A HAPPY MARRIAGE

Last night I finished reading the new novel by Rafael Yglesias entitled "A Happy Marriage." It is easily the best book of 2009 and perhaps the best book I have read in the the past decade. You may have heard about this novel on NPR, which details a couple's relationship over thirty years. The main character Enrique Sabas, like the author, published a novel as a teenager and is a screenwriter, and the novel details the lives of Enrique and his would-be wife Margaret Cohen, who eventually comes to struggle with cancer. Of note, Mr. Yglesias was married to the artist Margaret Joskow for thirty years, and she passed away of bladder cancer in 2004. It is hard not to speculate that the events which unfold in this book are largely autobiographical, but Scribner and Mr. Yglesias clearly offer this book as a work of fiction. Only Mr. Yglesias knows for certain what details from the book actually occurred and which are fictional, but the reader is allowed a sneak peek into Enrique's and Margaret's life.

The book shifts alternately between the past and present in the lives of this couple. In doing so, the author takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of a marriage. Through much of the novel we are left to wonder whether this truly was a happy marriage, and the question of what it means to love someone remains unanswered to the protagonist and the reader until the very end. The protagonist, Enrique, is what gives this book its life and its verity, and I cannot recall another literary figure with whom I have felt a greater kinship. This book, more than any I have ever read, made me think about my own upbringing, my own choices, my own shortcomings, and my own marriage and family. I also thought a lot along the way about the difference between pleasure and love.

Pleasure is a state of gratification due to another person- being with someone who always has the witty quip, the seemingly flawless body, the ostensible disinterest in anything outside of you. This is something that is commonly experienced early on in relationships- think the third date after the incompatibles have already been weeded out in favor of the possible soul mate and the nerves have been calmed since the first date (see "A Happy Marriage"). This state, like that engendered by a good drug, is utterly euphoric but also unsustainable. As one spends more time with an individual (dating, marriage), the whole of a person is exposed day in and day out. One might call this revelation a person's true self, but that would seem to suggest that early interaction between two people is mere play-acting. I think this is an oversimplification. People are complex. They want to be accepted before they allow themselves to reveal the parts (which are no more "real" than those initially divulged but) which are less likable.

Love, on the other hand, is a state of affection for another person in many cases despite that person and their needs or shortcomings. Anyone can find the character in the romantic comedy (think Zooey Deschanel in "(500) Days of Summer" or Julie Delpy in "Before Sunrise") winning, but in our day-to-day relationships which are often suffused with disagreements, differences of opinion, diapers, and an utter dearth of emolument, it is easy to feel unfulfilled. Show me someone with a long view of relationships who can still appreciate and enjoy the person with whom they share that quotidian, seemingly banal existence, and I will show you love.

I suppose what drew me in to Enrique Sabas and Margaret Cohen was the fact that Mr. Yglesias wrote a book about what he knew best- love, life, loss, and longing (but not necessarily in that order). In this blog, I have attempted to write similarly, perhaps with some success, because to write about that which one does not know or does not feel rings hollow and offers no comfort to the soul (one's own or one's audience's). In that sense, there is no more profound book than "A Happy Marriage," which revealed to this reader how lucky he is/how flawed he is and exactly what the definition of a happy marriage is.

In a book review, i.e. plot synopsis, from the New York Times, the critic Dinitia Smith stated that in this book, "he (Yglesias) has found the novel of his life." Her words refer less to Mr. Yglesias' "autobiography" than to his achievement. I leave you with a passage from "A Happy Marriage," which I found to be particularly poignant. I hope to not lose sight of these words and this book in my own daily life with my wife, my children, my family, my friends, and my patients, but Mr Yglesias has done his part to make forgetting these truths quite difficult.

"In that pre-dawn twilight, returning from his father's death to the life of his wife and children, he had a dim consciousness, saw a faint outline of the rampless bridge between birth and death, and death and birth, that people traverse all their lives convinced they are on a highway to somewhere new."