Spreading Jam on Stale Bread: Other Men’s Daughters by Richard Stern – Liv Golvin
January 19, 2026
Richard Stern dares to ask the question, what if Philip Roth were a WASP? I have lately become somewhat successful in choosing NYRB novels based on who writes the introduction. Stern was a close friend of Roth, and the introduction to this edition is his eulogy for Stern. (This also worked for me in picking up Curzio Malaparte’s The Skin, introduced in a very profound way by Rachel Kushner.)
In Other Men’s Daughters, Stern writes beautifully about divorce, and the end of the nuclear family. So your wife stops fucking you and you are instead met with a beautiful young woman. So this beautiful young woman strokes your ego by threatening to harm herself if you step away from her. By attaching herself to you, she has lowered her value greatly, something that both of you know but neither of you will say. So she becomes depressed, and you are able to flaunt your influence and power by telling your 45 year old friends and colleagues that you have a 20 year old bitch who will kill herself if you leave her.
Dr. Merriweather is by all accounts a smart man, something he purposefully expresses to the reader. He is a professor of biology at Harvard, an MD, and like a good Harvard man from a good Cambridge family, he is familiar with the classics. A man who promises intelligence such as this is attractive, but the degree to which he is willing to ignore the emotional intelligence he must also possess is shocking. In allowing his marriage to fall apart, which according to him has been happening for a long time before he meets Cynthia, he begins to absolve himself of emotional responsibility for his wife. This breakdown is ultimately what leads to his downfall– is a man who has taken on the responsibility of a life and family able to drop this when things become unwieldy? By marrying Sarah and fathering four children with her and agreeing, whether emphatically or placidly, that she give up her work, he has taken her worth to make his own.
Worth and duty, things that used to be talked about openly, are now hidden behind the unspeakable, called traditionalism and right wing, making them dangerous. A father was trusted to care for his daughter by making sure that she was kept safe from men who would lower her value on the marriage market, and ensure she made a good marriage, one that would keep her in the class she was born into. Cynthia’s father seems to subscribe to this view, and upon finding out that his daughter is shacked up in France with a man, goes to rescue her. He recalls his daughter’s difficult nature, and is then charmed by Merriweather. Cynthia’s father is a striving Southern lawyer who has made good. Merriweather is dressed well, handsome, and well spoken. They become friendly, and he effectively gives his daughter away. He has now absolved himself of the responsibility of caring for her, and given that task to Merriweather. Despite his love for Cynthia and his active duty in the care of her, he easily hands her off after 2 days with Merriweather. It is likely a relief to him that he no longer has to watch over her so carefully. What can this isolation really do to Cynthia I wonder, who already feels that she is largely an object, a “walking cunt.”
It is old fashioned to say that women are handed to men by their fathers. But I remain staunch in the idea that accepting someone as your partner does take responsibility. You understand that outside forces will influence both of you, that things will change, but you say let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together. It is not so much an anti-feminist belief of women being a man’s burden to carry, but a knowledge that love is not casual, and bonds made are not easily dissolved. In taking responsibility for Cynthia, Merriweather learns the hard way that his marriage will not go gently into that good night. Regardless of animosity, of loss of love, it is never easy to leave. Merriweather believes that his feelings for his wife are gone, but the memories remain, the nostalgia lives in his home. But the dissolver of the relationship often thinks of it kindly and as mendable, while the left behind partner is left to contend with the pieces. The abandonment leads to magical thinking reminiscent of death. Is this person really gone? Were they ever who I thought they were?
Over and over again in novels and I guess in real life, I find that men are very rarely able to pinpoint exactly why they love a woman. Dr. Merriweather is attached to Cynthia, he talks about her beauty and her intelligence, and seemingly knows he needs her. But why her? She has floated into his life and seduced him out of his marriage, but there is little in his novel about her actual personality. Perhaps the main thrust of it is that they both agree that he is superior to her, something he could not get from his wife. If you choose a submissive woman, you must accept that she depends on you. Merriweather has accepted this responsibility. At 42, Dr. Merriweather has four children, a home, and a wife. Two of his children are about Cynthia’s age. At 20 years old, that is, the age that Merriweather met his now estranged wife, what can one really know about what one wants? At 42, you know exactly what you want. You want the shape of your own life, and a woman who will fit herself into it.
The final break up of his marriage is more difficult than he is prepared for. He finds joy and sadness in his final Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family. He wishes things were different, that he and his wife could reconcile, but also knows it is impossible. He sees the sides his friends will choose, with their persistent marital “we.” He is rejected by his social circle for the divorce, where he was not rejected by the same people for his affair. Affairs were just a part of life, something to gossip about. The ending of his marriage is the true sin here, the breakup of the family, which is represented in the selling of his Cambridge home, as both parents move separately into apartments. We as readers see and understand that his marriage will end, but his younger children are not told until the end. The breakup of his marriage is not real until the house is sold.
In Merriweather’s last note to the reader he says “to have constant choice is to be constantly obligated to enjoy what one’s chosen.” Does this mean that maybe he would not continue to choose Cynthia if he had not gone to such drastic measures to keep her? As readers we know better than to take Merriweather at his word, especially when it comes to choices and emotions. He clearly does not have a lot of success in understanding himself or his motivations. He is not truly capable of the emotional depth that fixing his marriage would have required, and he knows he does not need emotional depth to keep Cynthia right now, because she is his chore, she is now his burden to bear. Was it worth the approving nods from complicit friends and relations of his ex wife, encouraging because he had a beautiful young woman on his arm? Was it worth the selling of a home that had been in his family for hundreds of years? It’s possible that he would say no. But he is a simple man, and he has made his choice.