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Adultery
Big Love meets Manhattan in Adultery, a darkly ironic contemporary comedy about love, sex, and polyamory on New York's Upper East Side. Professor Orlando Plummer, philanderer and drunk, first meets the Fliedermans--billionaire Roger and the exotic and neurotic Arabia--at an intimate orgy arranged by his own bored and wealthy wife Valeria. After that disastrous night, Orlando blunders his way through a dizzying sequence of academic back-stabbings and sexual musical chairs until he meets his personal Armageddon: his teaching assistant, Jun Mei, announces she is having his child--and his shaky polyamorous house of cards comes crashing down. Wicked, mordantly funny, and wise, Adultery teaches us a great many things about love, a literary life misspent, and the consequences of too much money.
"Throws sex at the bookish--and books at the sexish..."
"Throws sex at the bookish--and books at the sexish..."
457 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 11, 2014
4 people are currently reading
201 people want to read
About the author
Rod Kierkegaard Jr.
32 books43 followersRod Kierkegaard Jr. is a writer and cartoonist best known in the US for his comic strip, “Rock Opera“, which ran as a regular feature in Heavy Metal Magazine during the 1980s.
He is the author of two French graphic novel collections, “Stars Massacre“, (released in the US as “Shooting Stars“) and “Rock Monstres“, both published by Editions Albin Michel, Paris. His first novel, “Obama Jones & The Logic Bomb“, is published by Dogma Press.
“The Department of Magic” and “Family Cursemas” are Rod’s first published works through Curiosity Quills Press during the 2011 Holiday season, followed by “The God Particle” in early 2012.
He is the author of two French graphic novel collections, “Stars Massacre“, (released in the US as “Shooting Stars“) and “Rock Monstres“, both published by Editions Albin Michel, Paris. His first novel, “Obama Jones & The Logic Bomb“, is published by Dogma Press.
“The Department of Magic” and “Family Cursemas” are Rod’s first published works through Curiosity Quills Press during the 2011 Holiday season, followed by “The God Particle” in early 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 26, 2014
Sorry..I can't do this one..slut slamming of the wife? Nope
October 10, 2014
Rod Kierkegard’s “Adultery: The Scarlet Alphabet” is a comic gem, a cerebral masterpiece of contemporary social satire slumming as breezy sex farce, with a bit of trenchant literary criticism thrown in for good measure. The author’s razor-like wit is stropped with just the right amount of cynicism, which he employs not so much to lay bare the paradox and folly of modern life as to gleefully vivisect the whole animal, pulling back layers of pretense and self-deception like tissue to reveal the fragile, frightened egoist’s heart beneath—all the while managing to be funny as hell for more than 300 pages.
Orlando Plummer is a tenuously tenured professor of Traditional English Literature at upper-Manhattan’s ultra-PC (and none-too far-fetched) Lumumba University. A self-described academic “performance artist” with the veneer of an Oxbridge pedigree and not a single creative or ambitious cell in his body, Orlando is the ultimate pretender, the archetypal outsider, ever fearful of being found out, yet still somehow content to coast (and/or fornicate) his way through life in a miasma of alcohol-dazed indifference, leaving his long-suffering Chinese TA to actually do most of his work, and almost every major life-decision to the wife he loathes but cannot leave.
“Don’t draw the wrong conclusion. Don’t think for a minute that I don’t love my wife. Love is far too mild a term for my feelings. I loathe my wife. I hate her guts. Worse, I dislike her company. She is a crashing Seven-Sisters educated—which is to say woefully uneducated and willfully ignorant—bore. She is, however, always right about everything, particularly money, the sea of green that is her birthright, her native element, the source of her elemental power.
I despise my wife. I also desire her. And I’m attached to her. Most of all I fear her.
She is an object of horrid fascination to me, a fetish object. Her real name is not Valeria Messalina, of course; I have changed the names of everyone who will appear in these pages except for one.”
