American Studies

by Mark Merlis

"An amazing first novel, a beautifully written work of historical fiction" ( Lambda Book Review), American Studies tells the story of 62-year-old Reeve who, as he recovers from a brutal beating, recalls the troubled and closeted world of his former mentor, a once-famous professor who was driven to suicide during the McCarthy era.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Gay, Queer, Gay Fiction, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Mark Merlis is an American writer and health policy analyst. He became an independent consultant in 2001, writing papers for government agencies and for organizations such as AARP, the American Cancer Society, and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Born in Framingham, Massachusetts and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Merlis attended Wesleyan University and Brown University. He subsequently took a job with the Maryland Department of Health to support himself while writing. In 1987, he took a job with the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress as a social legislation specialist, and was involved in the creation of the Ryan White Care Act.

Beginning in the 1990s, Merlis published a series of novels. His first novel about a closeted literature professor in the McCarthy era, American Studies, won the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Literature and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction in 1995, and his second, An Arrow's Flight, a riff on the Philoctetes myth, set simultaneously in the ancient and modern worlds, won the 1999 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction.

Merlis currently lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his partner Bob, and continues to work as an independent health policy consultant.

Reviews

[LenaRibka · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars



JD: A Novel was my first Mark Merlis. I read it in 2016.
JD: A Novel is beyond ingenuity.

I remember that I wanted immediately AFTER to read EVERYTHING Mark Merlis wrote. Don't we all think the same after something so powerful, beautiful and emotional? Why didn't I do it?!
How could I miss THIS?!

Mark Merlis, who debuted as a novelist in his 40s, penning four works of fiction that explored the joys, tensions and agonies of gay life in America in the 20th century, died Aug. 15 2017 at a hospital in Philadelphia. He was 67.

In one of his interviews Mark Marlis said:

“I am, of course, a gay man whose … novels are swarming with gay characters, and I have allowed myself to be marketed as a practitioner of a genre called gay fiction. But this is a commercial category, not an artistic one. I write, like anybody else, about how it is to be human.”

It is actually all you have to know if you decide to read Mark Merlis.

His novels are beautifully heart-wrenching and simply HUMAN.

What an enormous loss for us all :(

[Mel Bossa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edit added on August 25th 2017. Just found out that Merlis passed away at age 67 on August 15th. He was one of the first gay authors I read and his book American Studies is one I will never forget and will continue to reread every few years. An enormous talent and wit to spare. R.I.P.

__________


A profoundly moving story about the Lavender scare during the McCarthy days. But more than this, it's a very funny, touching, and human tale of Reeves, a bitchy, witty, and lonely, aging gay man, victim of an assault he suffered at the hands of a "trick." As he lies in a hospital bed recovering, he thinks of his past, and fantasizes about the straight guy in the next bed.

This book is so full of grace and intelligence, and every time I read the inevitable and tragic end, I feel a bruise on my heart.

This is very atypical sort of narrator for a gay book. Meaning, Reeves isn't this muscular gym addicted, Will and Grace type of gay man. He's a queen, from a time where it was dangerous to be one--come to think of it, it still is a little dangerous these days, right? A lot, depending on the country.

What I love about this book, is the details and vivid emotions Merlis awakens in my mind when I read his carefully chosen words. It's all there: the pre-WW2 years, the post-war years, the sexual liberation, the artificial eighties, the fear, the love, the sex, everything. Nothing is left behind.

And it always has me dreaming of Tom Slater's Invisible City...

Someone said that this book is about the Civil war between straight men and gay men in America, and it is.

The talent of Merlis is in the way he managed to show us that war raging in the tiny trench between two hospital beds.

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't tell you how many times I've re-read this book. Sometime I just pick it up to read about ADLs and snort with recognition (Activities of Daily Living). Long out of print, but has thankfully been re-issued. Smart, and rewarding. Everything by Merlis is well worth reading.

May 2015 update. Just read it again. Always worthwhile. Never noticed the reference to the "Christmas Truce" of World War I before. As with everything else in life, the more you know, the more you see.

