Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2023
336 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
A compulsively readable, startling, and philosophically rich book about marriage, from an acclaimed critic and filmmaker
"As far back as our history books go, we have no record of a time preceding marriage. Isn't that an extraordinary fact?" So writes Devorah Baum in this searching and revelatory book. Marriage, for better or for worse, is how humans have organized their world and told their story. Straight, queer, coupled, single: none live outside the remit of marriage. One might as well try to live beyond language.
But when confronted with the question "What do intellectuals think of marriage?" Baum concludes that most philosophers have preferred to avoid the subject. Is marriage then an intellectual blind spot? To fill in the gaps, she draws on a wide range of cultural material, from the classical to the contemporary, while interweaving reflections on her own experiences of matrimony to both critique and celebrate marriage's many contradictions and its profound effects on us all. In doing so, she reveals how marriage has worked as a cover story for power and its abuses on the one hand, and for subversive and even utopian relational practices on the other.
Entertaining, illuminating, consoling, and candid, On Marriage is an unprecedented investigation of what we are really talking about when we talk about marriage.
"A rollicking account about marriage in books, movies, and culture, told with authority and genuine warmth." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Baum is an erudite and entertaining guide through the landscape of marriage, bringing a lively intellectual rigour to changing attitudes on matters of religion, feminism, parenting and sexuality... . A fascinating exploration." —The Guardian
"Baum is not interested in the rights or wrongs of marriage, only its varied manifestations and meanings... . [This] makes her work compelling, as does her willingness to self-interrogate." —Times (UK)
"Devorah Baum is a visionary writer. Her intellectual depth, her emotional precision and her searing insight can only be gathered under an old fashioned word: wisdom. If more 'self-help' was written by people as smart and emotionally intuitive as Devorah, then more people would actually feel 'helped.'" —Zadie Smith
"Everything you thought you knew about conjugal beds, secrets, feuds, confessions, triangulations and solaces will be pleasurably complicated by Devorah Baum's wryly insightful tell-all regarding the infinite perversity of marriage—including her own, mine, and probably yours." —Laura Kipnis, author of Love in the Time of Contagion: A Diagnosis
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Devorah Baum is a writer, a film director, and an associate professor in English literature at the University of Southampton. She is the author of Feeling Jewish (a Book for Just About Anyone) and The Jewish Joke: An Essay with Examples (Less Essay, More Examples). With Josh Appignanesi, her spouse, she is both codirector and performer in the documentaries The New Man and Husband. She lives in London, UK.
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