Year of the Cock: The Remarkable True Account of a Married Man Who Left His Wife and Paid the Price - Hardcover

Wieder, Alan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446582166 ISBN 13: 9780446582162

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2009

Synopsis

From a powerful new voice in nonfiction comes this electrifying chronicle of a married man who leaves his wife to pursue a carefree bachelorhood - only to plunge into an abyss of shame, regret, and penis envy.

Thirty-year-old Alan Wieder has everything a man could possibly want: a nice home in L.A., a thriving Hollywood career, and to top it all off, a beautiful and adoring wife. Then one day in 2005 - the Year of the Rooster - he wakes up with questions: Have I settled down too soon? Am I consigned to a humdrum future of marriage, kiddies, home-cooked meals and hybrid SUVs? How the %&! did this happen to me?

And just like that - after ten years in a committed relationship - Alan decides to walk out on his wife to pursue his fantasy of becoming a hardcore bachelor. Explaining very little, thinking even less, he dives into his exhilarating new single existence - buying a vintage Porsche, moving into a tastefully decorated bachelor pad, ignoring his wife, and bedding as many chicks as possible. However, to Alan's surprise and dismay, becoming a single dude also unleashes in him a torrent of crippling insecurities that he didn't even know he had. And soon, his would-be swingin' bachelorhood is cut short - very short - by a strange and shameful obsession that drives him to utter madness.

Some men leave their wives only to discover that the grass isn't greener. What Alan Wieder discovers - about the perils of newfound freedom, and about his own fragile male psyche - is far more agonizing and wretched. In this riveting and brutally honest memoir, Alan recounts the true story of his impulsive, wild, and ultimately disastrous foray into bachelorhood. A tragicomic tale of betrayal, sexual (mis)adventure, and ultimately redemption, Year of the Cock marks the debut of a remarkably talented new writer.

About this title

About the Author

Alan Wieder is a writer and producer living in Los Angeles.

Reviews

In this raucous, shallow, 87% true memoir, Wieder, producer of such reality TV dreck as My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé, leaves his wife, Samantha, out of boredom; the ball-and-chain discarded, he buys a Porsche, listens to gangster rap and beds a string of young hotties. His second adolescence derails when he develops an obsession with penis size that compels him to measure his member 20 times a day and undertake exercises, gruesomely recounted, gleaned from the online penis-enlargement industry. Wieder is a master of the hip-hop–inflected frat-boy banter, its swagger and misogyny cut with self-deprecation, that Hollywood has made the voice of American masculinity. But his journey from smug self-indulgence through gonzo comeuppance to contrite re-embrace of committed love feels as pat and forced as a reality romance. Rote obsequies aside, Samantha comes off as a pallid drudge, and Wieder's resentment of her and the other needy women who made him bec[o]me a boyfriend before I ever got to be a boy never lifts. He remains that most parochial—and uninteresting—of L.A. archetypes: the man who doesn't want to grow up. (July 22)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446582166
• ISBN 13: 9780446582162
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320