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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 4, 2002)
BOOKS * white on Proust chose the other two (sin and crime), which makes his fiction much stronger than that of his gay contemporaries. Proust did transpose many of his gay experiences into hetero sexual terms, just as he reconsti tuted his Jewish mother as a Catholic, and as he converted his father from a doctor to a govern ment minister. These transposi tions from the gay autobiographi cal reality to the straight fictional invention is, in fact, one of the most creative aspects of his novel. cized at the time for showing a gay man as the product of a suffocating mother and absent father— the neo-Freudian explanation of homosexuality that the gay community had rejected. O f course I argued feebly that I had been showing one mother, a particular father, an individual son, and that I was not at all proposing a general etiology. But at that moment in gay history there were still so few representations of gay men or lesbians that inevitably each portrait was taken as generic. Gay critics asked if a new novel gave young gays positive role models. Did it endorse clichés about gay effeminacy, bitchiness, immaturity? Did it show the gay community as suitably pro gressive and socialist and united with blacks, women and other minorities? Did it show Asian CM: Would you have any interest in writing a biography men as sexually passive (a dangerous cliché)? of a writer or other figure who Did it present black men as well-endowed studs (an equally destructive assumption)? was not gay? Some of this emphasis on political correct EW: Yes, of course. I’m work ry C hristopher M c Q uain ness... was a useful corrective to unexamined ing on a historical novel now prejudices, but gay writers often perceived gay that is based on the life of critics as narrow and Stalinist. One solution Frances Wright, a Scottish was to insist that gay critics did not speak for woman (heterosexual) who founded a disastrous Isherwood and Vladimir Nabokov— Isherwood the general gay reader. utopian colony in Tennessee in the 1820s. as a model of clarity and sincerity, Nabokov as This early clash between critics and novel someone gifted with a deeply sensuous approach ists eventually developed into a much larger CM: What does being a “gay writer” to the material world and a tirelessly inventive split between gay academics mean to you? style. 1 have always admired Colette for her and theorists on the one side EW : I think the era of huge vocabulary, her unexpected take on love and the gay creative commu gay fiction is coming to an and sex and her passionate response to nature. nity on the other. In the end, mainly because there’s Among living gay writers, the three that make ,- * i i f ; ■ ' • 1980s, when queer theory no longer much of an audi me feel that I’m not alone are Alan Hollinghurst, was the most lively intellec ence for it. In the 1970s gay Andrew Holleran and David Leavitt. tual trend in the States, this fiction was exciting to writer split appeared particularly and reader alike because CM : Do you consider Proust a more pri dramatic. Gay novelists were new areas of experience— mary influence than Genet? overshadowed by more glam cultural, sociological, inti EW : Proust is the bigger influence, the orous queer theorists. mate and political— were writer I have reread the most often at crucial being mapped. But now gay points in my life, starting in high school and CM: In a gay culture culture has assumed its per continuing at strategic moments in my subse that often seems as vacuous manent form, perhaps. quent career. as mainstream pop culture, is there still a place for rela CM: Do you ever feel CM : Would the lives and work of Proust tively difficult art, such as you’ve been pigeonholed as or Genet been so inspired if their sexuality the novels of Proust and a gay apologist, shifting the had not been the focus of internal and exter Genet? focus away from the merits nal conflict? Were these difficulties a sort of EW : There will always of your work? backhanded “gift” that will be denied to cur be a coterie of gay readers EW: Although writers rent and future gay writers? who will prize their sophis pretend they are indifferent EW : That is a fascinating question and hard tication and depth, their refinement and to their audience, in fact they are usually more to speculate about. Genet, of course, was quite originality. J H sensitive to it than they admit. The audience, open about his sexuality and a genius so per naturally, can he a small coterie rather than the haps his example disproves the idea inherent in Portland Arts & Lectures presents EDMUND general public, hut a coterie’s expectations can your question. WHITE along with fellow biographers Francine du he all the more tyrannical. To he sure, Genet had no available positive Plessix Gray and Jam es Atlas 7:30 p.m . Jan . 16 Gay novelists of my generation (Larry metaphor for homosexuality. Like everyone at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Kramer, Felice Picano, Andrew Holleran, else of his epoch he could choose only among Broadway. For tickets call 503-227'2583. Armistead Maupin, Paul Monette) were sub three models— homosexuality as crime, as sin jected to a rigorous examination, hook after or as illness. Whereas most middle-class C hristopher M c Q uain is a Portland writer and hook. For instance, I can remember my 1978 authors chose the illness metaphor (as a claim filmmaker. novel Nocturnes for the King o f Naples was criti on the heterosexual reader’s sympathy), Genet Prolific w riter and modern gay icon Edmund Wliite visits Portland r this month ^ to talX about | one of his wk predecessors, p Here’s a little sneak preview. «MCvy. Idmund W hite has unequivocally been one : of the most valuable participants in post- Stonewall gay culture, from his involve- I ment in the Violet Quill, a group of gay writers formed in New York in the early 70s, to his own successful career as a novelist, essayist, biographer and cultural critic. He co-wrote the original 1977 The Joy o f G ay Sex, and his 1982 autobiographical novel A Boy’s Own Story is widely considered a land mark of contemporary gay fiction. In the ’90s, W hite turned his focus to liter ary biography, writing on the lives of two of the 20th century’s most revered novelists, both gay men: Marcel Proust, whose Remembrance o f Things Past (1917-1927) is considered one of the greatest novels of all time, and Jean Genet, whose midcentury novels of transgressive, dan gerous and criminal homosexual existence were seen as beautiful allegorical texts. As a modem cultural figure, W hite himself can he described as a more approachable, con temporary version of Gore Vidal. He is a man of learning whose writing is expansive, insight ful, informative and invigorating. This month W hite will he in Portland dis cussing his btxik on Proust as part of the Port land Arts and Lectures series. Just Out inter viewed him via e-mail about Proust, Genet and gay writing today. Christopher McQuain: You’ll be dis cussing Marcel Proust, on whom you’ve writ ten a biography. Aside from Proust and Jean Genet, who are your “writer-muses”? 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