Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (May 17, 2002)
may 17.2002 BOOKS B rown : T he L ast D iscovery of A merica by Richard Rodriguez■ Viking Press, 2002; $24.95 hard bound. Out on the shelves Lurie’s style is always down to earth and stoic, with no place for flights of floweriness. She unsentimentally— though sometimes humorously— charts the pain and joy of the emotionally wary but hapless. Here, that style is applied to real-life subjects who happened to be possessed of more drama, quirks and eccen tricities than most writers usually give their fic tional creations. The author hit it off with Merrill and his “friend” at Amherst College in 1954. During the 40 years that followed, she knew them both as a couple and as writers. She notes that both were independently wealthy and privi leged (Merrill was the son of Charles Merrill, founder of Merrill Lynch) but chose to live rel atively modestly. The couple also declined to join what Lurie refers to as “the international set of rich, famous homosexuals,” choosing instead to cul tivate aesthetically like-minded friendships without regard to class, gender or orientation. (Thrill-seeking Truman Capote found the cou ple “boring.”) The relationship was burdened from both an increasingly casual polyamory and inequali ty in the fulfillment of literary ambition: Mer rill is now venerated, but Jackson’s gift went unacknowledged by publishers, critics and audiences. The two also dabbled in the supernatural— hence the titular “spirits”— as documented in Merrill’s master piece, The Changing Light at San- dover. However, what Lurie ini tially saw as a bemusing experi ment turned into years of eerie obsession and isolation, during which the couple seemed to pre fer their supernatural friends to the tangible ones. The author makes it clear in her foreword that she was not the pair’s closest friend and that a memoir— as opposed to biogra phy— is highly selective, drawn mainly from the limited resource of human memory. But the story springs from Lurie’s lucid mind in clean, ener getic bursts. Her sharp recollections hit the read er like so many poison darts: Absorbed quickly, they linger in the consciousness until we feel Merrill and Jackson’s (and Lurie’s) experiences— the exhilaration and defeat— were our own. — Christopher M cQuain JH Richard Rodriguez discovers brown, while Lesl6a Newman’s latest is black and white cannot respond to this call, cannot “choose a side.” Nonetheless, the market ichard demands reconciliation. As a Rodriguez writer, he laments that his eth writes poet nicity— deemed “Hispanic" by ically. He the government, for which he keeps his sen thanks Richard Nixon with as tences short and much irony as sincerity— sweet. Fragment shelves his books in a special ed. W hen he category apart from the “white” hits his rhythm, (dubbed “universalist”) writers the language he admires. becomes florid, He notes that audiences flowing, evoking attending his readings consist a passionate, at . . „ , . . , Richard Rodriguez reads from Brown mostly of Hispanic writers-in- times erotic, ^ j 7 at Borders training, while out in the hall, imagery, a gush 7 young lesbians wait to hear the poet scheduled o f emotion or an all-consuming idea— with after him: “Why couldn’t I get the lesbians for out drowning the reader. Faulkner edited hy an hour? And the lesbian poet serenade my Hemingway. Mexican American audience? Wouldn’t that T he simplicity of Rodriguez’s style serves a he truer to the point of literature?” complexity o f thought. Dispensing with the Perhaps he might also lament this review, usual postmodern jargon, he deconstructs the appearing here because he is a “gay writer.” ambiguities of U .S. racial relations and cul Then again, maybe not. He attributes his fasci tural politics hy targeting simplistic under nation with the ambiguities of “brown" not lying assumptions. Indeed, Americans have only to his “mixed” ethnic heritage hut also to oversimplified, telling the story as a conflict his life as a gay Catholic. In either case, recon of “black vs. white,” when, Rodriguez argues, ciliation remains elusive, more so in the latter: the United States has been “brown” from its “My brown paradox: The church that taught inception. me to understand love...also tells me it is not