This was a rare novel, when it first came out, which featured an aging main character. The more typical assumption seemed to be that only young men would be interesting to gay readers.

[Nikolas Koutsodontis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Το "American studies" του Μαρκ Μέρλις (1994) είναι βιβλίο που πιάνει πολύ σοβαρά την εμπειρία του λευκού ομοφυλόφιλου άντρα στην Αμερική του 20ου αιώνα και του αξίζει να θεωρηθεί ήδη κλασικό στην gay λογοτεχνία. Ο Μέρλις διηγείται την εμπειρία του αποσυνάγωγου, του διωγμένου, του εξόριστου ομοφυλόφιλου άντρα από το οικογενειακό, πολιτικό και κοινωνικό του περιβάλλον.

"Είμαστε υποχρεωμένοι να αλλάζουμε τόπο: η εξορία δεν είναι τιμωρία, είναι η κατάσταση μας. Με αυτήν αρχίζει η ζωή μας, όταν μας αποδιώχνουν από τον κόσμο των "κανονικών" ανθρώπων, όπου περιμέναμε να αφομοιωθούμε, και με αυτήν αρχίζει και πάλι , ξανά και ξανά". 170

Οι δύο παράλληλοι χρόνοι, ο τωρινός και η ανάμνηση ή ανάπλαση μέσω της φαντασίας του χτες, γίνονται με σταθερά το ποθούμενο, ορατό και σε κοντινή απόσταση αντρικό σώμα. Γίνεται με σαφή ορισμό της κοινωνικής, πολιτικής και ψυχολογικής πολυπλοκότητας του κενού, της απόστασης ανάμεσα στον πόθο και την εκπλήρωση του, ανάμεσα στους ανθρώπους γενικά, αλλά και εσωτερικά στο κάθε άτομο, μεταξύ του πραγματικού εαυτού και του ρόλου που καλείται να επιτελέσει.

"Έμεινα να στέκομαι εκεί που ήμουν, ενώ εκείνος προχωρούσε μέσα στο φως του επόμενου φανοστατη για να βυθιστεί έπειτα στο σκοτάδι. Και πάλι, τον είδα να ξεπροβάλλει, μικρότερο αυτή τη φορά, μέσα από την επόμενη λίμνη φωτός, και ακόμη μικρότερο στην επόμενη, καθώς ξεμάκραινε ολοένα. Είχα ήδη αλλάξει κατεύθυνση για να επιστρέψω σπίτι, όταν τον άκουσα να τρέχει, τον σκληρό ήχο από τις σόλες των παπουτσιών του πάνω στο πλακόστρωτο της γέφυρας. Όταν έφτασε δίπλα μου ήταν κάπως λαχανιασμενος, αν και δεν είχε διανύσει μεγάλη απόσταση. Λίγα μόνο χρόνια στο μύλο είχαν ήδη κάνει τη δουλειά τους. Είπε το όνομα μου και πέρασε το μπράτσο του γύρω από τους ώμους μου. Μια κίνηση, που την εποχή εκείνη δεν ήταν ασυνήθιστη για τα αγόρια της ηλικίας μας. 109-110

Το αντρικό σώμα, στην λαχταριστή επιφάνεια του ή και στην σύνθετη δαιδαλώδη εσωτερική του ψυχική πραγματικότητα, δίνεται από τον Μέρλις με τρόπο που μονάχα ένας ομοφυλόφιλος άντρας με μακρόχρονη εμπειρία ζωής μπορεί να το αποτιμήσει.

