Left To Themselves by Edward Prime-Stevenson (Vallencourt Books, 2016)
This novel, written for (and about) boys, was published in 1891 and is believed to be the first book ever published to be (self-proclaimed) “homosexual” in essence. Edward Prime-Stevenson (1858 – 1942) was an American journalist and novelist living in Europe. In 1908 he published The Intersexes, a defense of homosexuality from legal, moral, biological and personal perspectives.
Left To Themselves is an adventure story about two boys, the twelve-year-old Gerald Saxton and the seventeen-year-old Phillip Touchstone. Gerald’s father, who is vacationing with a group of (all) men in Nova Scotia, has sent for Gerald, and Phillip is enlisted as his chaperone on the journey, which goes repeatedly and dangerously wrong. The story thrillingly follows them from a resort camp in the Adirondacks to New York City to a shipwreck to an idyllic deserted island and finally to an ornery seaside town.
The two boys — or the boy and the boy/man – immediately form an uncommon and deep friendship and are devoted to one another in a tender and profound way. They are pursued and hounded at all stages of their journey by a handsome man who is intent upon kidnapping Gerald (for reasons that are never clearly defined), and who blackmails and threatens Phillip to gain access to his prize. This constant threat of blackmail is what, according to Eric L. Tribunella, who wrote the very interesting introduction, signifies the homosexual subtext of the book, for blackmail was a crime that originated with, and was primarily associated with, homosexuality.
The plot itself is reliant on coincidences that make no narrative or practical sense, and this fault weakens and blurs the reader’s enjoyment of the book. But as most adult readers will be reading the book for its literary and cultural merits, this narrative failure is of no real import.
A unique, fascinating glimpse into how homosexuality and adolescent sexuality were regarded in an earlier age.
The Outward Side by James Colton [Joseph Hansen] (The Other Traveller, 1971)
The Other Traveller was a publisher affiliated with the Olympia Press that published books with frank homosexual content. The Outward Side takes place in the 1960s in a small Californian town outside of San Diego. Marc Lingard is a Protestant minister and a well-liked and respected participant in the civic life of the town. He has a lovely wife named Margaret and is handsome and charming. The problem is he is homosexual, but has successfully repressed his sexuality except for a passionate and affectionate affair with a visiting theatrical director the summer he was 17.
Six months after his marriage he replaces the marital double bed with singles and stops having sex with Margaret. He masturbates compulsively and fantasizes about having sex with the young hunky California boys who parade around town in their tightly-fitting swim trunks. When a (male) librarian in the town is arrested for hosting a “ring” of high school boys for orgies in his (nicely decorated) bachelor pad, Marc is thrust into a drama that results in him coming out and moving out of town with a hot blond 17-year-old, who after one night of sex pledges himself to Marc for the rest of his life.
James Colton is a pseudonym for the well-regarded writer Joseph Hansen (1923 -2004; best known for his series of Dave Brandsetter gay mystery novels), and there is an attempt to make Marc a sympathetic and believable person. The book is pro-gay and liberal, advocating for sex education and the rights of migrant workers. The sex scenes (both real and imagined) are plentiful and explicit, and the writing about sex is, within the constraints of a pornographic vocabulary, erotic and unsensational.
So an odd book — a strange combination of tones and genres that is an interesting depiction and product of a specific time and place: small town America on the cusp of Stonewall.
This beautiful book, subtitled A Memoir of Grief, is a memorial to Plante’s long-term partner, Nikos Stangos and their relationship. They lived together in London for almost all of their adult lives. Nikos was Greek by birth, born there during the German occupation in the 1940s. He was educated in the United States and settled in London, where he wrote poetry and worked as an editor at Thames and Hudson. By all accounts he was a brilliant and charming man and a passionate and dedicated lover.
In a series of very brief (a few sentences) recollections and observations. Plante recalls Stangos’ life and the life they shared. Yet despite this minimalistic approach, the portrait he creates is both large and complex. Plante’s observations and admissions seem to be self-aware and honest, and this acuity lends an astringent tone to what might have been a sentimental and indulgent work.
