Objects of Desire: A Portrait of Love and Marriage

by Ralph Graves

Book Overview

This is a love story, told in a completely different way. Eleanor MacKenzie, just graduated from Barnard, and Ralph Graves, just graduated from Harvard, met as brand-new researchers at Life magazine... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0740740083
• ISBN13: 9780740740084
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Tiasquam Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

And They Lived Happily Ever After

by Daniel Cabot, Martha's Vineyard Times.OBJECTS OF DESIRE is a book of essays--two dozen witty essays, a kind of polymorphic valentine from Ralph Graves to his wife of 45 years, Eleanor. The "objects" really are objects: cars, a cassoulet, sculptures, a bracelet, paintings, a wine rack, various dogs, a silver belt buckle. Each is in some way evocative of the flavor and spirit of what seems to us to have been an extraordinarily wonderful marriage. The objects are the objective correlative of the emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects of their life together.Ralph Graves is a witty and entertaining raconteur, but more than that, as poets like Robert Frost are able to do, he takes ordinary objects and finds in them something more--about life together and about the human condition. The objects do more than call up the family story; they are touchstones to reflection and understanding.Ralph and Eleanor are interesting people--bright, creative, talented, adventurous--who have lived interesting and intellectual lives. Their jobs at "Life" magazine and the style with which they live in New York City, on Martha's Vineyard, and in travels around the world, are interesting in themselves. But we found our interest in the insights of the thinker and the craftsmanship of the skilled essayist.

Ralph Graves Writes of Desire

OBJECTS OF DESIRE uses what seems at first an implausible premise--that an object can tell the story of love. But as Mr. Graves writes about his or his wife's desire for an object, the circumstances surrounding its acquisition, and their enjoyment of it, we are drawn in to an understanding of the dynamics of the couple's long and tightly woven marriage.The book is organized in a series of stand-alone chapters. Each chapter describes an object Mr. and Mrs. Graves treasure--a belt buckle, a painting, a swimming pool, a house, a table, a leather-bound book, a necklace. Chapter 16, The Nine-Foot Table,exemplifies the give and take, the working together and the determination each brought to the marriage. Off and on for years--36 years, in fact--the couple searched for a nine-foot table to accommodate their large family. The search finally ended when Mrs. Graves found just what they wanted under a heap of display items. The story of the hunt for the table, its purchase, the farcical transporta-tion of the table from delivery van to upstairs apartment in an inches-too-small freight elevator, closes with a comment from the building superintendent, "If you ever sell this apartment," he slaps the table, "this stays here."Mrs. Graves describes her husband's book as "a valentine, a love letter." Mr. Graves says it is something more, "a portrait, through objects, of love and marriage and of the woman who is at the heart of both."Mr. Graves has published three works of nonfiction and six novels.

An Ode to Love

By Cynthia Riggs, Vineayrd Gazette. At a time when more than half of all marriages end in divorce, it's heartening and more than a little reassuring to read this author's love letter to his wife of 45 years. Graves has written ten books, ranging from a novel about the Roman Empire to a murder mystery set on his beloved Martha's Vineyard. This is his most deeply felt and charmingly written book, as well as a portrait of the woman who has shared his life for so long. He tells much of their story through objects that have been important to them. Many of these are gifts. As he puts it, "Every present that is given in the course of a marriage makes a cumulative contribution to the marriage itself. Every gift must be personal." He begings with a sterling silver belt buckle his wife gave him three years before they were married, and that he still wears. She still wears a bracelet that he bought her in Rome right after their marriage. He talks about the problems of finding the nine-foot-table they needed for their growing family, a Mustang convertible they had for 22 years and a number of dogs that have brightened their lives and broken their hearts.This is, as he says,"A portrait of a love story and a marriage" and one that tells a great deal about what it takes to make a marriage work.