"Δεν μπορώ να του προσδώσω την ύπαρξη κάποιας εσωτερικής ζωής -λες και με έβαλε κάνεις να κάνω τον κριτή των ψυχών. Η επιφάνεια του και μόνο είναι τόσο περίπλοκη και συναρπαστική - τα μάτια, το στόμα, οι ώμοι το καθένα σαν μια καλοσχηματισμένη σκέψη, τα μπούτια του σαν διατριβή, η πνευματώδης διαλεκτική του πισινού του και το άλλο ego sum του πούτσου του: συγκεντρωμένος σε αυτά, κάθε στιγμή, πώς θα μπορούσε να του περισσέψει χρόνος για κάποια ιδέα ή κάποιο κίνητρο πέρα από αυτό που υπάρχει πάνω του; " 209-210

Η εκτίμηση της όψης, της επιφάνειας και η απόδοση σε αυτές νοήματος, αισθητικής και ιδεών έχει να κάνει και με την όλη λογική της camp τέχνης, μιας τέχνης που δεν απολογείται για τη στυλιζαρισμένη και ιλουστρασιον έμφαση στην επιφάνεια, μιας απενοχοποιητικής απόλαυσης του φαίνεσθαι και της ηδονής του. Και αυτή η τέχνη είναι στενά συνυφασμένη με την gay κουλτούρα.

Περιγράφεται, λοιπόν, ένας κόσμος αντρικός με αληθινά σαγηνευτική και ερωτική λεκτική αποτελεσματικότητα.

"Τον ξαπόστειλαν στο Σαίντ Μάρτιν, όπου όλα ήταν ιδρώτας και δημοκρατία, μυώδης Χριστιανισμός και κρύα ντους" 52

Έτσι αρχίζει ο απογαλακτισμός ενός από τους χαρακτήρες του βιβλίου. Ο κόσμος των αμερικανών αντρών βρίσκεται μέσα στις λέξεις του Μέρλις με τον θαυμασμό για τη δύναμη εκείνης της γερής και άνετης αγορίστικης λαβής πάνω στην ζωή που φέρει στους ιστούς του.

"Όμως του ανήκει ο εαυτός του, στέκεται εκεί άκαμπτος, ριζωμένος καλά στον ενεστώτα χρόνο" 207

Αυτή η κυριαρχία, αυτή η αρχιτεκτονική της νιότης με τις γερές της πλάτες και τον ιδρώτα, τις απάλευτες καύλες έρχεται να μυθοποιηθεί σε μια ειλικρινή δίψα, μια έλξη που δεν έχει ηλικιακό όριο. Μάλιστα χρωματίζει με ιδιαίτερη αξία την περιέργεια και την απορία , δίνοντας στις αντιδράσεις αυτές ένα ερωτικά αρρενωπό ύφος. Ενέχουν την ορμή, την ενέργεια, την αθωότητα, την σοβαρότητα που κουμπώνουν καλά στη νεότητα. 209

Ο Μέρλις παραδίδει με το βιβλίο αυτό τη συνπυκνωμένη εμπειρία και τα συμπεράσματα του στη ζωή, εκείνα τα "ποτέ πια" μετά από δυσάρεστες σεξουαλικές εμπειρίες (37) που έχουμε πολλοί πει, την έλξη των νεαρών γκέι για τους μεγαλύτερους άντρες με θέση (58), το κοίταγμα και την πρόταση στα παλιά παράνομα στέκια ομοφυλόφιλων (76), το πετσόκομμα της ομορφιάς που μένει πάντα άπιαστη στην παλιά λογοτεχνία (83), το πώς αισθάνεσαι ένα "άνοιγμα στην ζωή σου" με το ερωτικό σκίρτημα (87), το vuctim blaming (158), τη διαχείριση μιας πεζής πραγματικότητας που ένας ενθουσιασμός μπορεί να μας πετάξει σκληρά πίσω (195), η αίσθηση οτι ο κόσμος ανήκει στους στρέιτ άντρες ανεξάρτητα από ταξική καταγωγή (227), δίνει ακόμα πολύ σημαντικά ερωτήματα για την επαφή των αντρών, πως αναγνωρίζουμε ποια είναι γνήσια και ποια ρόλος (268) και τελίκά το πόσο φτάνουμε να σπάσουμε την άμυνα και να αγγίζουμε κάτι εσωτερικό. Ακόμα πιο σημαντική είναι εκείνη η σκέψη "Και τι είναι λίγο παραπάνω ντροπή στη ζωή μου;" (275) που θα πρέπει να ρωτάμε τον εαυτό μας μπρος σε καταστάσεις που δεν απαιτούν δειλία.

