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Vastly more common, in Kipnis' telling, is the domestic gulag. This is monogamy-as-suffocating-prison rather than monogamy-as-soulful-devotion. It is self-sacrifice to maintain the status quo in state and society with a personal payoff of deadened sensitivities. (For the more creative, there is always the removal of some sensitive part of the spouse's anatomy.) It is a life defined by "you can't," the you-can't that endlessly issues from your significant other's lips, hemming in the edges of your life as the price for fidelity.

The author has conducted her own personal survey of popular you-can'ts in marriage. Her list occupies a stunning nine pages, beginning with "You can't leave the house without saying where you're going. You can't not say what time you'll return … ," progressing through, "You can't be impulsive, self-absorbed, or distracted," finishing up with, "You can't return the rent-a-car without throwing out the garbage because the mate thinks it looks bad, even if you insist that cleaning the car is rolled into the rates," and concluding with the other end of the bargain: "This is love obtained." Because the only way this can work, the only way anyone would be mad enough to buy into the system, is through the internalized conviction that there is nothing worse than being uncoupled. It is humiliating to be without a partner; it is crushing to be dumped. All else must give way to the foundational project of continuing the relationship at whatever cost. It's good for psychologists and the publishers of self-help books; good for the economy; good for the government. Fascism with full consent is the best way to rule.

The polemic draws to a close with consideration of the most famous adultery of recent memory, that of President Clinton with a certain White House intern. In public consciousness, Kipnis argues, Hillary Rodham Clinton was not the only, or even the primary, offended party. It is as if Clinton was the bridegroom and America herself the bride, demanding faithfulness as the first qualification to serve as chief executive. The masses were far more frenzied over Monica than Serbia, and soon one politician after another fell, regardless of anything to do with taxes or education, as jumbles of skeletons tumbled out of the closet. Kipnis surmises that the nation's dissatisfaction with the state of marriage was projected outward and public servants were made to pay for boredom in the bedroom.

But back to love. The first half of the book's title is a bit wide of the mark; permanent monogamy is Kipnis' bugaboo, but that hardly makes for a catchy title. A Polemic, however, is right on the money. As her "Reader Advisory" explains, "polemics aren't measured; they don't tell 'both sides of the story.' " Happy coupledom is not part of the data up for analysis. Even with the genre in mind, though, a few points of contention are worth a bit of quibbling. For instance, Kipnis accepts without question the popular myth of romantic love's recent invention, somewhere about the High Middle Ages. She and other true believers (C.S. Lewis strangely among them) have surely missed Jacob's weeping for joy on discovering Rachel at the well, or Gregory of Nyssa's exhortation to celibacy in De Virginitate to avoid the wrenching grief that follows the death of a beloved spouse. A more nuanced discussion of humans' paradoxical relationship to work is in order, too: maybe there is a capitalist conspiracy out there, but one suspects it could hardly be so successful if people weren't so interested in keeping busy. (Even couch potatoes watch their soaps with the maniacal attention of stock analysts.) And anyway, if the problem is finally political, infidelity isn't going to fix the system. People in love are notoriously too distracted to go around changing the world.

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