The Use of Fame

May 1, 2017
Nixon’s (Angels Go Naked) fourth novel follows the electricity and heartbreak of the bicoastal marriage of two teachers and poets. Ray, 52, and Abby, 60, have been married for 25 years, and they have beaten the odds and remained close through time. Ray teaches part-time at Brown while Abby holds a full-time position at Berkeley. Ray has fallen in love with one of his former grad students, Tory, but he is afraid that giving up Abby would destroy him. Their commuter marriage allows them to miss each other, but it also means less time to deal with issues in their relationship. When Abby learns of Ray’s feelings for Tory, she wonders whether her neediness has driven him into another woman’s arms, while Ray has been feeling that Abby is neglecting their relationship. Neither seems to be a whole person alone. They try to stay together, even planning to move together to Miami when Ray is offered a job there, but their plan never comes to fruition. As time wears on, Abby deals with financial problems, and Ray with continuing health problems and questions about his recent life changes. The reality of trying to make love last is shown with poise and grace, and all the situation’s complexity nuance rings true in Nixon’s honest prose and nuanced characters.

March 1, 2017
In alternating chapters, an unhappy couple reveals their marital woes.In her unsatisfying fourth novel, Nixon (Jarrettsville, 2009, etc.) chronicles the deteriorating marriage of 52-year-old Ray Stark, a famous poet, and Abigail McCormick, 60, a literature professor. Ray, who wants to "disrupt" language, grew up among miners in West Virginia with an abusive mother; Abby, a stickler for correct grammar, comes from San Francisco wealth. They live on opposite coasts: Ray teaches part time at Brown, where he covets a full-time professorship, proof of recognition by the Ivy League. Abby teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, where she spends free time riding her beloved horse and tooling around in her Porsche. Both have physical problems: Abby has lupus, Ray's heart is enlarged, compromising its ability to pump blood. He is always in pain; stress makes Abby's symptoms flare, and stress abounds after Ray, apparently suffering from a stereotypical midlife crisis, confesses that he has fallen in love with a student. Will he stay with Abby or choose 30-year-old Tory? That shopworn question propels the plot. It's hard to see why either woman wants him: he is disgruntled, angry, envious of friends' successes; moodiness gives way to rages. Tory is so slightly sketched that the reader has no idea what she sees in Ray, nor, apart from her youth, what he sees in her. Although Abby is turned off by Ray's "coal-mine manners" and his preference for movies featuring "exploding heads, zombies, or aliens," although he denigrates her interest in literary theory, berates her for spending money on her horse, and accuses her of neglecting him, she yearns to save the marriage. Self-medicating with Ambien and alcohol, Abby repeatedly, and almost lethally, blacks out; Ray, suspicious of doctors, refuses to face the prospect of a heart transplant. But it's hard to care about characters who are one-dimensional, as are their assorted friends. Especially grating is Ray's friend Johnny, a poet, a womanizer, and a boor. A predictable plot with characters who fail to evoke sympathy.

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