Το βιβλίο ακόμα, λίγα μόλις χρόνια μετά τις ανατροπές του σοσιαλισμού, αποτίει φόρο τιμής σε όλα τα λοατκι+ άτομα που συστρατευτήκανε με το αμερικάνικο κομμουνιστικό κίνημα στα δύσκολα χρόνια και με την βαθιά ομοφοβία που χαρακτήριζε το κίνημα. Ο Μέρλις είναι πικρός και επικριτικός με την Αριστερά- ιδίως με το πόσο στρεβλά υπάρχει στην πραγματικότητα η συντροφικότητα των κομμουνιστών, πόσο τελικά ως άνθρωποι έχουν μια ουσιαστική επαφή ή μια χάρτινη και προβλεπόμενη. Ο Μέρλις δείχνει μεγάλη οργή για την Αριστερά, δεν της συγχωρεί ούτε την ήττα (στα χρόνια του Μπους που γράφτηκε το βιβλίο μιλάμε για ολοσχερή υποχώρηση), αλλά ούτε και την ομοφοβία και πατριαρχία της. Είναι ίσως περισσότερο, αν και δικαιολογημένα κάπως, αρνητικός από όσο θα έπρεπε. Αυτή, ωστόσο ήταν η χώρα και η εποχή του και αυτές οι στρεβλώσεις στο εργατικό κίνημα.

Δίνει ο Μέρλις μια ποιοτική εικόνα της σκοτεινής εποχής του Μακαρθισμού, αλλά και βάζει στο κάδρο το ευρύτερο πλαίσιο των εργασιακών σχέσεων (101), τους ανθρώπους που προδίδουν την αστική τους καταγωγή και συντάσσονται με το Κόμμα της εργατικής τάξης, τους διανοούμενους με τους ιδανικούς τους συνδυασμούς του Γουίτμαν και του Μαρξ.

Εγκυβωτίζει αληθινά όμορφες ερωτικές ιστορίες στο πλαίσιο και την εποχή τους, ενώ έχει εξαιρετικά καλογραμμένες εικόνες και παρομοιώσεις με πανέξυπνο χιούμορ (η παρομοίωση μιας νοσοκόμας με τεράστια μερίδα παγωτού που λιώνει-206). Όλα αυτά κάνουν το βιβλίο! Η ισορροπία παρόντος και παρελθόντος είναι άψογη, τα γεγονότα συμπληρώνονται συνειρμικά και συνδέονται οι εποχές και τα πράγματα, συνδέονται τα συναισθήματα και οι μοναξιές, τα εμπόδια, τα αδιέξοδα, οι δυσκολίες, οι αναζητήσεις και η καθυστέρηση της ανακάλυψης του τρόπου να ζούμε καλύτερα όπως και μας αξίζει.

Τελικά ο τίτλος "Αμερικάνικές σπουδές" (στα ελληνικά "Α όπως Αμερική) είναι αυτός ο λογοτεχνικός,ο απόμακρος κόσμος, το ατομικό βασίλειο του κάθε ομοφυλόφιλου της εποχής εκείνης και ίσως και σήμερα που υψώνει απέναντι στην βίαιη πραγματικότητα της εξορίας του. Ο Μερλίς έχει τη σοφία να βάλει ένα καλό μέρος της πολιτικής και κοινωνικής ουσίας της Αμερικής μέσα σε αυτές τις σπουδές. Να τις προσδιορίσει και να τις ερμηνεύσει.

