A Much-Married Man, A Novel

By Robert Sward

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0921215991
• ISBN13: 9780921215998
• Release Date: July 1996
• Publisher: Ekstasis Editions
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Serial Monogamy--Bay Area Writer Considers Why Marriage Does

Half the adults in America know first-hand what it's like to be maritally committed to someone and to fall short of one's partner's, or one's own, expectations. But what of a maritally impaired, maritally challenged, veteran of five shots at wedded bliss? In A Much-Married Man, poet and novelist Robert Sward takes a provocative, serio-comic look at the life and loves of ex-baseball player Noah Newmark, a 47-year-old serial monogamist struggling to keep his fifth and current marriage alive. For twenty-five years Noah has been trying to live up to his own expectations and those of his partners, and four times his adventures in marriage have failed. Still, bemused and befuddled, a little dense perhaps, Noah has refused to quit. "Divorce suits, court appearances, child custody cases, alimony, support payments, nothing served to dampen his ardor," Sward writes. "Having paid up, having made amends, and, typically, with the blessings of all concerned, the word Amor! on his lips, the banner of love flapping in the breeze, he'd ride off again on a quest for the beloved." When fifth wife Holly, a day-time, TV soap star threatens to leave, Noah realizes that he is unwilling to go through yet another divorce. The reader is re-acquainted with the social-sexual history of the last four decades as Noah tries to save his current marriage by coming to terms with his previous ones - revisiting the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, and those decades' spouses, Shelley, Anna, Dolores, and Natasha. In the flashbacks that follow, Sward, author of twelve books of poetry, pokes fun at the romantic impulse even as Noah relives his quest for mystery and romance. Equal parts Don Juan, Don Quixote, amoral, obsessed sexual explorer and deluded romantic, Noah is a throwback to the courtly (and somewhat loony) lovers of a bygone era, capable of an almost Arthurian devotion to each beloved. Sward's novel is set at Mt. Chakra, the socially hierarchical Yoga Country Club where Noah examines his past with the aid of Rama P. Rama, a silent East Indian physician. Playful and stern, mystical and practical, the 101-year-old guru is one of A Much-Married Man's delights, quizzing Noah about his marital history by chalking questions and answers on a small slate. "You practiced the yoga of self-deception," he writes, after Noah details marriages #1 and #2. "Very popular yoga." Even Holly, eager to escape Mt. Chakra, responds favorably to the man she calls Rama Pajama. "I like what he says about money," she remarks. "He's more worldly than you think. He says, 'The answer is money. What is the question? Everything.' Now that's what I call enlightenment." Seemingly independent, Noah may strike some readers as a man who can't live without women. That's a misconception, though Noah's father, a stand-up comedian, does criticize him for his impulse to marry every woman he has sex with, and macho character though Sward's creation may seem, he is nothing i