The writing style and topics in this collection of gay men's short stories from the American South will seem outdated even though the book was publishThe writing style and topics in this collection of gay men's short stories from the American South will seem outdated even though the book was published in 2001, given the astonishing changes over the recent past in society's attitude toward gays. That can either enhance or detract from the reading experience, depending on what one is looking for.
The stories themselves are sometimes over the top with respect to the Southern qualities: Those can be woven into the writing seamlessly or in a way that stands out too much. Several of the tales are good, and one or two are great. One advantage to the collection is the healthy variety of authors and writing styles.
Overall, this collection is worth reading, giving us as it does a snapshot of certain people at a certain point in history in a certain part of the United States. ...more
This tale of two brothers suffers from lifeless characterization, too much reliance on stereotypes (Southerners, New Yorkers, etc), unlikely scenariosThis tale of two brothers suffers from lifeless characterization, too much reliance on stereotypes (Southerners, New Yorkers, etc), unlikely scenarios and a distinctive paint-by-numbers feel to the author's technique. But worse still are jarring mistakes stemming from ignorance or indifference, such as the mention of a "vile of cocaine" or "stir foam cups," errors big enough to pull readers right out of the narration. I cannot recommend a book with this many weaknesses. ...more
Virginia Lovers tells of a North Carolina family's brush with homophobic violence in the 1970's. It's not about Virginia and it's not about lovers. BuVirginia Lovers tells of a North Carolina family's brush with homophobic violence in the 1970's. It's not about Virginia and it's not about lovers. But place and passions are important just the same. Here Michael Parker, whose other novels, like this one, center on the town of Trent and its people, takes up the subject of homosexuality. This is his only novel to do that, so for a gay reader the authorial voice carries more weight than it normally would. Can he write a credible gay character? Or two perhaps? I grew up gay in the South in the 1970's. I'll decide.
The author avoids an overly familiar tone about sexuality, race, and even gender, and wisely so. The tale follows events in the Edgecombe family, Thomas, Caroline and their two teenage sons, a family whose members always seem to act at cross purposes. A mystery and lots of action drive the story. The point of view shifts during the melodrama, in which the brothers take off to the nation's capital, but the author writes most surely from the standpoint of the father and the town of Trent. So, for example, during a quarrel in a delivery van --
He turned to his sons, who sat together on the plywood toolbox that doubled as a passenger seat, Pete slack and scowling, Daniel fixing him with that imperious and implacably rational look he'd inherited from his mother.
-- the impetus of the novel, one son's sexuality, first appears for readers as a perception on the father's part, although the father himself won't realize it until much later. For a book largely about being gay and coming out, sex itself is not graphically depicted. Except for one or two uses of queer, a word more acceptable in Britain than the United States at that time, I found the characterization and description quite close to the way gay teens then and there actually felt.
The setting is another vantage point the author uses to good effect. The family lives in a town situated on the southeast coastal plain, a geographic and climatic zone whose distinction from the Piedmont region forms an intimate contrast within several Southern states. Thomas is not originally from Trent, a fact that hints at future difficulties. Caroline comes from the Piedmont, which she much prefers. It marks her outsider status not just in the town, but, it would appear, in the family as well. The boys, who are from Trent, would rather be elsewhere. Their getaway from small-town doldrums comes sooner than either was expecting.
The book succeeds because the author knows both his limits and his strengths. While its main appeal is to gay readers, the emphasis on family and place, plus the changing points of view, gives this novel significant crossover appeal....more
An Irish boy, 14, goes to live with mysterious relatives during the 1930's. This is a tale of instinct in which political, religious and sexual passioAn Irish boy, 14, goes to live with mysterious relatives during the 1930's. This is a tale of instinct in which political, religious and sexual passions play out on an isolated, rural estate. The boy, Timothy, finds himself both attracted and repulsed by two men, the corrupt, bejeweled, perfumed and corpulent Bobo, and Bobo's hustler-type sidekick Skipper, whose violence Timothy inadvertently sees when Skipper bashes a young man after an intimate encounter.
With other violent-minded males lurking about, the odds don't look good for the soft boy from Dublin, but over four years Timothy toughens up a little and learns to accept his sexuality. The writing is marred by an unaccountable vehemence of expression by several of the raging male characters, but their predatory dramas seem of a piece with this gothic tale....more
A discerning gay reader might be inclined to take a pass on yet another story situated in a privileged layer of society that can obsess about art and A discerning gay reader might be inclined to take a pass on yet another story situated in a privileged layer of society that can obsess about art and fritter away time in Paris. What offsets that in Allan Stein is the middle class background of the protagonist, a young teacher living in Seattle who, having lost his job over a false charge of impropriety, uses his friendship with a campy art lover to live down to expectations in France. So grounded, the story, a melodrama of constant motion, builds on a firm base.
The descriptive writing is good, too, the author bringing readers into touch with the teacher's sex drive in a way that avoids the pitfalls such explicit accounts often fall prey to. The narration conveys a distinct sense of homosexual desire gay readers can connect with, for the erotic overtones entail more than just the teacher's ephebophilia.
The plot is shrewd, the author using the life and physique of Gertrude Stein's nephew, who really did live in Paris a almost a century before, as a foil for the action taking place at the end of the 20th century. The location of so much of the action in Paris makes sense, and the mood of the story feels right.