But, Rodriguez asks, what is brown? W hat love I feel.” kind of brown? Red brown, chocolate brown, As a writer, Rodriguez wants to speak to his mud brown? T he question goes to the heart of gay audience; and to his Hispanic audience; the country’s absolutist racial definitions: the and to the lesbians in the hall; and to the 19th century “one-drop theory” that designat straight guy writing this review. He wants to ed an ostensibly “white" person “black” speak to you, whoever you might he. And he because of “mixed-race” parentage or the wants you to listen. black honors student accused hy Rodriguez will read from his peers of “acting white.” But Brown: The Last Discovery o f then, he probes, what is America 7 p.m. May 17 at Bor “white”? What is “black"? ders, 708 S.W. Third Ave. T he insistence on racial — Kevin Moore purity quickly becomes moral istic, informing the ideologies S he L oves M e , of right and left— the militias S he L oves M e N ot and segregationists hut also the by Leslea Newman. separatists and multicultural- Alyson Books, 2002; ists; both sides demand $14.95 softcover. “authenticity.” Rodriguez— bom o f M exican and Native rom Leslea Newman, the American parents (or, as he groundbreaking author of puts it, the conquistador and H eather Has Two Mommies, the Indian), raised a C atholic comes a new collection of yet living as a homosexual— 0 1 l6 S&1/6 ^Boutique “The adult gift shop fo r lovers with good taste ” V A dult G ifts & C ards * L otions & P otions V M assage O ils * M en ’ s & W omen ’ s L ingerie V S ex T oys * N ovelties * A dult C andies & G ames V 20% O ft S elected L ong G owns Open Mon-Sat 1720 SE 122nd Avenue • Portland OR 503-252-2017 • www.lboutique.com romantic fiction. She Loves M e, She Loves Me N ot pretends to explore a wide diversity of contemporary lesbian relationships. Eleven stories deal with a supposed taboo, each spin ning a denouement meant to keep us on our toes. In “Girls W ill Be Boys,” a young butch mistaken for a man gets it on with a straight woman; “Keeping Abreast” is about a butch/femme couple shaken up by token signs of breast cancer; in “Mothers of Inven tion,” a butch reluctantly gets pregnant out of love for her girl; “Flight of Fancy” show cases a femme confused by her arousal for (eek!) another femme; and in “A Ston e’s Throw,” a butch is shocked by her attraction to (gasp!) another butch. Mirroring a stereotypical straight world, the bulk of Newman’s couples encompass dis tinctly separate gender roles; it’s a claustro phobic construction of mainly butch/femme lovers, who refer to one another as my femme/my butch and reject butch/butch or femme/femme action as unnatural and dan gerously transgressive. Sister hood is dead; femmes are repre sented as universally catty and competitive toward each other, especially in the presence of hutches. She Loves M e succeeds in bringing up an array of issues, but it fails miserably at mirror ing the queer heart. It is awk wardly out of tune with a large part of our community. Thus, if you long for a text with room for diversity and play, stick with On Our Backs; if a sexy piece of prefeminist era is your cup of tea, this compilation will make you swoon. — Els Debbaut F amiliar S pirits by Alison Lurie. Penguin USA, 2002; $ 13 softcover. K evin M oore is the Graphic Director at Just Out. E ls DEBBAUT is assistant manager o f In Other ovelist Alison Lurie’s Familiar Spirits is a memoir of the revered 20th century queer poet James Merrill and his partner of more than four decades, the widely ignored writer David Jackson. N Words Women's Books and Resources. C hristopher M c Q uain is a Portland free-lance reviewer. LASER HAIR REM OVAL sona laser hair removal specialists • Patented treatment process effectively reduces or eliminates unwanted hair from all areas of the body • Four on-site-state-of-the-art losers • Now treating white, blond, grey hair with laser • Guaranteed results • Gender friendly dinic mm* Thousands o f men and women have experienced the Sona difference. Call today! 503 - 443-2250 www.laseritnow.com .... D'Mer , r r ,, . c . spring special o->n Purchase a packaqe for any body area 5285 SW Meadows Rd Suite 270 amj seJ nd area area of equal equYa| and add add a a second Lake Oswego. OR 97035 or lesser value for FREE oj 1 •ti