A beautiful and moving memorial to the mysteries and complexities of marriage.
Guest of a Sinner by James Wilcox (Harper Perennial, 1995)
I had read and enjoyed several James Wilcox novels (Modern Baptists, Miss Undine’s Living Room, Sort of Rich) back in the 1980s when they were first published, but hadn’t read anything of his in a long time, so when I saw a paperback copy of this book for sale in the used books section of Northshire Bookstore in Manchester (Vermont), I bought it, and I’m glad I did. Unlike earlier Wilcox novels, which take place in the South and have an evident southern sensibility, Guest of a Sinner is set in New York City, and is saturated with details of life in NYC late in the 20th century. Wilcox is very good at capturing the moods and atmospheres of the city, and the book is generously populated with a large cast of authentic and eccentric fin de siècle New Yorkers.
At the center of all these characters is Eric Thorsen, a man whose stupefying beauty has in some ways incapacitated him. A talented but unsuccessful pianist, Eric (barely) makes his living as a rehearsal pianist and teaching piano to underprivileged students, while dreaming of his fabulous debut at Carnegie Hall. He lives in an (illegally acquired) rent-controlled apartment in Murray Hill. His sister, Kay, lives in a gloomy basement apartment on the Upper West Side. (Like all good NYC novels, this one revolves around real estate, and a sort of residential musical chairs drives much of the farcical plot.) Kay works in Macy’s Cellar and is having a doomed but happy affair with a married man; Eric panicked and left his fiance at the altar many years ago and subsequently leads a monastic existence in New York (he is often mistaken for a homosexual).
Both Kay and Eric become involved with a hapless and rather bedraggled woman named Wanda Shopinski, who is having apartment problems of her own. Orbiting around this central triad is a constellation of very bright minor characters: Mrs. Una Merton, who lives directly below Eric with her dozens of stray (and highly odoriferous) cats; Mrs. Fogarty, the owner of a newstand who does not hesitate to participate and manipulate other people’s lives; Lamar Thorson, Kay and Eric’s tragically (and mysteriously) widowed father, who lives in Tallahassee but appears with alarming frequency in New York; Russell Monteith, Eric’s very wealthy friend who has recently divorced his wife and embraced a homosexual lifestyle, and Arnold Murtaugh, a short ex-priest with a mysterious sexual charisma.
Wilcox makes a delicious and quietly hilarious souffle from these ingredients. His humor is so subtle and unforced that the reader often wonders if Wilcox himself is on the joke. Wilcox makes most other comic novels seem gross and artificial by comparison — perhaps because his humor is always connected to the underlying pathos of his characters’ humanity. They strive to be (and do) good in a world that seems especially designed to embarrass and defeat them.
An interesting and engaging novel that chronicles the “marriage” of two gay men in England. Cyril and Len meet one another at a basic training camp while performing their National Service in 1954. They exchange “conspiratorial smiles” and quickly fall in love, and begin a relationship that lasts until Cyril’s sudden death (of heart attack) in 1981.
The novel is artfully composed of eleven chapters that read like stories; each chapter jumps forward in time from two to five years. This episodic yet detailed and intimate portrait allows the men and their relationship to realistically and interestingly evolve over time. They split up at one point and pursue other loves, but reunite a short while later, both realizing that they are happier together than apart.
Cyril and Len suffer the indignities, inconveniences, and persecution of being gay in postwar England, but nevertheless manage to lead a conventional and happy domestic life together. Neither of the men is particularly interesting and the book is mostly focused on the drudgery of everyday life, but this lack of sensation gives the men a genuine humanity, and their relationship, which is considered so abnormal and a such a threat to polite society, is as ordinary and natural as their love.
The American Stranger by David Plante (Delphinium, 2018)
I found this book at Rizzoli’s when I went there to buy a copy Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend for a friend. I had no idea that David Plante, a writer I have long admired, was publishing a new novel and was delighted to find and buy the book (fortunately P is close to N) . I started reading it almost immediately and was captivated by its piercing beauty and wisdom. I think it is an extraordinary book.
