Ambivalence, A Love Story: Portrait of a Marriage

From Publishers Weekly
Part memoir, part essay, Donatich's account of contemporary marriage and fatherhood will resonate with readers who find Robert Bly too glib and Martin Amis too ironic; his book fairly bristles with skeptical intelligence, self-deprecating humor and careful observation of social habits. Conceived during his wife's first pregnancy-"a period of wondering about what I was about to become"-Donatich's book opens with a rousing start in which the author recounts how he lost his job as the publisher of Basic Books eight hours after his first child was born. Anyone who has ever been downsized will appreciate his cutting descriptions of the executive rehabilitation program that he subsequently endured: a place where displaced alpha males consoled themselves with needless posturing while searching for their next position. The rest of the book is more uneven. The meandering narrative structure allows Donatich to delve into such diverse subjects as his sexual initiation, his conflicting feelings about his wife's depression, his anxiety about becoming a father, the annoyance of using a condom when his wife goes off the pill, his status as the son of an immigrant, country versus city living, the motives behind America's consumerism and the politics of playing the accordion. Generally, the more personal the topic the more Donatich's descriptions prove revelatory and enlightening. The current director of Yale University Press, Donatich concludes that his own life has been built on ambivalence, which, he thinks, is not such a bad thing considering the brutal effects of arrogance, absolutes and empire. "Ambivalence embraces compromise, and the effect is as enduring as it is flexible. The same applies to marriage," he writes. The memoirist may seem too self-absorbed or misanthropic for some, but the essayist has crafted a crackling ode to the ambivalence experienced by an educated man as he makes his way through "the various stages of his life: as a son, as a student, as an athlete, as a career man, lover, husband, father." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
In an aptly titled memoir, a pendant piece to Food and Loathing (2003) by the author's wife, Betsy Lerner, Donatich describes the couple as "two compromised people," and his elegantly written essays spiral from the birth of his daughter and back to it. These essays are full of irony and, yes, ambivalence, as he examines from every possible angle his marriage, the couple's efforts to conceive a child, his wife's depression, his loss of his job, and his being rehired. A few side trails lighten the journey: a description of his family's ethnicity (they are from Istria, and his grandmother's house has been under five flags in her lifetime); his relationship with the accordion; the concept of fatherhood in children's books. One might wish that once, just once, Donatich would give in to a wholly realized and unadulterated emotion, but, clearly, that's not what he is about. He is going to be a very interesting father. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"A poignant self-portrait of what we rightly call 'a family man'. At certain eloquent moments it carried me inexorably to my own experience, and provided illumination. By touching so sensitively on the communal, it consoles in a finer tone."
- Harold Bloom

"Both in its general assertions and particular instance, this is a riveting book. And an original one. John Donatich admits to and explores the many aspects of Ambivalence, and he does so with intelligence and wit."
- Nicholas Delbanco

"There is no ambivalence in my response to this radiant work of story-telling. Its beauty of expression and familiarity of emotion and experience are John Donatich's gift to his readers, who just may recognize bits of themselves between its beautifully crafted lines."
- Sherwin Nuland



Book Description
Ambivalence, a Love Story is a deeply nuanced accounting in which two people come together to make a marriage work. Rarely has marriage and its compromises been so intimately portrayed, especially when tested by depression, unemployment, miscarriage and other realities of contemporary life. Whether inside the sterile out-placement offices for reengineered executives or traipsing through the suburban homes and competing lifestyles with perky realtors, Donatich muses on life's transitions with rare candor and insight.

Ambivalence traces the inner life of a man coming into adulthood: on being first generation, on interfaith marriage, on playing the accordion and ultimately on the question of whether we are better off solitary or coupled. But at heart, it is a tender -- if circumspect -- love story. An astonishing middle-aged debut.



From the Back Cover
Praise for Ambivalence

"A poignant self-portrait of what we rightly call 'a family man'. At certain eloquent moments it carried me inexorably to my own experience, and provided illumination. By touching so sensitively on the communal, it consoles in a finer tone."
- Harold Bloom

"Both in its general assertions and particular instance, this is a riveting book. And an original one. John Donatich admits to and explores the many aspects of Ambivalence, and he does so with intelligence and wit."
- Nicholas Delbanco

"There is no ambivalence in my response to this radiant work of story-telling. Its beauty of expression and familiarity of emotion and experience are John Donatich's gift to his readers, who just may recognize bits of themselves between its beautifully crafted lines."
- Sherwin Nuland



About the Author
John Donatich is currently Director of Yale University Press. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The Nation, The Village Voice and other publications. He lives in New Haven, CT with his wife, Betsy Lerner and their daughter, Raffaella.



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Impending fatherhood takes publishing executive Donatich into an exploratory thicket of thoughts, concerns, and ideas. In fluid and easy-reading prose, even though the author wears his erudition on his sleeve with apt quotes from a panoply of writers, Donatich, in a purely subjective and self-interrogative way, expresses his thoughts on becoming a father. "The predicaments of manhood" become immediately clear when Donatich gets fired from his job just eight hours after his wife gives birth (he's now the director of Yale University Press; she's the literary agent Betsy Lerner). Donatich gathers that "fatherhood calls for indulgence and dependence as well as discipline and providing" and that "the new father must learn to position himself next to his child's day-to-day life, instead of its iconic markers." This awareness sends him back in thought to the world of his immigrant family and to his own youth of peculiarities and cultishness: "imperial, competitive, proud, territorial, politically incorrect. . . very much like a religion. The very qualities that embarrassed me as a kid now seem a privilege." Nothing here is mawkish, though, and Donatich is as hard on his upbringing as he is on his presumptions to the demands of fatherhood: "more complex than uncertainty, less adventurous than dissidence, ambivalence is a mode of being contrary that has neither the credulity of rebellion nor the alibi of cynicism." After the miscarriages and the breakdowns, he writes convincingly of striving to be the brick, the stabilizer, the heater in the basement whose cycles provide warmth. Acceptance is bittersweet, "a deliberate tolerance for the dull ache of long-term loving." But once he gets the firstwhiff of his daughter, all else but her becomes a moot point. A father in the making who's Spock-like as he hews to the intuitive, though the intuition is informed by Neruda and Emerson, Kirkegaard and Walter Benjamin, the tragicomic ironists of old Eastern Europe-and the sheer pleasure of Marvin Gaye. Agent: Tina Bennett/Janklow & Nesbit


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