escape through sex. And he's, well, wimpy -- the book goes from one popular porn genre (threesomes) to another (lesbians, albeit unseen, and cuckold). Kornbluth seems to be making a point here about male sexuality or something -- not really clear what it is. Probably not clear to him. Odd to have a woman having a lesbian fling tell her husband what's wrong with their marriage and what's wrong with him, is a lack of the masculine.
The book is like a murder mystery in which the crime is so cleverly done, the author struggles to find a way for the detective to solve the case. Kornbluth put his characters in a situation he couldn't figure a good way out of it. Maybe it'll get fixed in the movie version, if there is one.
In some ways Kornbluth is Blair, sexy and enchanting, but then punishing. In some ways, he's Jean, seducing us, taking advantage of our affections for a while, and then leaving behind just a cropped picture. Still a good read -- obviously I liked it enough to obsess about it for this long review (revised several times). Would make a good book club choice for the moral or ethical questions it raises, if indistinctly.
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