Life After Marriage [antikvár]

Preface My original intention was to write a book on divorce rather like my study of suicide: a kind of critical meditation, with some history and philosophy, but above all literary and personal. My secret title was The Savage God Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. It seemed a natural progression, since for me suicide and divorce were closely linked. My bungled attempt at the former, twenty or so years ago, was followed within a few months by a remarkably unacrimonious experience of the latter. Unacrimo-nious not because my then wife and I parted as friends, but because by the time we reached the divorce court all acrimony was spent. The suicide attempt had destroyed the marriage more effectively than I ever could have guessed. After it, divorce was the only way out. For me, there were other similarities between divorce and suicide: they produced the same private depression and public failure, the same need to come to terms with the split between my romantic ideals and the reality I had managed to create for myself, between what I had thought I wanted and what I had somehow arranged to get. Later I came to think of them as my