Entertainment
Literarea Review: "Wedlocked" by Jay Ponteri
- Details
- Published on Friday, 28 June 2013 16:14
- Written by Kevin Kizer
Over the past couple of years I’ve written dozens of book reviews for our magazine, website and now-defunct TV show. In fact, writing about other’s books is something I find quite easy (for better or worse). But writing about this particular book – “Wedlocked” by Jay Ponteri – I found to be a bit of a struggle.
It’s not because of the way the book is written. It’s written quite well. Ponteri is a seasoned writer and it shows as he deftly moves between straight narrative and evocative prose. It’s not because of the subject matter – an intensely personal memoir about a married man yearning to be known and loved by women other than his wife (I’ve never been married, thank god). It’s because for the first time – and for what might be the only time in my life – the author is an old, dear friend and many of the memories he recounts I recall as well. It made for an odd, wonderful and poignant reading experience.
Jay Ponteri and I grew up in Mishawaka, Ind., a little northern town next door to South Bend. Although I don’t have any distinct memories of the first time we met, we had a lot in common and became fast friends. We were both on the tennis team and heavily involved in high school journalism, in particular our high school paper. I spent a significant amount of time at his home during those years, especially during the summer months. And Jay had a big influence on me: he got me into the Who and the movie "Slap Shot", two things for which I am eternally grateful.
Between tennis and journalism we spent a lot of time together and made many a road trip: to Kansas City for a journalism convention, to Chicago for White Sox and Cubs games, to Fort Wayne, Ind., to hang out with other high school journalist/friends and many, many times to Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., where I continued my journalistic endeavors post high school.
Jay, who was a year behind me in school, attended Marquette University and after college graduation we both went our separate ways – he to the great Portlandia and I to the small, character-filled Midwestern towns. Like old friends are wont to do, we fell out of contact for many years – nearly 20 – until we crossed paths once again last year on the place where Faces get Booked. And surprise, surprise, we’re both writers and he was about to give birth to a memoir. Now, let’s get to it.
“I recall thinking that I would marry at some point. I never questioned it.”
“Wedlocked” covers what honestly is well-worn territory on the American literary scene. A man is in an unfulfilling marriage and imagines/engages in an affair with a much younger women who seems to appreciate the depth of his experience. But to pigeonhole Ponteri’s memoir in such a way would be dishonest, the major reason being Ponteri’s non-traditional approach to the narrative. He combines conventional storytelling with intense personal essays and poetic prose in order to examine the concept of life-long love.
“This silence about marriage in our culture is hurting so many of us, leaving us alone and blame-filled. We are not so good at marriage, America.”
We are not good at it indeed. Now, this isn’t some middle-aged man-child going through a midlife crisis only to find that true love comes from blah, blah, blah. This, my friends, is NOT a feel good book or a road map for couples who are struggling. This is life and love in the raw, about a troubled marriage (by the way, did I mention his wife is an old friend too?) and a very introspective man’s ruminations on love, sex (sometimes in explicit detail) and the idea that “married man suggests a man who cannot love another woman, a man doomed to loneliness.”
“Let’s shatter the opaque glass, let’s squeeze the shards into juice and drink if from the leaking cups of our bare hands.”
That’s exactly what Ponteri does in this memoir. Here’s a quick breakdown of the story: Jay and his lovely wife have what appears to be a normal, loving marriage complete with pug dogs and a child on the way. However, Jay finds himself infatuated with another woman but instead of instigating an affair, he writes a secret manuscript about his feelings towards this woman. As is the case with all secret manuscripts, it falls into the wrong hands: his wife’s. This leads to what one might call “marital problems.” After the discovery, Jay takes us through the back story of their relationship, going back to Jay’s college days and leading up to the present. In the end, the story really is about two struggles: one about a couple trying to keep their marriage together (a marriage they both truly want) and another, personal, internal struggle the writer himself faces regarding love, devotion and depression.
“Living is an erratic interval between two points that do not exist.”
This book is so refreshing in its stark, bloodied honesty. Jay does not set himself up as a hero. Not at all. There’s no posturing. There’s no macho horseshit. He comes across as flawed, lonely and yearning – in short, he comes across as a human. Especially poignant are his remembrance of youth, which includes watching his parent’s marriage dissolve, something I remember well. Jay was the youngest of three brothers, and it almost felt like as soon as they all went off to school, his parents felt like their familial work was done so they went their own ways as well. Of course, that’s flippant and not at all what happened – but it felt that way.
“We never arrive, we’re in a continuous transit or we do arrive but only at death.”
If I had to distill the essence of “Wedlocked” I would say it an insightful philosophical treatise on the concepts of “love” and “marriage.” Can you have intimate, personal relationships that are free of desire? Is there something in us that’s always searching out new love? And, most importantly, does love always have to decay? I think Jay himself best sums it up when he writes that this book is “my state of mind lost inside an American marriage” – and he’s not afraid to admit he’s still lost in many ways. And that’s what makes “Wedlocked” fascinating reading, even if you aren’t old friends with the writer.
"Wedlocked" is available from Hawthorne Press and can be purchased online.
About Jay Ponteri:
Jay directs the undergraduate creative writing program and Show:Tell, the Workshop for Teen Writers & Artists, both at Marylhurst University. His work has been published recently in Forklift, Ohio, Del Sol Review, Salamander, Puerto Del Sol, and Tin House, among others. His essay "Listen to this" was mentioned as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2010. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, son, and two pugs.
Old friends in simpler times (circa 1987): the author, Jay Ponteri (far right, white t-shirt leaning against the water fountain) and reviewer, Kevin Kizer (center, black hoodie with yellow headband).