Παρά τα πολλά προτερήματα του το βιβλίο υστερεί σε συναισθηματικό βάθος. Κάπου κλωτσά σε μια ψυχρότητα όταν δίνει τη Μακαρθική περίοδο, την προδοσία και την αυτοκαταπίεση και αυτολύπηση. Δεν μας επιτρέπει να αισθανθούμε τους ήρωες του που περιγράφει εξαιρετικά όμως. Η καύλα και ο ερεθισμός, το πείραγμα του αναγνώστη υπάρχει μαζί με πολύ σκέψη και αρκετές σκηνές ουσιαστικής λογοτεχνικής αξίας. Απλώς είναι συχνά λίγο περισσότερο στεγνή η απεικόνιση των χαρακτήρων και των καταστάσεων.

Η υπόθεση του βιβλίου γενικά συγγενεύει με εκείνη των πιο σύγχρονων queer βιβλίων "Η ιστορία της βίας" του Εντουάρ Λουί και "Αυτό που σου ανήκει" του Γκάρθ Γκρίνγουελ, αλλά και με τις αληθινές ιστορίες του καθηγητή και πεζογράφου R. H. Barlow (1918-1951) και του ακαδημαικού κριτικού λογοτεχνίας F. O. Matthiessen (1902-1950).


Ένα σπουδαίο βιβλίο.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled upon Mark Merlis by Googling "Best Gay Novelists." His name kept coming up on best lists, but I'd never really heard of him. I'm often disappointed by gay literature novels. Too often the focus veers into sex, even when it's not apropos to the story. And while Merlis explores sexuality in American Studies, the focus of sex is handled in a way that reflects the main characters experiences in post WW2 America. Sex for gay men at that time was often furtive and fleeting. It was something one did and then compartmentalized, never to be discussed at length.

Merlis describes a time when everyone who was "outside" the norm was suspect. This is a very well written book that pulled me back to a time when everyone was looking over their shoulder, and those that didn't often paid a very big price.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this novel many years ago when it returned from the obscurity it had briefly descended into. I didn't review it at the time and when I did post a sort-of-review (see below) I realised I would have to read the novel again in order to do it justice and the following is that review:

I fell in love with the work of Mark Merlis when I read 'Pyhrus' (or 'An Arrows Flight' to American readers) which I have read many times since and never fails to both amuse and move me and it lead me to 'American Studies' which I have now read for the second time and has ensured that 2026 is going to be the year I read all of Mr. Merlis's oeuvre and it is fitting that I start in January with his first novel. I have no intention of providing a synopsis - it is there on GR and Amazon and in countless good and bad reviews available online since its first publication in 1994. I am going to discuss/point out aspects of the novel which I believe are important. There are things I am going to say which I wouldn't have said when I first read the novel and definitely wouldn't have occurred to me in 1994 if I had read it on first publication, but then I think how we respond to really great novels, and this is a really first rate novel, inevitably changes with time. What matters is whether a novel is trapped with its time or lives beyond. To be simplistic at the time Jane Austen wrote her novels there were countless similar novels about young ladies living in parsonages hoping to find a husband. But Austen is still read, still speaks to readers, in a way none of those forgotten lady novelists do. I am not comparing Merlis to Austen but the comparison is still valid. I begin my review pointing out what reviewers when 'American Studies' was published or later seemed to miss - that there are strong echoes of the Oscar Wilde/Bosie story:

"...I didn't believe in a world where a kiss is a prelude to a skull fracture..." that is from page 235 of my Houghton Mifflin hardback edition and if I had quoted more of what went before and after the echoes of:

"Some do it with a bitter look, / Some with a flattering word, / The coward does it with a kiss, / The brave man with a sword!" (from 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' by Oscar Wilde)

would be even more apparent. But I insist I am speaking of echoes not pastiche - it takes extraordinary skill to use the familiar in ways that are truly new - but it is also within the echoes of Wilde and countless other famous or notorious 'gay' scandals that this novel stands as the final tribute because the uncomplicated championing of men whose lovers failed to be worthy of them has shifted. Although not the central story in 'American Studies' the relationship between 19 year old Jimmy a undergraduate student of the professor Tom Slater is much more then a deus ex machina to keep the plot rolling along. Jimmy's failure to be worthy of the great Tom Slater is as all encompassing as Bosie's failure to be worthy of Wilde. In reality and in the novel both are banished into obliquity for failing to fulfil roles they had never asked certainly never been consulted or given a choice over. Remember what Wilde said of it:

"(It is the)...great affection of an elder for a younger man...(it exists) when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him..."

