A MARRIED MAN

by Benjamin DeMott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 11, 1968

Deliberately, a more circumscribed novel by the eminent critic than his The Body's Cage (1959) entrapped here, a Couple, singular, and once again unsingularly demonstrating the tired truth of adultery which James Dickey put so well-""Although we come together, nothing will come of us. . . ."" The married man is until then a relatively proper Bostonian -- Grodon Flint, self-involved and collaterally self-indulgent. This then is an account of his affair with younger Jean Hollis, from its exclusively and obsessively urgent beginnings through the pain inflicted on his wife (""I've been dull and drab for so long"") and ultimately on its participants in its isolated, isolating, shabby deceits. The terminal recognitions--of compromise. Forfeit and irrecoverable loss--give the book a little more extension than the point it makes only too clearly: however alluring the trip, you'll only find second class accommodations.

Pub Date: Sept. 11, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION