The Book: The 158-Pound Marriage, by John Irving
The Story: The narrator and his wife Utch meet in Vienna, marry and come back to New England, where the narrator works as a college professor. He is also a writer. They meet another couple, Severin (who I called “Steven” in my head while I was reading) and Edith Winters. He is a wrestling coach at the same school as the narrator teaches at. She is a writer, although she has yet to finish anything. They meet at a faculty party and become friends. Outside of working together, they do have enough in common, they both met their spouses in Vienna, they both have two children, to start a tentative friendship.
As their friendship progresses, the narrator develops a crush on Edith, and Utch a crush on Severin. Before long, at the end of their dinner dates, they are swapping partners, do-si-do. It starts off as this “fun” little thing and then a system of rules creeps in as different members of the little group start to become jealous and obsessive. The whole thing ends up in a death-spiral, and John Irving explores the emotions and feelings that come with that falling out.
The title refers to the 158-pound wrestling class- which Steverin says is the most elite wrestling class. He also tends to rate other things in “wrestling class” terms. A 132-pound novel. Stuff like that.
What I Thought: I have read a handful of John Irving novels. I tend to like them, but not love them. I’m a fair-weather fan without a doubt.
This book kind of set my teeth on edge. I actually was less uncomfortable with the partner swapping than I thought I would be. There were only a few smutty scenes (however, when he went smutty, he went seriously smutty), and just the way that it was presented was less lewd than I would have thought. What I was uncomfortable with, however, was every single character in the book. They weren’t “human”. Nothing about them rang true for me. How they acted, how they talked, how they felt, how they made decisions. They just didn’t ever seem like real people. They had bizarre histories (which were somehow drawn out to annoying levels, and this is a short little book), they made crazy choices, they didn’t even eat normal things…. I could go on and on. They were just not real people. And that bothered me.
I was annoyed that they left their children on the back burner so often. In one scene, the narrator is hooking up with Edith at Edith’s house and their daughter (whose name I won’t even TRY to spell) comes into the room because she’s scared. She notices that the man’s clothes that are all over the room are not her dad’s. Meanwhile, the narrator is hiding down under the covers while Edith comforts her daughter. This made me much more uncomfortable than the fact that Edith and the narrator were sleeping with each other. I don’t even know if we ever learned the narrator’s kid’s names. They were characters, but not really. I just kept wondering “where are their kids in all this?” but never really found out.
This is not to say that I hated this novel. I really didn’t. I love the way that John Irving writes. It’s almost like he’s sharing a private joke with his readers that are smart enough to get it. His humor is kind of subtle, but I think that he is really funny. I think that what makes me keep coming back to his books is the tone that he takes. Maybe it is the word choice or the length of paragraphs or… I really don’t know what it is, but he writes in a way that is interesting and different. I think that I could pick out one of his paragraphs without even knowing it was his, and that says a lot.
Conclusion: If you have never read John Irving before, don’t make this your first one. Try The World According to Garp or Cider House Rules. If you enjoy John Irving already and want to read something from before he got famous with Garp, try it out. The major draw for me was that I wanted a shorter book, and this really is. My copy is less than 300 pages, so I just read the whole thing in one big bite on a day off.