The Straight Gay Novelist

Even though I started it well over two months ago, I finally got around to finishing the wonderful novel "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" this week.  Michael Chabon has been  one of my favorite authors ever since I read his epic Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay."  That book, which deals with the ebb and flow of two best friends' relationship as it spans continents, years and the growth that comes with transitioning into adulthood, has maintained it's position as one of my all time favorites, years after I closed it.

So it was with eager eyes that I picked out "Pittsburgh" in a Montana bookstore after reading the intellectual double whammy of "The Fountainhead" and "The Corrections."  It seemed like it would be a lighter book that I would breeze through but that ended up not being the case.  Something about the first 100 pages didn't keep my attention and after much deliberation I put it back on my shelf once "Harry Potter" came out and devoured my book reading energy.  Once I begin a book, no matter what I feel about it, I have an extremely hard time abandoning it and I am happy that my curse led me back to "Pittsburgh" a week ago.  Once I picked it up, I found myself completely immersed in the story of Art, a recent college graduate, and his aimless adventures with a new group of friends in their final summer before entering the dreaded world of adult responsibility. 

I'm at a place in my life where the stress of becoming an adult sometimes weighs itself heavily upon my shoulders but my "dance" world is very different from the normal post college world.  Chabon brilliantly connects the reader to a pack of four main characters as they struggle to find their group dynamic and build a place in each others lives, no matter how fleeting.  The most interesting aspects of the story come with the struggle the lead character wrestles with surrounding his sexuality.  Even though I've only read two of this author's novels, both of them have had prevalent homosexual story lines that have touched me deeply. 

It's not so much that you can't go out and find a novel containing gay characters but to have their struggle become part of the everyday life of a character in a mainstream novel seems rare.  There is a gay section in every Barnes & Noble, but the books there are usually foolish, poorly written, over sexualized fodder for the horny man's imagination.  Chabon writes about his gay characters struggle to be accepted by themselves and their friends in the same way he would write about a heterosexual's struggles.  Choosing to have gay characters so heavily featured in his books leads me to automatically assume that Chabon himself must be gay.  With a simple glance at the back cover, I was quick to discover that he lives with his wife in Brooklyn.  I find it so strange that so many people, myself included, automatically jump to the conclusion that to portray a gay character convincingly in a book or on screen must mean that the author or actor is gay.  However when Tom Cruise a gay man plays straight, we never once think about it being unnatural.  I don't know exactly what I'm getting to, but it seems like an unfortunate double standard of which I, myself, am guilty of. 

The same thing that made "Brokeback Mountain" such an important movie is what makes "Pittsburgh" a great book, the fact that at its core it is a great story.  The struggles with sexuality and relationships are those that everyone can go through, the lead character in this just happens to be struggling more than most.  I remember having a conversation with my dad about "Brokeback" loosing the Oscar and how upset my friends and I were.  At first he brushed it off as normal fan disappointment but then realized that it meant something bigger to the community.  We so rarely get stories that cast us as people rather than sidekicks or secondary characters.  To suddenly be brought to the forefront by a movie or a book like "Pittsburgh" is a wonderful and refreshing discovery.  Even though it took me two tries to be submerged in, I'm fortunate to have picked it up again because it is yet again, another great Michael Chabon novel. 

Comments

[Nicholas]

Matt. A very intriguing post indeed. I think you touch at the heart of what a lot of mainstream American culture - and gay culture itself - struggle with when it comes to homosexuality: how to identify the individuals beyond their orientations. Because that's what a gay person is, right? A PERSON...who happens to be gay. The literature - and art - that you speak of, instead chooses to see these gays not as homosexuals, but as people. It's something that I myself struggle with from time to time. For so long we have been told that sexuality is what defines a gay or lesbian individual, but what Chabon and Annie Proulx have a clear and beautiful understanding of is that sexuality is not a definer of a person, but rather the person defines sexuality.

[M]

Nick I think that is exactly what I was attempting to say but you managed to say it more eloquently and succinctly ;-) It's a tough subject and an interesting juxtaposition is something like "Queer as Folk" which we certainly have been indulging in but seems to take the opposite end of the spectrum; sexuality as raw and defining which has always been one of my problems with the show. Yet I continue to watch it.

