The post-AIDS era begins
Valley of the Shadow and The Darker Proof
B Y
J O E L
R E D O N
Valley o f the Shadow. by Christopher Davis
(St. Martin’s, $13.95).
The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis,
by Adam Mars-Jones and Edmund White
(Plume, $7.95).
y impression of Christopher Davis’s
first novel was that Davis was trying to
imitate the style of Ernest Hemingway, mainly
by using run-on sentences and the word and to
connect sentences instead of ending them with a
period. “ The old man’’ in his first novel
(Joseph and the Old Man) seemed like a cliched
Hemingway type. Reading that book made me
angry and I never finished it.
In the first paragraph of his new novel. Valley
o f the Shadow, Davis writes: “ I was afraid of
the water when I was young and small and I
remember my father taking me out into it and
holding me under my stomach and then letting
me go.” In the jacket blurb Malcolm Boyd
observes: “ In 1929 Ernest Hemingway wrote
A Farewell to Arms. . . . ” He goes on to say
that in 1988 Davis wrote Valley of the Shadow.
Obviously I’m not the only person who sees the
connection. But to actually compare Davis with
Hemingway ought to be illegal, Hemingway
was a great writer, maybe the best, and Davis is
not, he may not even be “ good.” At best Davis
knows enough about Hemingway to try to
imitate him, but it comes out pretentious and
put-on. The book does get better, however,
once the narrator relaxes more into his material.
Valley o f the Shadow starts off with the
narrator’s memories about masturbation (which
may interest some people but doesn’t me) and
then goes into light pom — penises become
dicks. Then it’s Fire Island (“ and he was so
handsome” ) and promiscuity. Finally, the long
hot sexual relationship with Ted (who eventu
ally dies of AIDS). At one point the narrator,
while describing an evening with a trick and
what they did in bed, stops himself and says:
. . but prudence and a desire to preserve
some privacy even when I am no longer living,
when this will be read, prevent me from being
more specific.”
How about: Who Cares? In the narrator's
world everyone who matters is male, muscular,
witty and attractive — yet the narrator claims to
scorn “ gay culture.” Because he hates it but
boasts of his own sexual exploits. I’m not
inclined to feel sympathetic, while at the same
time the narrator is so busy pointing fingers at
everyone else’s promiscuities and shallow
nesses. Valley o f the Shadow, however, does
catch the flavor of New York in the early ’80s
and for that it will be read and remembered.
It doesn’t necessarily take a person with
AIDS to write convincingly about having
AIDS. For example, two years ago M. E. Kerr,
a writer of novels for young adults, wrote a
book called Night Kites in which a younger
brother confronts his older gay brother’s
struggle with the disease. Kerr’s characteriza
tions were simple but unquestionably authentic.
I don’t know whether Adam Mars-Jones has
AIDS or not, or whether Edmund White does
either, for that matter — but this fact never
occurs to me as it has when I’ve read other
AIDS fiction. The two authors of this collection
of stories are top-notch — they’d make me
believe anything. What they write is literature.
The Darker Proof is a book that tells us about
ourselves. If you want good, perceptive short
stories about people dealing with AIDS, look no
further.
Even though the Mars-Jones stories occur in
Britain, nothing in the experience of being or
knowing someone with AIDS is left out. One
character, losing his courage while having a
relationship with an HIV-positive partner (one
who becomes gradually more sick), thinks
nostalgically “ of the time when people had got
so exercised about who loved who, and how
much. Now it was simply a question of what
character of love would be demanded of him,
and how soon.” A narrator in the story
“ Remission” says, “ Health for me is more
than being not-yet-dead. It’s not something you
patrol; it’s something you must forget to patrol
or it’s not any sort of health at all.” Mars-Jones’
work is a little more brooding than White’s, but
this perhaps is only because his characters
suffer more physically and are not always in
longer-term relationships.
In White’s “ Palace Days,” two expatriate
lovers from America go to Paris (“ And just as
Europeans had once gone to America in search
of sex, in the same spirit he’d come to the New
World.” ) But the lovers eventually realize that
AIDS has so changed the face of their society
that the only home which exists for them is their
relationship together.
The Darker Proof is a book that left me
immensely satisfied.
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just out • 21 • July 1988