Orlando is virtually egotistical in his passivity, constantly surprised and bewildered by his own feelings—so much so that the very awareness of complex emotion seems to arrive unbidden, catching him off-guard every time. He is, as he himself puts it, a man without a heart, incapable of feeling guilt, only fear. And there is much to be afraid of in this labyrinth of Orwellian academic bureaucracy where PC culture has run not merely amok, but deep into the provinces of the surreal, where New Age psychobabble and deconstructionist gobbledygook have assumed the solemnity of cultic scripture, and where a career-ending sexual harassment complaint is only a direct look in the eye away.
In response to Orlando’s obsessive philandering, Val arranges a series of “couples dates” with the wealthy Roger and Arabia Fliederman
“Befriending another married couple is almost always a mistake.
Hence, the relative safety of casual, consensual, or in our case, Val’s and mine, stage-managed adultery. One avoids all the usual pitfalls of “couples-dating” by going straight to bed, thus achieving the boredom and monotony of the physical intimacy of marriage at a single bound. You may call this swinging, wife-swapping, or polyamory if you like. I prefer to call it adultery.”
Ultimately, of course, wackiness and extremely expensive polyamorous group-therapy ensues. Love triangles, meanges à quatre, impromptu quintets, poly-quads, and dysfunctionally sexless sextets form and disintegrate with the manic promiscuity of some microscopic multi-celled community, the narrative convolutions a gaudily variegated mosaic of multi-cultural intercourse.
References to Japanese No and Kabuki theater are a sort of recurring literary symbol in the novel, a principle of continuity that effectively holds the structure up despite its sprawling eclecticism. Other marvelously arcane references abound, everything from the “Tale of Genji” to the Orlandos of Ariosto and Virginia Wolf, the novels of Thackeray and the short stories of Irwin Shaw. (Kierkegaard is no doubt aware of his famous namesake’s “Diary of a Seducer”, though this seems to be the only obscure literary reference not included in the novel!)
Then too, much of “Adultery” with its hyper-intelligent, highest-common-denominator humor put me in mind of what is probably my favorite novel of all time, Josef Skvoreky’s 1977 vast, darkly comic grand opus, “The Engineer of Human Souls”. Both Skvoreky’s political émigré college professor Daniel, and Kierkegaard’s stranger-in-a-strange-land Orlando share the same wry, vaguely bemused contempt for their students, a bunch of bored, lazy, shallow, over-privileged, hyper-entitled plagiarists, whom they nonetheless have no qualms seducing. Skvoreky’s novel is cleverly structured like the syllabus of the course on American literature Daniel teaches at Edenvale College, the small, vividly imagined Canadian liberal arts institution set in a mythic wilderness, far from the crushing heartbreak—if never far from the memory—of the 1968 Prague Spring. Kierkegaard’s Orlando is neither so well-organized, ambitious, or politically aware, and yet, one senses an undeniable kinship between the two characters; they share an uncannily similar cynicism, the same benignly jaundiced way of looking at the world. One cannot help imagining the kind of conversations the two might have over a drink at some academic conference. Yet another happy surprise for readers.
“Adultery: The Scarlet Alphabet” is enthusiastically recommended. Run, don’t walk, to get your hands on a copy of this one!
Orlando Plummer is a tenuously tenured professor of Traditional English Literature at upper-Manhattan’s ultra-PC (and none-too far-fetched) Lumumba University. A self-described academic “performance artist” with the veneer of an Oxbridge pedigree and not a single creative or ambitious cell in his body, Orlando is the ultimate pretender, the archetypal outsider, ever fearful of being found out, yet still somehow content to coast (and/or fornicate) his way through life in a miasma of alcohol-dazed indifference, leaving his long-suffering Chinese TA to actually do most of his work, and almost every major life-decision to the wife he loathes but cannot leave.
“Don’t draw the wrong conclusion. Don’t think for a minute that I don’t love my wife. Love is far too mild a term for my feelings. I loathe my wife. I hate her guts. Worse, I dislike her company. She is a crashing Seven-Sisters educated—which is to say woefully uneducated and willfully ignorant—bore. She is, however, always right about everything, particularly money, the sea of green that is her birthright, her native element, the source of her elemental power.
I despise my wife. I also desire her. And I’m attached to her. Most of all I fear her.
She is an object of horrid fascination to me, a fetish object. Her real name is not Valeria Messalina, of course; I have changed the names of everyone who will appear in these pages except for one.”
