Lena Dunham's Reading List: Monogamy? Monotony?

Just a three letter difference but they’re important letters!

If your social reality looks anything like mine, you may have noticed that open relationships are IN. Like mesh ballet flats, they came in hot and high brow, as signifiers of some special level of cultural awareness, and now? Well, you can get ‘em at Zara.

And maybe it’s just who I’m hanging out with (heathens, clearly!) but marriage has become a much more malleable concept than it used to be. Back in the Mad Men days, we all just cheated behind closed doors- the “what they don’t know will only hurt them if I act weird and suspicious” theory of the case. In my twenties, even liberal kids in skinny jeans were coupling up with a quickness, play-acting trad marriage from their dorms and collective apartments as they cooked bland curry and watched Rick & Morty and went to bed at 1am on separate sides of the futon. When your significant other met someone they found cute, they tortured you for three months with indecision and then dumped your ass like you were on fire.

Now? Those same kids would be joining a polyamory support group and keeping a Google cal to sync schedules with their primaries and secondaries. Boy oh boy- if my twenty-something lovers could have had access to all this therapeutic language, they would have been SMMFD (so much more fucking dangerous.)

Lemme be clear- all this snark does not mean I am anti open-relationship (though it’s INTENSELY easy to satirize, and at this point low hanging fruit.) Obvi I believe everyone should do what makes them feel happy in this one delicate life we are given (though if we get another life, we better all behave impeccably!) As long as no one else is injured by it, go forth and conquer. And if you, the reader, have multiple lovers then I want you to come over and tell me ALL about it, okay?

But personally, I am a chronically ill, family-and-friends focused workaholic with only so much space to download someone else’s concerns as my own. If I am not hanging with my husband or doing my job, I just want to read and kiss my pigs on the snout and dangle satin ribbon on my cats and listen to borderline porny sounding ASMR. It’s very hard- and also boring- for me to imagine taking on anything else. Plus, when I go in I go ALL in- I’m putting every egg in the monogamy basket. Meanwhile, when it comes to group anything, I’m usually hoping someone will pull the fire alarm and release us. And I know not all open relationships involve group sex- I’m not a republican!- but if there were an orgy to attend, well I find the idea mortifying. I’m always worried that everyone at my birthday party has eaten right and made friends, and it makes me act pretty cloying- and I know that attitude would migrate over to any sexual function.

If open relationships are suddenly everywhere, so are open marriage books. Divorce memoirs and narratives about broadening sexual horizons constitute 87% of the book recs I’m given these days. I’ve read some great ones (Ada Calhoun’s Crush is sexy and silly and hopeful) and some that made me wonder who has the time for a latte and a hand job at 11am on a Tuesday in THIS economy. But, with the genre expanding faster than that East Side LA polycule your friend is circling, it seemed like a good time to highlight classic stories of one-on-one matrimony, its pleasures and discontents.

Monogamy was the subject of some of the 20th (and 21st!) century’s best writing- when it works, when it doesn’t, when it works and then doesn’t and then does again. And I’m not over it! It’s why I watch so many videos about brides who were scammed by TikTok-famous wedding dress designers. Because this shit is evergreen!

So, without further ado, some of my favorite tales from the marriage trenches:

WHEN SHE WAS GOOD (Philip Roth, 1967)

If you love Philip Roth, or even if you loathe him, this book is for you. For the die-hards, we have it all: bad choices, suburban malaise, toxic introspection. And for the people who are like “I CANNOT HEAR ONE MORE MAN COMPLAIN” then you’re in luck, because this is his only book with a female protagonist, and she is fighting her way through the video game that is heterosexual existence, trying to beat every level. If you wonder why the character seems so dense with the author’s disdain, many believe Lucy Nelson- our protagonist- was heavily inspired by Roth’s doomed first marriage to a shiksa. Trivia fact: this book’s tagline (“a stunning portrait of the all-American bitch”) inspired one of the most personal episodes of Girls.

Here I am with a vintage edition- oh Hannah, why the ornate yet passionless hairstyle?

WHILE I WAS GONE (Sue Miller, 1999)

Somewhere along the way, Sue Miller got bracketed in with mom novelists. To me, that category also includes Anne Tyler, Ann Patchett and and some other Ann(e)s, and it’s not derogatory- it just means your linen wearing, cabernet swilling, Duolingo class takin’ mom will cry all over the book on vacation. And I want her recs!!! When I got this book from a hotel lending library when I was fifteen- it’s about a married woman being brought back together with a mysterious man from her Bohemian past, who may or may not have played a hand in her best friend’s death- I found it sophisticated and horny and kind of cutting edge, and it made me see my parents as people with big lives that had come before me. If you loved The Secret History but you also like fare that’s a little more straight forwardly dramatic and a little less opaque, grab it.

COLORED TELEVISION (Danzy Senna, 2024)

Danzy Senna skewers a lot here- capitalism, Hollywood, gentrification, men acting like they’re the first people ever to have thoughts or feelings. But the heart of this novel comes from its layered depiction of a marriage between two artists, and the unsung dreams and stagnated desires that both drive and divide them. This book is hilariously funny, totally modern and possessed of a tone that can’t be described with a simple mash-up of other titles– one of my favorite books I read in 2024.

MADAME BOVARY (Gustave Flaubert, 1857- Lydia Davis translation)

Miss Bovary is the OG desperate housewife, and it’s wild how modern this nearly 200 year old meditation on the drudgery of feminine expectation is. Even if you don’t like oldies, this one still feels fresh as hell. Lydia Davis- a genius in her own right, just bought her meditation on COWS- does a gorgeous translation that allows Flaubert’s singular style to really sing and cuts to the heart of sentences that, in other translations, can feel flowery and laborious.

BRIGHTON ROCK (Graham Greene, 1938)

If you’ve ever loved a bad boy, then Pinkie- the uber naughty career criminal who would and should be played by Barry Keoghan in any modern film adaptation- will make you wince. The novel has a crime caper’s pace, but the truly sinister thread is about Pinkie’s marriage to the pious and devoted Rose, who really needs to head to SLAA or watch a TikTok on the topic of “if he wanted to, he would.” If you like your marital discontent with a helping of Guy Ritchie-esque crime, then this is the one for you.

Please, leave your faves in the comments- and I hope you can tell I’m not a marriage truther, since basically all of these end in disaster, or at least vague dissatisfaction!

til death do us part,

Lena