In reality Bosie was a dreadful shite and in the novel Jimmy is unformed, weak and frightened, barely more than a boy. But the real failure was Tom Slater - he is the great man - Jimmy is just a vessel that allows Slater to finally acknowledge his humanity and sexual needs. But it is always about Tom Slater, his needs, his desires, genius, etc. Today you couldn't write a relationship so one sided in its point of view but, and this important, Merlis writes accurately and convincingly from within the cultural standards of the time his novel was set and in which he wrote. That we see beyond them - that for us the 'panthers' that Wilde and his like feasted with are not ravenous devoveres and destroyers of genius but frightened and very young working class lads - is to our credit but we should hold back on to vociferous self-congratulation. Because 'American Studies' is something more than a failure to recognise future categories of victims. It is a brilliant, subtle and extremely find rendering of the variety and complexity of the varied nature of 'gay' men 'gay' experience in most of the twentieth century in the USA'

"We thought it was just the natural order of things that the world would force us underground and punish us unremittingly if we dared to show our faces...I am not sure any man my age has quite got over the feeling that his was ordinary, the way it was always going to be. By the time we were let out, like prisoners from a camp, we just stood around, dazed, to this day never quite believing that we had actually been liberated..." (page 144 in my hardback edition).

That is the reaction of one character who in middle age finds himself in the post Stonewall new era - but there are subtle portrayals of this man's attitudes and behavior to that of men like Tom Slater, but also how men like Slater were also formed by class and education. It is all to frequent that the variables and differences of gay life in America pre-Stonewall (and need I insist that the UK, Irish or French experience was equally different) are elided to make a tale of simple repression versus liberation with a undifferentiated dark age stretching back before those Greenwich Village drag queens fought back. Mark Merlis portrays that variety without belabouring it.

'American Studies' is a wonderful portrait of a vanished America and its genius lies in its universality. You don't have to be gay to read Merlis, anymore then you need to be a virginal spinster in a country parsonage to read Austen or perhaps realistically to be Jewish to read 'Goodbye Columbus' by Philip Roth. Great literature moves from the particular to the general because a great novelist:

"(will)...see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour” (William Blake Songs of Innocence)

My Original Review/Comments:

Were largely quotes from some of the praise 'American Studies' received on first publication. I see no reason to remove them and perhaps they reinforce what I was trying to say.

When this novel was first published it received wonderful praise in the UK:

"A first novel of startling maturity." - Daily Telegraph

"Mark Merlis proves himself an enviably accessible and assured writer...if 'American Studies' holds a mirror up to our culture of discrimination, it is also a very funny book, which surprises us with its sense of make-do hope." - Sunday Times

"Bitterly funny and deeply sad." - Times Literary Supplement

"An exceptional first novel." - Paul Bailey [an exceptional fine author I recommend you discover if he is unknown to you - Liam]

"A brilliant first novel...Merlis's language is precise, discriminating and sensitive to irony." - Literary Review

Yet sixteen years later Tom Cardamone included it in his seminal 'The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered'. Whether because due its inclusion there was shortly afterwards a flurry of new paperback editions and now nobody mentions that such a superlative work ever slipped out of print.

