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A review by bhnmt61
The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family by Dan Savage
4.0
This is the third book of Savage's that I've read in as many months, and it's the one I'm most conflicted about. If I'd put the book down at any of several different points, I might have rated it five stars or three or even two.
When I was reading the first section next to my sleeping spouse, it was all I could do not to wake him up laughing. But then there was the part where, while walking through the Seattle Wedding Expo, he makes sweeping generalizations about all women wanting fairy princess weddings and how weddings are all about women and what women want. Well, it was a wedding expo. The women who want lowkey, non-princessy weddings are not going to be there. He might be interested to know that the person who nixed my desire to have a small, casual wedding was my dad.
And then there was the middle section, filled with vitriolic screed against anti-gay bigots. How can he piss me off when I completely agree with him? I wondered, but somehow he did. Savage is at his best when he's telling stories of his childhood or his family and he's poking fun at himself as much as he is the people around him. But when he starts ranting about the bigots, he somehow crosses over some line that just turns me off, even though I deeply, completely agree with him.
But the beginning and the ending--where he relates in comic detail the interactions between him, Terry, and their son D.J., are genius. The scene where they are examining their rings while D.J. sleeps between them at the end had me all choked up.
So, it's a mixed bag. The one thing I can always count on from Dan, though, is that he makes me think. I value monogamy far more than he does, but thinking through his arguments against it ended up deepening and enlarging my perspective on my own long-term marriage. The Commitment is well worth reading for that alone.
When I was reading the first section next to my sleeping spouse, it was all I could do not to wake him up laughing. But then there was the part where, while walking through the Seattle Wedding Expo, he makes sweeping generalizations about all women wanting fairy princess weddings and how weddings are all about women and what women want. Well, it was a wedding expo. The women who want lowkey, non-princessy weddings are not going to be there. He might be interested to know that the person who nixed my desire to have a small, casual wedding was my dad.
And then there was the middle section, filled with vitriolic screed against anti-gay bigots. How can he piss me off when I completely agree with him? I wondered, but somehow he did. Savage is at his best when he's telling stories of his childhood or his family and he's poking fun at himself as much as he is the people around him. But when he starts ranting about the bigots, he somehow crosses over some line that just turns me off, even though I deeply, completely agree with him.
But the beginning and the ending--where he relates in comic detail the interactions between him, Terry, and their son D.J., are genius. The scene where they are examining their rings while D.J. sleeps between them at the end had me all choked up.
So, it's a mixed bag. The one thing I can always count on from Dan, though, is that he makes me think. I value monogamy far more than he does, but thinking through his arguments against it ended up deepening and enlarging my perspective on my own long-term marriage. The Commitment is well worth reading for that alone.