10 October 2006

Ackerley, J.R. We Think the World of You (1960). New York: Poseidon P, 1989.

This book details a love triangle between an older bachelor, a younger married man, and a dog, Evie. The title, then, is pretty clever. Despite the older man's narrating the novel, i.e. using "I" throughout, the pronoun used in the title is "we". The plural signifies any two points of the triangle, for indeed, all persons think the world of all persons, and yet jealousy comes into it quite naturally, destroying whatever potential harmonies could come of all this.

Also destroyed is Frank, the older man/narrator. He ends up with Evie in the end, the dog he spent time with only to get closer to the younger man he really loved. This is becoming a difficult thread to deal with in my reading of late. Time and again I've read books where an older, "gayer", upper-class man is in a consuming love with a younger, "straighter", lower-class man. Why is this such a staple in the 20th-century gay male canon? I imagine Forster, Isherwood, Burroughs, Ackerley, et al. were just living out their fantasies through fiction, a tradition spanning all genders and gender types, and without getting too much into it, it's clear that there's something very alluring about youth, about people who sit way out at the extreme ends of the traditional gendered-behavior continuum, and about people who are forced through lack of ability or interest to allow you to do all the thinking for them.

No book yet in the 1900s has ended with a central gay character overcoming this trap of fantasy.* Of course, I've only read up until the 1960s, after which gay subcultures come out fully into the public sphere and masculinity becomes expanded in scope to include more people than "men who prefer sex with women." Here's how The Joy of Gay Sex, 3rd ed. puts it. Well, I was going to quote it for you, but while TJOGS is pretty much a godsend for any closeted gay boy wanting to come out, full of plainstated truths and incredibly helpful advice (in between all the "hott" "pics" and how-to's along the lines of the original JOS's kama-sutra-y stuff), the language of these passages tends to be a bit too...unbearable out of context, I'll say.

To love men is to love whatever it is that is "the masculine", and for most gay men—well, for all of us—what is attached to "the masculine" has for so long been one small set of objects and images that what else can you expect us to gravitate toward, obsess over, and write about?
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*It's interesting that Forster's Maurice, the first major gay novel written in the 20th century, resolves its plot with such a relationship, treating it as a kind of salvation whereas writers after him portray it as a trap.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"...masculinity becomes expanded in scope to include more people than 'men who prefer sex with women.'"

I don't think you want to use such glib definitions of heterosexuality since the other end of the binary (if homo/hetero is such a thing) is "men who prefer sex with men." Using preference, rather than orientation, to define these terms makes a person vulnerable to having their prefernce changed--leading to charges of recruitment and promises of "cures."

Saying I prefer Pepsi to Coke (which is a silly and illogical thing to say) means any number of factors might change your preference. Availability, price, marketing, coercion, etc. Now, saying I am naturally and biological oriented toward Coke (a perfectly smart way to be, proof of evolution in fact) renders those factors moot. Unless Jesus tells you to drink Pepsi. Then you better do it.

11:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

biologically oriented

11:51 AM  
Blogger Dusty said...

This is all true, for the most part. Maybe "have sex" instead of "prefer sex" was the way to go.

I'm still trying to figure out whether I believe in biological orientations/foundations for homosexuality. I did, and I see how in doing so I fight the radical right's assertion that this is a choice I've made, and thus don't deserve equal rights.

But buying completely into biological orientations neglects the affects that sociology, psychology, geography, et al. have on a person's sexual identity. Contemporary queer theory looks at identity (sexual or otherwise) as fluid and contextual: you are who you are due to where and when you are and how your world around you is.

I think all this is the reason I've been having such a hard time placing these characters in knowable sexual-identity boxes. Those boxes, if they exist, weren't even built until the 60s/70s.

10:04 AM  

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