John Irving is a young, eccentrically talented novelist with a singular rage to instruct. His books—funny, cleverly written, sometimes oddly endearing—provide a wealth of information about subjects one hardly expects to encounter in works of fiction…. [In The 158-Pound Marriage] the title and many of the episodes derive from wrestling, a sport that, as far as I know, has been unnoticed by contemporary authors. From Irving's previous book, The Water-Method Man, one learned a great deal about a rare ailment of the male urinary tract, and that particular pain in the human condition has also been neglected by novelists in droves. In each case, of course, Irving's pedantic exposition is eventually linked to a subject that does indeed interest novelists—marriage, with all its devious sexual and emotional permutations—but one must wade through a lot of words about wrestling and urology before coming in sight of the human heart behind these awkward symbols….
Like wrestling, marriage takes on the lineaments of metaphor, becoming a vehicle for Irving's concern with the differences between Europeans and Americans. He is, in fact, highly romantic about his Europeans, who are consistently stronger, more earthy and solid, more attuned to life's mainstream, than his wan, attenuated, overintellectual, naïve Americans…. (p. 13)
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