The American Stranger follows the young adult life of Nancy Green, a Jewish girl from New York City getting her masters degree in literature (Henry James, of course) in Boston. Nancy’s parents are refugees from Germany and are secretive about their past. They are wealthy and cultured and Nancy is well loved by both her parents.
In Boston, she meets Yvon, an odd and insular young man who grew up in a “parish” of French Canadians in Providence, Rhode Island. He is younger than Nancy, an undergraduate. The first half of the book chronicles Nancy and Yvon’s passionate love affair, which ends traumatically for both of them when Yvon’s unstable and dependent mother kills herself, feeling abandoned by her son.
Nancy then meets and somewhat rashly marries Tim, a wealthy refined British Jew from the Middle East, who works as a barrister in London. Their marriage is a disaster almost from the beginning. Tim is cold and abusive, Nancy feels alone in unfriendly London, and suffers several punishing miscarriages. (One of the reasons Tim married her was because he wanted children — his first wife was unable to.) When Nancy finds out that Tim’s mistress is pregnant with his child and that he plans to keep both the woman and the child in his life, she leaves him and returns to New York. The book ends with her failed attempt to find Yvon, who has disappeared.
Plante’s writing is faultless: poised and elegant, and both the world and characters in the book have a haunting and slightly mysterious aura. The American Stranger is a jewel.
The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing (Knopf, 1973)
A disappointing and somewhat tedious novel from Lessing. Perhaps it’s because the main character, the dully named Kate Brown, is an unengaging and unlikable woman. After devoting herself selflessly and tirelessly to raising her four children, coddling her selfish husband, and maintaining a charming household in suburban London, Kate finds herself at 40 with a purposeless and passionless life.
Fortunately, she is fluent in Portuguese, so when her husband and children all leave her for the summer to pursue opportunities in far-flung places abroad, she is hired at an international human rights agency, where she finds that her experience as a mother and housewife qualify her to serve as a sort of corporate den mother, solving everyone’s problems and tidying up other people’s messes.
After a few months working in London as a nanny/interpreter, she is sent to manage a conference in Istanbul. There she meets a much younger man; they become lovers and when the conference concludes they take a holiday together to Spain where they both become gravely ill. This is the only part of the book that is narratively engaging: Kate and her young lover unwisely travel to a remote Spanish village where no medical care is available, and Lessing potently evokes nightmarish Sheltering Sky atmosphere of being dangerously out of one’s depths in a foreign land.
Kate abandons her nearly dead lover, who is being diligently but inexpertly nursed by nuns at a nearby convent, and gets herself back to London, where she recuperates in a luxurious hotel for several (very expensive) weeks. She recovers her health but finds herself financially compromised, and so moves into a basement flat owned by a strange kittenish young woman, with whom she forms a strong but unbelievable bond. They live together for several tedious months of mutual healing and self-discovery and then Kate Brown abruptly decides to return to her family and her home.
This book is very much a product of its time. The fact that it attempts to explore the difficulties of a woman searching for a rewarding and fulfilling life as something other than a mother or wife is worthy and admirable, but Kate’s insufficiently imagined and evoked life prevent Lessing’s novel from engaging or rewarding the reader.
A Heavy Feather by A. L. Barker (The Hogarth Press, 1978)
Another dark, disturbing and idiosyncratically brilliant book by this fascinating writer. A Heavy Feather is self-defined on the half-title page thusly: “This is the story of Almayer Jenkin’s progress through life. ‘You start alone, you finish alone,’ she says. ‘It’s fine to be alone, it’s a revelation, truth at last.’”
The book does, indeed, as promised, follow Almayer Jenkin through her life, beginning when she is a young child and finishing in her old age. Yet it does this in an unusual and interesting way: the novel is comprised of nine chapters, and each of them records a brief period in Almayer’s life from different vantage points alternating between first and third person. In the sections narrated by Almayer (about half) she is very much at the center of the book, but in many of the other sections, different characters — her father, her friends, her husband, her son — take center stage and Almayer’s presence in the book is refracted and tangential.
