To have and to withhold

Early in Joshua Henkin’s “Matrimony,” a novel that follows a couple through the ups and downs of their relationship over 19 years, the protagonist, Julian Wainwright, attends a writing class where the professor pontificates about writing: This, and the story’s glacial pace, confirm that this is a literary novel.

But is that a problem? If fast-paced entertainment is not among the pleasures generally offered by the literary novel, other pleasures often abound: a richness of language, a heartbreaking depiction of difficult emotions, an exploration of interesting ideas.

“Matrimony” strives to realize these pleasures, though the results are somewhat mixed. The novel doesn’t deal with difficult emotions so much as skirt them. This is partly due to Henkin’s focus on the less interesting of his protagonists. Mia, the wife in the titular union, faces the most serious life crises, notably the death of a parent. And yet the death of Mia’s mother takes place offstage and is touched on only in flashbacks. Mia remains the most compelling character with the most interesting problems. Henkin puts her at the center of the action only near the end of the novel: It is here that “Matrimony” fully comes alive and that Henkin demonstrates his considerable abilities as a storyteller.

At the heart of this novel is Julian, an aspiring writer, and Henkin depends on that hoariest cliche of the literary novel genre for his story -- the writer who finds it difficult to write. The struggle of the artist to create is far less interesting than practitioners of the literary novel seem to believe; perhaps this is why so few paintings of artists staring at blank canvases hang in the Louvre. When Julian finally encounters a shattering event far more serious than his post-adolescent aimlessness, he is quickly shuffled offstage -- away from the prying eyes of readers -- to deal with what appears to be the first significant event of his life.

This narrative tendency mars much of the novel; the compelling, potentially heart-rending stuff is kept out of sight, while the ordinary details of daily life are given at length. Every town the lovers find themselves in becomes a collection of street and business names devoid of a sense of place, as in this description of their wanderings as a new couple around Boston: “They strolled on Newbury Street and Boylston and Newbury again, past Newbury Comics and the department stores and the Boston Public Library, heading west toward Kenmore Square and Fenway Park, and, beyond that, Boston University.” We learn the names of all 12 condiments at Julian’s favorite hot dog stand, but what fuels and sustains his attraction to Mia? This question remains a mystery, even at the end when Julian realizes that writers needn’t be unhappy -- satisfaction works just as well -- to produce art.

“Less is more,” Julian’s writing professor intones. Following this advice causes the story to shy away from the powerful emotions that roil beneath the surface of a long-term relationship: Ultimately, readers are denied emotional intimacy with Henkin’s characters. Hemingway and Carver are the two most famous exemplars of the “less is more” philosophy, but Carver never published a novel and Hemingway never published a good one. Perhaps, in the long form, less is actually less. *