Orlando is virtually egotistical in his passivity, constantly surprised and bewildered by his own feelings—so much so that the very awareness of complex emotion seems to arrive unbidden, catching him off-guard every time. He is, as he himself puts it, a man without a heart, incapable of feeling guilt, only fear. And there is much to be afraid of in this labyrinth of Orwellian academic bureaucracy where PC culture has run not merely amok, but deep into the provinces of the surreal, where New Age psychobabble and deconstructionist gobbledygook have assumed the solemnity of cultic scripture, and where a career-ending sexual harassment complaint is only a direct look in the eye away.
In response to Orlando’s obsessive philandering, Val arranges a series of “couples dates” with the wealthy Roger and Arabia Fliederman
“Befriending another married couple is almost always a mistake.
Hence, the relative safety of casual, consensual, or in our case, Val’s and mine, stage-managed adultery. One avoids all the usual pitfalls of “couples-dating” by going straight to bed, thus achieving the boredom and monotony of the physical intimacy of marriage at a single bound. You may call this swinging, wife-swapping, or polyamory if you like. I prefer to call it adultery.”
Ultimately, of course, wackiness and extremely expensive polyamorous group-therapy ensues. Love triangles, meanges à quatre, impromptu quintets, poly-quads, and dysfunctionally sexless sextets form and disintegrate with the manic promiscuity of some microscopic multi-celled community, the narrative convolutions a gaudily variegated mosaic of multi-cultural intercourse.
References to Japanese No and Kabuki theater are a sort of recurring literary symbol in the novel, a principle of continuity that effectively holds the structure up despite its sprawling eclecticism. Other marvelously arcane references abound, everything from the “Tale of Genji” to the Orlandos of Ariosto and Virginia Wolf, the novels of Thackeray and the short stories of Irwin Shaw. (Kierkegaard is no doubt aware of his famous namesake’s “Diary of a Seducer”, though this seems to be the only obscure literary reference not included in the novel!)
Then too, much of “Adultery” with its hyper-intelligent, highest-common-denominator humor put me in mind of what is probably my favorite novel of all time, Josef Skvoreky’s 1977 vast, darkly comic grand opus, “The Engineer of Human Souls”. Both Skvoreky’s political émigré college professor Daniel, and Kierkegaard’s stranger-in-a-strange-land Orlando share the same wry, vaguely bemused contempt for their students, a bunch of bored, lazy, shallow, over-privileged, hyper-entitled plagiarists, whom they nonetheless have no qualms seducing. Skvoreky’s novel is cleverly structured like the syllabus of the course on American literature Daniel teaches at Edenvale College, the small, vividly imagined Canadian liberal arts institution set in a mythic wilderness, far from the crushing heartbreak—if never far from the memory—of the 1968 Prague Spring. Kierkegaard’s Orlando is neither so well-organized, ambitious, or politically aware, and yet, one senses an undeniable kinship between the two characters; they share an uncannily similar cynicism, the same benignly jaundiced way of looking at the world. One cannot help imagining the kind of conversations the two might have over a drink at some academic conference. Yet another happy surprise for readers.
“Adultery: The Scarlet Alphabet” is enthusiastically recommended. Run, don’t walk, to get your hands on a copy of this one!
January 27, 2017
Fusing a view of the idle rich that makes Jay Gatsby look sympathetic with an attack on political correctness that offers only futile bumbling as a response, Kierkegaard provides what one desperately hopes is not social realism.
Orlando Plummer is employed as a professor of literature at an obsessively liberal US college, but works at being a drunkard and adulterer, and gets his real income from Valeria, his wealthy dilettante wife. When Valeria decides to cope with both his affairs and her boredom by taking him husband-swapping, Orlando finds himself lurching ever deeper into polyamory.
As with other works by Kierkegaard, the prose is tight and the language pleasing.
However, this novel is written in the style of the autobiography of a comparative literature critic who has lost faith in liberal education. Filled with cutting parodies of political correctness and left-wing intellectuals, it suffers the issue that all post-modern commentaries risk: while it tears down the hollow façade of its target, it suggests no better alternatives. Readers might, therefore, be left with the sense that this is destruction for it’s own sake rather than a clearing away of pretence.