I've never considered one of my top defining characteristics to be the fact that I'm gay. In fact I would probably put that rather near the bottom. But I guess I can see why, as a culture, many men choose to use that as a defining characteristic as a strange overcompensation for the repression that we all seem to go through at some point. Now I'm really rambling and need to sit down and gather my thoughts. Thanks for the beautiful comment though!

[Meg]

Hi. Stumbled upon your blog recently and this post reminded me of an old NPR interview with Chabon (from just after he won the Pulitzer) in which he talked briefly about the fact that people would often assume he was gay and would, at times, be upset to learn that he wasn't.

I think that happens less frequently now because his wife, who is a writer herself, accidently stirred up a controversy of the go-on-Oprah-and-be-attacked-by-crazy-women variety a few years back. She wrote an essay that appeared in the New York Times in which she talked about loving him more than she loves their children and it would seem a lot of people found this rather awful.

Anyway, if you're interested, the NPR interview is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1122285
The part where he talks about readers--and even journalists--assuming that he's gay is toward the very end. Last 4 or 5 minutes.

[Rob]

There was an article about his sexuality a couple of years ago too, iirc. I've flipped through Adventures, if only because my alma matter is the place he got his MA at(Pittsburg was his masters thesis) and the English dept is gaga over him and his work. I liked it, but it wasn't my cup of tea per say. Right now, I'm about half-way through American Gods by Neil Gaiman. That's an excellent book.

[jennifer]

don't you love it when something so personal to our individual identity is portrayed in a real way instead of resorting to stereotypes? For me, I find it so difficult to find Asians in art/literature/tv/theater without the usual cliches...we're good at math, geeks, or do kung fu. that's why I was so amazed that in the Harry Potter series, Cho Chang is portrayed without any mention of her ethnicity or an accent. amazing! I give major props to J.K. Rowling...and Chabon.

[jennifer]

don't you love it when something so personal to our individual identity is portrayed in a real way instead of resorting to stereotypes? For me, I find it so difficult to find Asians in art/literature/tv/theater without the usual cliches...we're good at math, geeks, or do kung fu. that's why I was so amazed that in the Harry Potter series, Cho Chang is portrayed without any mention of her ethnicity or an accent. amazing! I give major props to J.K. Rowling...and Chabon.

[M]

Meg! Thanks for commenting and the link to that interview, I will have to check it out. I am sure many people assume he is gay but if anything, I admire him more because he's not. I know it doesn't matter either way, but it's nice to see gay PEOPLE portrayed rather than gay CHARACTERS.

That's interesting what you bring up about "Potter" Jennifer! I had never really thought about that, but I guess that's maybe because Rowling did such a good job of not making it her defining characteristic! Even though cliches are usually cliches because they are somewhat true, it's nice to find authors who don't portray race or sexuality by those limited terms.

[Larry]

Two of the most interesting novels with gay characters I know are these:

1) Paul T. Rogers's Saul's Book. A very powerful work about "Sinbad," a teenage Puerto Rican prostitute working the Times Square area, and the older man who takes him under his wing and both loves and betrays him. Not, as they say, for the squeamish. But the book (which will be Rogers's first and last, since Rogers was murdered by the lover on whom he modeled the teenage hustler) is not just a story about life in the sex trade; it is also an extended meditation on love, trust, betrayal, redemption, and God. Rogers by this one masterly, little-known work alone comes closest in American literature to the work of Jean Genet.

2) Brian Malloy's The Year of Ice. Totally different. The narrator, an attractive, not-too-bright Irish Catholic teenager growing up in 1970's Minneapolis, is a gay kid who is as troubled by his mother's apparent suicide as by his own sexual fantasies. By making the kid at once homophobic himself and something of a bully, and at the same time surprisingly sympathetic, Malloy achieves an unusual balancing act.

Both are well worth reading.

(BTW: Are HTML tags no longer supported in comments here?)

[jakey dubs]

hey its jake. i am half way through and havent gotten around to finishing it yet, but its so great actually and so weird that i recognize everything about pittsburgh. i am so excited to see sienna as jane in the movie!!!!

[M]

Jake! I didn't realize they are making a movie! when does it come out? Who is playing Art and Arthur?!