IN A MAN'S TIME

ISBN-10: 0-671-21708-9
Writer: Peter Marin
Title: In a Man’s Time
Language: English
Place of Publication: New York, NY
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year of Publication: 1974
Format: 138x222mm
Pages: 256 pp.
Jacket Design: Lawrence Ratzkin
Binding: brown cloth in duotone dust jacket
Weight: 427 gr.
Original Price: USD 7.95
Entry Date: 2014021
Entry Date: 4^th September 2014

BOOK DESCRIPTION

The subject of Peter Marin’s astonishing and brilliant book is the only serious act left to man in a shifting and grotesque world–the act of sex, his only means of reaffirming his humanity, of focusing his will to live, of reaching his own spiritual; and animal nature, of realizing his humanity–and evoking  the humanity of others. Marin writes about sex as perhaps no one has since D.H. Lawrence, with a lyrical and graphic intensity that is at once intensely personal and truly passionate. In an age when sexual passion has been eroded, overexplained, reduced to a study of techniques, mechanical pleasure for a race of liberated robots. Peter Marin has restored to the act of love the profound adventure of sexuality, the sense in which “carnal” knowledge is in fact real knowledge, perhaps the only way in which we truly “know” others, and ourselves. Written in the form of a journal, a diary of encounters, shared moments, sensual discoveries, In a Man’s Time  is the story of a summer in which a man moves away from marriage to pursue his sexual  freedom, returning drawn by time and the changes within himself, “thick with light and joy,” to his wife, his children, to that married life in which  “the world spells out for us, letter by letter and bit by bit, the messages of what things mean and who we are.”

No man who has ever known the tension between the solidity  of loving one woman and the exultation of loving many can fail to recognize the truth and power of Marin’s experiences, to feel how he too has sought in women, and sometimes found, “this sense of grace, of deepening and vision.” Funny, warm, compassionate, deep, so frankly descriptive that it will surely shock some readers, In a Man’s Time is both an intellectual experience and an awakening, like the shock of recognition and awareness that came over one when one first read A. Alvarez’s The Savage God. Yet, in his vivid and moving description of friendships, loves, sexual encounters, Peter Marin manages to create in the reader a very special sense of joy,” “a sense of going in and down and then coming up whole, sweetened by pleasure and laughter,” which is the peculiar and special knowledge of those who have confronted their own sensuality without fear or false guilt and accepted it as the most precious of human gifts. In a Man’s Time is a major book by a writer whose previous work and reputation have made “this journeying through time and the senses” an eagerly awaited and triumphantly achieved event.