Orlando is also overly focused on his own cleverness; not – unfortunately – his cleverness compared to the other characters, but his supposed ability to tailor the narrative to gull the reader. An ability that proves less great than his statements allege, particularly in the case of a big reveal part way through the book that is in actuality so obvious that readers were likely to have been more surprised were it not true. Although this might be a deliberate technique by Kierkegaard to display Orlando’s character, the continued revealing of new information about events that the narrator knew at the time they were first described moves beyond a dislike for Orlando into a distrust of the author’s descriptions.
In addition to this smugness, Orlando has a tendency to wallow in his own pity. Rather than commit to improving his situation, he collapses back (sometimes literally) then whines when others fail to support him or even take advantage. Even those times where he is genuinely the wronged party do not raise sympathy, sandwiched as they are between repeated incidents of tediously petty selfishness, indolence, and casual disrespect for others.
Kierkegaard’s characterisation is equally skilled, and equally lacking in sympathetic qualities, when it comes to the supporting cast. Apart from a few bit parts who pass through a single scene with few ripples, narcissists, drunkards, and petty abusers of all varieties vie to be the most obviously superficial and selfish.
As such, while this novel is – as the blurb suggests – a comic romance, it might best be considered so because it is not a tragedy that the protagonist ends up with one of the other characters rather than – for example – someone the reader might care about.
Lacking a character to properly root for, readers are likely to find much of the satire too bitter to amuse.
Overall, I found this novel technically skilled but lacking in characters that I cared about. I recommend it to readers who enjoy Great American Novels; especially those by Fitzgerald
I received a free copy from the publisher with a request for a fair review.
Orlando Plummer is employed as a professor of literature at an obsessively liberal US college, but works at being a drunkard and adulterer, and gets his real income from Valeria, his wealthy dilettante wife. When Valeria decides to cope with both his affairs and her boredom by taking him husband-swapping, Orlando finds himself lurching ever deeper into polyamory.
As with other works by Kierkegaard, the prose is tight and the language pleasing.
However, this novel is written in the style of the autobiography of a comparative literature critic who has lost faith in liberal education. Filled with cutting parodies of political correctness and left-wing intellectuals, it suffers the issue that all post-modern commentaries risk: while it tears down the hollow façade of its target, it suggests no better alternatives. Readers might, therefore, be left with the sense that this is destruction for it’s own sake rather than a clearing away of pretence.
Orlando is also overly focused on his own cleverness; not – unfortunately – his cleverness compared to the other characters, but his supposed ability to tailor the narrative to gull the reader. An ability that proves less great than his statements allege, particularly in the case of a big reveal part way through the book that is in actuality so obvious that readers were likely to have been more surprised were it not true. Although this might be a deliberate technique by Kierkegaard to display Orlando’s character, the continued revealing of new information about events that the narrator knew at the time they were first described moves beyond a dislike for Orlando into a distrust of the author’s descriptions.
In addition to this smugness, Orlando has a tendency to wallow in his own pity. Rather than commit to improving his situation, he collapses back (sometimes literally) then whines when others fail to support him or even take advantage. Even those times where he is genuinely the wronged party do not raise sympathy, sandwiched as they are between repeated incidents of tediously petty selfishness, indolence, and casual disrespect for others.
Kierkegaard’s characterisation is equally skilled, and equally lacking in sympathetic qualities, when it comes to the supporting cast. Apart from a few bit parts who pass through a single scene with few ripples, narcissists, drunkards, and petty abusers of all varieties vie to be the most obviously superficial and selfish.
As such, while this novel is – as the blurb suggests – a comic romance, it might best be considered so because it is not a tragedy that the protagonist ends up with one of the other characters rather than – for example – someone the reader might care about.
Lacking a character to properly root for, readers are likely to find much of the satire too bitter to amuse.
Overall, I found this novel technically skilled but lacking in characters that I cared about. I recommend it to readers who enjoy Great American Novels; especially those by Fitzgerald
I received a free copy from the publisher with a request for a fair review.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews