[.ca] The Married Man: A Novel (ISBN 0679781447)

From Amazon.com:
Edmund White majored in sexual explicitness with his boldly autobiographical trilogy--A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony. Now, explicitly as ever, he trains his unflinching eye on a new subject: a young man's death from AIDS. Austin is a fiftysomething American expat in Paris; Julien is a young married man he meets at the gym. Much to Austin's surprise, Julien calls him and soon they are sharing a bed and a life. The Married Man is White's Henry James novel: the first couple hundred pages show us a satirical portrait of young Julien as a stuffy Frenchman and a more elliptical portrait of Austin's apprehension of French culture through his lover. With Julien, "Austin was always learning things, not necessarily reasoned or researched information but rather all those thousands and thousands of brand names, turns of phrase, aversions and anecdotes that make up a culture as surely as do the moves in a child's game of hopscotch." But White wants to take us all the way to the end of this relationship. Austin is HIV positive, and it soon becomes clear that Julien has AIDS. As Julien's health unravels, the two travel to Providence, to Key West, to Venice, to Rome, and ultimately to Morocco. The author coins a darkly appropriate phrase for this urge to move: he calls it "AIDS-restlessness." White, in fact, unveils a whole gallery of startling images as Julien nears death. Julien is "the bowler hat descending into the live volcano." Thin and brown and bearded, he looks "like the Ottoman Empire in a turn-of-the-century political cartoon." Though he can't read it, Julien acquires a copy of the Koran. "It was the perfect book for a weary, dying man--pious, incomprehensible pages to strum, an ink cloud of unknowing." White has found a language both magical and clinical to describe a horrible death. --Claire Dederer

Not really worth reading:
Austin Smith is a middle-aged American writer, living in Paris, looking for new love from men. He meets Julien, a young married man... I enjoyed reading 'A Boy's Own Story', written by this writer, which I rated very highly, and therefore I thought I would read another book by Edmund White. However, 'The Married Man' was a disappointing read. 'The Married Man' lacks much in the way of plot. Instead, its content depends mainly on the main character leading a not spectacularly unusual life, but travelling from place to new place and to new venues far too often, extravagantly, rather than working, so the writer can then describe in detail yet another set of new scenes and events and characters and yet more huge expenditure in the new place/venue. That method of creating a book, and the absence of much interesting plot besides, made the book tiresome after a while. I felt I was being made to read material that had being written simply in order to pad the book out unnecessarily. The content itself becomes quite depressing in the second half of the book. The style of writing, often with very long turgid sentences and over-complicated similes, suggests the book has been too overwritten ('A Boy's Own Story', in contrast, had a much more interesting, direct, snappy style of writing to it). Frankly, the main characters aren't likeable (apart from Ajax). This book was slow going to read, and not a pleasurable experience: more a grim slow turning of the pages, just to finish the thing off. The writer hasn't really attempted any form of climax to the book, or even a good ending, either. He just lets the book tail off into nothingness after 310 pages. Overall, this didn't seem to me to be a book worth reading, and I was sorry to have spent time going through it.

Not What I Expected:
I guess I looked for White to provide thought provoking insight into the older/younger gay relationship. I found the book dull and lacking any real direction. The characters were uninteresting and one demensional. The plot dragged on and on and never really went anywhere. I actually found myself skipping paragraphs trying to get to the point of the story. I apologize to anyone who might find this review offensive, but I didn't enjoy this book at all.

Men Behaving Badly:
While I enjoyed the author's excellent writing style, I at first thought he was attempting to show us a portrait of human beings "warts and all," but as I came to the novel's end I concluded that despite his attempts to the contrary, Mr. White has given us a book peopled with ultimately unlikeable characters. My life experience has not been enriched by being introduced to the selfish, whiny Peter, the capricious and immature Julien, and the priggish, self-congratulatory Austin. Good riddance to The Married Man and all its characters!

Les choses que nous faisons pour l'amour:
Edmund White's 'The Married Man' is the first work I have read by this author written in the third person, which was a far cry from the three prior novels I devoured last year, his autobiographical 'Boy's Own Story' trilogy. In picking up this book, I entered it with a sneaking suspicion that the two main characters; Austin and Julien, were variations on White himself, and his lover Hubert Sorin. Austin is an author, like White himself. Sorin was an architect, just as Julien is when Austin meets him. Sorin passed away in 1994 of AIDS complications, the novel is set in that same time period...etc, etc, etc,....there are too many parallels to White's own story for it not to be a continuation of where he left off with 'The Farewell Symphony'. And so, the choice to tell the story as an 'observer' or 'outsider' by writing it in the third person is a matter of curiosity to me...as if White himself could not 'make the story real' by putting himself into it as narrator...like the story as a whole is still too painful for him to tell as his own. About 100 pages into this novel, I emailed a new acquaintance with some thoughts that the protagonist and his lover were both 'unlikable' characters to me...Austin came across as extremely co-dependent; Julien as selfish, emotionally protracted, and abusive. Through the circumstances of the story, it is hard to not feel a degree of sympathy for both the characters eventually, but initially it was hard (for me) to become engaged with either one of them. As in the other novels I have read by the same author, White has a 'baring of the soul' approach to character development unlike most authors I have read. They are self-effacing; emotionally raw; virtually unable to hide any unattractive facet or character flaw from their chronicler...White lays out most all his characters like 'open wounds' and invites readers to gape at them. The story itself, that of an HIV positive man who meets and falls in love with an initially married man, who then finds himself succumbing to full-blown AIDS...is full of the same emotions I have found in other works by White. While I experienced a feeling of malaise with the co-dependency of Austin, and the abrasiveness of Julien, White labels Austin as co-dependent by the end of the story; and Julien's story becomes so heart-wrenching that it is near impossible to not try to understand the anguish invoking his treatment of those around him, especially Austin...as if his relationship with Austin was the most honest, because he displayed his real feelings to him, and didn't sugar coat them like he did with others...who in retrospect called him 'always cheerful and good-natured'... While I enjoyed this novel overall, I have to give it only 4 stars in rating it, due to the fact that I think White's writing is a lot less 'detached' when it is written in first person. I would have to explore another third person novel to really make an informed conclusion, but...in comparing Married Man to the other three I have read...they come across as if White was far more 'involved' in them by inserting himself as narrator. However, this is a good read by a wonderful author, and I recommend it highly.

A modern classic:
Precise words, elegant narrative, soberb style. Edmund White is probably the closest thing we have to Henry James nowadays. Touching novel. And I didn't even finish yet.