White, Edmund. Forgetting Elena. New York: Random House, 1973.

Amnesia stories fall into two camps, I think. One is the case where the person gets amnesia and knows it, and everyone else knows it, and so the drama is whether or not the amnesiac can be teased or lured back into full awareness. This is the romantic-comedy camp of the genre, though maybe The Bourne Identity could be fit in here, too. The other camp is the one where the amnesiac wakes to a world where he knows no one (including himself) and no one seems to know him (or they don't let on that they do). This is a horror/suspense camp of, like, Memento and Dark City and the like.

The one interesting thing about White's first novel is that it fits into neither of these camps. The narrator wakes up not knowing who or where he is, but that to announce such an affliction would be a very big mistake (why? unclear), so he hides his amnesia from everyone around him. As a result, everyone treats him as they always have, and he must use these clues to figure out who he is.

I suppose one reason he can't let on he's amnesiac is the setting of the novel. This is an island culture (it's post-Stonewall Fire Island, really) where decorum is everything and people are judged by their social position. It opens room for some comedy, though not much for those who were born right around the time Fire Island's heyday was winding down.

I read the book looking for a funny or maybe even just humorous novel written by a gay man or about gay men to teach in my 20th Century Fiction class next fall. I thought this would be an easy task, but it's proven near impossible. We've taken ourselves so seriously for so long. I mean, we've had to, one could argue. I may have to settle for Breakfast at Tiffany's.