All in all, this book creates the right atmosphere and deploys its settings and characters astutely. I recommend it to fans of gay fiction....more
Written in 1951 by novelist and film producer Russell Thacher, this tale of life on an American naval vessel during the 1945 invasion of Iwo Jima takeWritten in 1951 by novelist and film producer Russell Thacher, this tale of life on an American naval vessel during the 1945 invasion of Iwo Jima takes a slap at the unbridled worship of authority after World War II. For the captain of the vessel, an armed transport known as an LST, must protect his crew from the insensate orders of the professional command structure of the United States Navy. The book is also known for a subplot involving a same-sex relationship.
A notable strength is its technique. One theme the author pursues is the interpersonal relations of the men on board the ship. For this a modernist or postmodern approach would not work. The linear timeline and simple realism allow the author to pace the story, build suspense and engage readers. It also sets the mood of the story using narration rather than language.
In post World War II America any novel dealing with homosexuality had to end on a bad note to get published. On the other hand, the Kinsey Report, published in 1948, had taken the subject out of the dark and made it a topic of interest to the American public.
Thacher has a smart way to deal with this. While conceding an unhappy outcome, he doesn’t just let it go at that. One of the gay crew members defends himself vigorously in an unusual rebuke to homophobes that readers at the time must have found sensational. What’s more, the story leaves hints that the captain himself may be bisexual.
Whatever the case, all the captain’s psychological insight and endurance under pressure mean nothing to a naval command trying to hide its responsibility for a fatal tactical blunder. But while some of the good guys lose, some of them win and even a bad guy or two gets just a little better by the end of the tale.
The Captain is an exceptional novel of keen insight and victory by small steps, undeservedly out of print. I recommend it to anyone who can get a copy or an online version....more
Why did Whit Miller marry? Author Joseph Hansen poses that in the first part of this book, a story in three parts for which Whit's life in the late 19Why did Whit Miller marry? Author Joseph Hansen poses that in the first part of this book, a story in three parts for which Whit's life in the late 1960's forms the core. The tale has all the traces of the author's style: vivid prose, lots of people and dialog, steady pacing and well marked temporal shifts. Modern readers get a look at the plight of gay men coming to terms then with their sexuality.
The characters lack depth. Having become rich, Whit now wants a relationship. Though endowed with a healthy sex drive, he finds himself drawn only to the young and the beautiful. This alone counts for him as personality. That impulse repeats itself in one affair after another, and Whit never gains insight into his growing alienation.
"I wanted to belong to somebody," says one friend, and here lies another jinx. For Whit and the rest, dependence on others is an ideal they seek out. Emotions as such are a prime value. Oddly delirious acts and unlikely events tend to take readers out of the moment, as do one or two stylistic tics in the dialog. The characters' interests are limited largely to the vogue of an educated, academic West Coast elite.
The book has good and bad points. I liked the peek into the minds of gay men who lived through the terror of the mid-twentieth century. The rich detail takes in the vast expanse of Los Angeles right down to the working class areas and the nearby country, avoiding the bias of gay writers toward swank gay locales. Lovers of good prose will find the book a decent way to pass time....more
Would a gay author lead his readers on? Yes, if it serves some wider aim. Paul Binding evolves the characters in After Brock so as to voice ideals thaWould a gay author lead his readers on? Yes, if it serves some wider aim. Paul Binding evolves the characters in After Brock so as to voice ideals that have little to do with sexuality. These ideals, as the shared values of a political class, find their echo in Western cultural life, so a book that takes up that echo has a certain appeal.
Whatever one thinks of this, the key flaw lies in the fraught task of turning ideas into people. It's hard to think the Paul Binding whose Lorca: The Gay Imagination traced Lorca's sexuality so finely through his poetry could be the same man who here dismisses same-sex love. But one of the values his story stresses is conformity.
The plot is a complex parallel: 18-year-old Nat, lost in the hills along the Welsh border, lives an adventure akin to his father's some decades before. It turns out the father, Pete, endured a trauma when he was Nat's age. An aggressive reporter who puts it all together also stands in for readers as the stern judge of modern society and the British state upon the lives of father and son.
The teens in the story learn to embrace the judgments of society as they grow, and to forge emotions into a cold slag of indifference. When Nat faces prison, for example, his father accepts it without fight or feeling. So does Nat. I'm not kidding.
A big part of the plot evokes the erotic love young Pete feels for his buddy. He later writes it off as a teenage dabble, to be tossed aside after A-levels for a life of sexual conformity. How mature. Late in the book the futile life of a hastily drawn gay character justifies the shape-shifting by which gay or bi males turn straight.
The characters are lost within their own minds. Responsive only to the demands of an alien world, their personalities are steeped in an abiding obedience to impersonal values. This is the way slaves think, not grown men; but the writing portrays it as a virtue.
It might be said that something proper, even British, lies in the peremptory stoicism and low key masochism found in Nat, Pete and the others. But in fact these are the trademarks of a debased, reactionary, global culture. It's all put to poor use. The men's inner lives are not plausible, their dilemmas too often forced by unlikely plot twists.
Binding's ugly yarn is a slap against not just gay and bi men, but humanity as such. Aside from those interested in the effect of neoliberalism upon popular culture, I cannot recommend such a poorly conceived novel....more
Loading...