Almayer is an interesting and original character from any and all angles. Her mother left her and her father when she was a baby, and her father, a loving but dangerously incompetent parent, barely supports the two of them with his struggling plumbing business. He dies when Almayer is a teenager, and she is sent to live with a family of benevolent strangers whose life she fairly ruins with her naivete and instinctual honesty. She then sets out on an independent life, first becoming involved with a pair of mismatched homosexual lovers (as usual, Barker’s world matter-of-factly includes characters of many different and under-represented sexual persuasions) and later marries a kind and decent (but somewhat clueless) husband. She ends her life as a successful yet solitary business owner in London.
As with all books by Barker, what makes this one especially interesting is the acuity of the author’s perception and expression. The book skips haphazardly (it seems) through time and space but each time it lands Barker’s skills allow her to quickly evoke a complete and authentic world inhabited by interesting and well-developed characters. And so, despite its fractured and episodic nature, the novel feels rich and whole, and Barker’s prose is as bracing, funny, and elegantly assured as always.
Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert Jenkins (George H. Doran, 1918)
A slight and silly but charming book set in London during WWI. Patricia Brent, an intelligent and resourceful young lady, is resigned to her fate as a spinster although she is still in her twenties. She lives as a “paying guest” in a rooming house along with many other sad and thwarted people, and works as a private secretary for a “rising” young member of Parliament (it is doubtful he will ever rise).
One day she recklessly tells her housemates that she is engaged to be married, and thus begins the romantic adventure that leads her to the altar. She presses a strange man in a restaurant into posing as her fiance, and it turns out he is no other than Lord Peter Bowen, one of London’s most desirable and charming bachelors. He immediately falls in love with the Patricia and insists that their pretend engagement is real. This annoys Patricia and she spends most of the book trying to withstand his (charming) courtship, despite all the help he is given by his (charming) friends and (charming) family.
The book is amusing — many of the characters are urbanely funny, including Patricia, who has a wry and cynical sense of humor. But because Peter is so thoroughly charming, Patricia’s obstinancy seems contrived to provide a plot, and this makes the book seem somewhat effortful — it lacks the scintillating elegance and speed of Evelyn Waugh’s early novels (Vile Bodies, Decline and Fall).
Sigrid had told me a year or so ago that she was working on a novel about a woman who inherits a Great Dane after the dog’s owner, a friend of the woman’s, dies. This sounded like a promising premise for a novel, so I felt predisposed to like the book, but I was surprised by how much Sigrid does with this simple premise and how rich and rewarding this book is.
The narrator is an independent woman who lives alone, a writer, an intellectual, a professor. The friend whose dog she inherits is also a writer and teacher — in fact he was the narrator’s teacher and mentor early in his career, but the narrator, unlike many of her fellow female students, did not have an affair or marriage with the man. Instead they shared a long and close friendship.
She is surprised, however, when he commits suicide, perhaps because of writer’s block, and his third wife tells her it was his wish that she would adopt his dog, Apollo, a Great Dane that he had found abandoned in Central Park. Although the narrator has no experience of owning dogs (she is a self-avowed cat person) and lives in a rent-controlled apartment that forbids them, she agrees to take the dog, and of course bonds with it in a very real and touching way.
The story of the narrator’s and Apollo’s courtship and romance is constantly interrupted by observations and explorations of many diverse topics (dogs in literature, the relation between men and women and sexual harassment, competition in the literary world, life in New York City). By including so much material that is not fictionalized and reads like essays, Sigrid gives this novel a very original and pleasing texture. At times the writing and tone made me think of several other writers: Susan Sontag (interesting, given Sigrid’s relationship with her — see Sempre Susan), David Markson, Lily Tuck, Lydia Davis. There is something very cool and bracing about the tone of the book that completely prevents the dog story from becoming sentimental: it’s a very winning combination of subjects and tones, and makes the book seem very fresh and refreshing.
It felt to me as if in some way Sigrid had found her true voice in this book — or perhaps it is only the matter of her doing in this book what she is so adept and skilled at doing, and not trying to do anything that is usually expected from a novel. A smart and beautiful book.
