If Iowa can do it . . .

Dan Savage's second memoir, The Commitment - not to be confused with the band from the eponymous, early 90's movie, The Commitments - is proving to be one compelling read.  At first it felt a bit redundant of his first memoir, The Kid; many of the stories were retold as shorter anecdotes.  My second reaction to this book was: okay, I get it, you're gay and have no interest in gay marriage even though you're in a committed relationship with an adopted child; stop complaining about your overly-supportive family nagging you to tie the knot.  But somewhere in the middle of the memoir, Savage takes a serious look at marriages in his own family and delves head-first into the politics surrounding gay matrimony.  This would be the middle section, "The Engagement".  Here, Savage compares grandparent, parent, and sibling stories - none of which are typical love stories, or even typical marriage stories - to the right wing myth of the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.  Savage avoids getting all Keith Oberman, but he does make impassioned observations.  In one case, his Republican father tries to explain to him that conservatives don't really have anything against the gay population.  Rather, his cynical argument goes, they're just playing to the bigoted instincts of their base to get voters to the polls.  Savage's partner Terry pipes into the conversation at this point to remind his dad that these same get-out-the-vote gestures are also stripping tax-paying citizens of the rights straight, married couples take for granted.

While Savage is conflicted and mostly skeptical about marriage, even going as far as applying for a marriage license with his lesbian friend Amy and throwing a sham wedding ceremony with nearly naked men dressed as winged tutti and a drag queen playing the part of sobbing mom, he believes strongly that the gay marriage movement is a civil rights movement.  I already agreed with Savage's opinion before picking up the book, a book surprisingly five years old.  As the debate of gay marriage continues to hit headlines and stranger-than-strange Iowa legalizes same-sex marriage just this year, I can't help but wonder why The Commitment isn't a best-seller.  It is timely, funny, honest, passionate and reasonably argued.  (Plus, there is a very tender moment with a birthday cake fetishist.)

Onward and Upward

Finished Committed tonight.  Elizabeth Gilbert is a modest and generous writer.  She managed to weave her own fretful story in between the stories of friends, family, strangers she met in Southeast Asia, and historical figures.  She dispels myths and enriches the meaning of matrimony with great humor.  In the end, she decides that, despite her own fears and trepidations (as well as those of Felipe's), marriage is an act of subversion because in the end no church, despot, government or repressive regime has been able to control what happens in the privacy of one's bedroom and cannot prevent the bond that two people in love have for one another.  As Gilbert says, slave owners in pre-Civil War America forbade slavery, but slaves invented jumping the broom as a commitment ceremony, just as today, gay and lesbian couples in the U.S. celebrate their weddings without state approval. She ends the book with her own simple ceremony, in her new home, surrounded by family and friends.  I threw rice.

The Humble One

Coming back to Elizabeth Gilbert after forcing myself to finish Cleaving is like taking a long, hot, sudsy bath after trekking through mud puddles. Ahhhh. Gilbert's voice is soothing after so much self-involved blathering. She is mature, wise, self-deprecating, humble. She roots herself in historical, sociological, sometimes even biological, context. Her own marriage stories are peripheral to the story of the institution. One hundred pages in I have learned much about the constantly changing historical reasons for marriage. And opposed to Julie Powell's example of foreign travel, where she thrusts herself into the most foreign of foreign experiences (hunting with the Masai in Tanzania) only to ponder about how cute she is and then make out with one of the English-speaking guides, Gilbert pays deep respect to the heritage and customs of the lands where she travels. For instance, she and her exiled lover, "Felipe," land in Vietnam and she questions the women of a Laotian village about their experiences of marriage. She asks if they are happy. In response, they laugh! The women do not base their lives around the pursuit of happiness, like most Westerners; they just live. They marry because that is what they are supposed to do. And Gilbert respects this enormous difference by researching it.

I love that Gilbert is politically liberal, but doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve. The purpose of the book isn't to sway opinions about gay marriage (although, she clearly states that she supports the idea) or bash conservative hypocrisy. The purpose is to show how marriage has evolved throughout time and changed depending upon culture. But in so doing, she can't help to editorialize a wee bit: "So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are absolutely correct, but in only one respect - only if they happen to be talking about Judaism." (58) How awesome is that?

"Where Narcissism and Insecurity Converge"

Dear Lord, I finally finished Cleaving! I have been way-laid with my MFA graduate application during my free time this week (apparently, the deadline is tomorrow, not - as it was written on the application form - Feb. 1!), so I stayed up until 1:00 A.M. getting all of my application forms and essays printed, collated, stapled and neatly stacked for delivery and then I stayed up until 2:00 A.M. finishing the Powell's grisly mo-fo.

And unsatisfying it was. Surprise, I didn't like it. Didn't see that coming, did you?

Powell doesn't talk about her marriage until the book is 2/3 finished. Up until that point it is all meat and adultery. Now, I'm not a prude and I don't care if she had an affair, nor do I care about sexual description. But something about the way Powell writes about her lover and her obsessive behavior after their split left me cringing. (Did I need to know that her wrist cramped from masturbating to his image in her mind? NO!) Also cringe-worthy are her revolting details of dripping fluids from severed joints, skinned goats, and several full-on livestock killings. Oh, and drinking blood gleaned straight from a live cow in Africa. And, and, and her notion that all men are staring at her lasciviously at all times.

So, when she finally discusses her husband, Eric, it is completely confusing. They are soul mates who finish each others' sentences, fall asleep watch Buffy and tirelessly propping each other up. Why does he put up with her? Why does she keep him hanging on? There is no resolution at the end of this mess except that they no longer shout at each other in the middle of the night and they consider couples therapy!

I think what drives me the craziest about this book, versus Julie and Julia, is Powell's smugness. Sure she reveals the ugliness of her actions, but I couldn't help but feel the entire length of the book that she was smirking about it all. It's glib. Her metaphors between butchery and love/sex are obvious. She is overly self-conscious and whiny. When she was exhausted in Julie and Julia from 8 hours of office work paired with 5 hours of food prep, I understood, even empathized. But when she's exhausted from obsessively checking her Blackberry and taking her sexual frustration out on a side of beef, I just feel irritated. The title of this post is a quote from an Amazon.com review. I'm not alone in my disgust.

My copy of Cleaved is clean, free of marks and food stains. The binding is sound and I still have my receipt of sale. I'm well within the 30 days of purchase. I have NEVER returned a book before, but Powell has inspired me.