The 158-Pound Marriage
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| The 158-Pound Marriage | |
 1990 Ballantine Books paperback cover |
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| Author | John Irving |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Random House |
| Publication date | August 12, 1974 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 245 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-394-48414-2 |
John Irving's third and perhaps darkest novel, The 158-Pound Marriage examines the sexual revolution-era trend of 'swinging' (wife swapping) via a glimpse into the lives of two couples in a small New England college town who enter casually into such an affair, with disastrous consequences.
[edit] Plot summary
The narrator (who never identifies himself by name) is a college professor and a relatively unsuccessful author of historical novels. While doing research in Vienna, Austria, he met Utch, an orphaned survivor of the German occupation and the Russian siege at the end of World War II. At the opening of the novel, the narrator and Utch are married with two children and live a relatively placid existence until, at a faculty party, they become acquainted with Severin Winter, a Viennese-born professor of German and coach of the school's wrestling team, and his wife Edith, a WASP from a privileged background (she met her husband in Vienna while on a buying trip for MOMA) who is an aspiring fiction writer. The narrator begins a mentor-protege relationship with Edith, and soon the couples are sharing dinners and play-dates with their children. As the narrator becomes more attracted to Edith and Utch begins to fall for Severin, the couples begin trading spouses for sexual encounters at the end of their dinner dates. At first the affairs proceed smoothly, with emotional conflict submerged beneath sexual curiosity, but soon enough, obsessive love rears its ugly head, and the narrator begins to discover that the Winters have not been entirely honest with him and his wife about their motives for entering the affair.
The sport of wrestling features prominently—the novel's title refers to the 158-pound weight class, which Severin Winter considers the most elite competitive weight—and a subplot eventually emerges involving Winter's protege, a peculiar wrestling prodigy from Iowa who transfers to Winter's college because of its superior biology department and becomes a pawn in the fallout of the two couples' swinging relationship.
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