'American Studies' is simply fantastic - and must simply be read - in fact Mark Merlis has to be read - he is brilliant - a true original.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many interesting new books come out every week, and so many others that are older are recommended by friends that I rarely just randomly snatch something off of my dangerously over stuffed bookshelves. This weekend though I was running out the door to meet a friend and realized that I was so close to the end of the book I was reading that there was no way my current read would sustain me through my trip, especially with the Covid F train having been switched to local service so express tracks could be repaired. (Seriously, it should not take me nearly as long to get to Tribeca as it takes me to get to Pennsylvania. Can I get an amen!?) So I reached up and grabbed the book that looked lightest (weight not subject matter) and ran out the door. That book was American Studies. Obviously I went into this read with no expectations aside from that it would be easy to carry. Most of my books were picked up at library book sales or in used book stores and just looked vaguely interesting in the moment. Well I got this one right! This is one of the best written books I have had the pleasure of reading, and I read a lot of well-written books. The story itself is quiet, intellectually compelling, historically resonant, and very interior. It is both tragic and funny (the story is never funny, but the telling often is.)

Stories about educated, white, semi-self-loathing gay white men have apparently fallen from favor. I casually mentioned to a 30ish year old colleague (back when one had impromptu happy hours) that I have always had a thing for the movie "Boys in the Band" which is campy and tragic and wonderful and that I was sad to hear Ryan Murphy was remaking it because I despise everything Ryan Murphy touches. I am used to having people jump all over my Ryan Murphy criticisms and I expected that, but she instead went off on the dated stereotypes and the ways in which it made it appear as if all homosexuals were white, well off and educated and felt like aliens roaming the earth, miserable in their skins and bitchy. Well then. I was there, as a cis het woman, but one whose best friend was an educated financially secure gay white man (this was in 1989 where one of the dual storylines is set), and those stereotypes, that misery, the need to playact a great deal of the time, that really happened. As Merlis puts it, the gay men of his generation all wanted to be Noel Coward. And maybe it was different for educated financially comfortable white men than for gay men of other caste and class and educational level. I am white and educated and reasonably financially secure and so were most of the people I knew. But the concerns and pains of the men in this book (as in Boys in the Band), felt very real to me. Very. Merlis really captured his moments with his dual timelines in the McCarthy era, and in 1989 when people's fears and misinformation about AIDS created new wedges and levels of prejudice and reinforced that aliens and earthlings divide between gay men and their larger community. It does not have to, and really cannot, tell the story of all gay men at those points in time, but it tells the story of many men, that I know.

The story itself is fascinating. briefly, the main character is in the hospital after being beaten and robbed by a trick he picked up in a bar. When his friend brings him a book to read written by a person who had been his mentor in the 1950's it sends him down a rabbit hole of memory,, and the story bounces between the 1989 hospital room and the ivied halls of an elite university 30+ years earlier. The characters are brilliant and sad and superficial and loving and all have seen fun and exciting but have not ever seen themselves as people who had the option of settling down, of forming deep human connections, of distinguishing themselves, though it is clear those things look appealing to them.

I am doing a terrible job of selling this, but I cannot recommend it more highly. I mentioned before the sexual superficiality of all of the men is here - the adoration of male beauty, its fetishization is always center stage, or waiting to come on set peering around the curtain. I will leave you with one passage regarding the same so you can get a feel for the tone and the writing (describing his hospital roommate, a handsome young laborer who never speaks to him and who watches cartoons all day):

"I cannot endow him with an interior life -- as if a soul were mine to confer. The very surface of him is so complex and resonant, eyes, mouth, shoulders, each like a well-formed thought, thighs like a dissertation, the witty dialectic of his buttocks and the simple ego sum of his cock: spinning all this forth instant after instant, how could he have time left over for an idea or a motive beyond just being?"

[Charles Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is not an endorsement of amazon.com or any business owned by Jeff Bezos. Books for my reviews were checked out from a public library, purchased from a local brick-and-mortar book shop, or ordered from my favorite website for rare and out-of-print books.

I finished this book in 48 hours and pondered it for another 24. The narrative is heavy with the self-loathing that most gays experience their entire lives (Does it really get better?) Reeve is in hospital recovering from an assault. He's been bringing tricks (men who are gay for pay) home to his apartment building for twenty years, but this latest one beat him up and almost blinded him. He looks terrible, feels ashamed and terrible, and is being evicted by his landlords over the incident. His sickbed reveries are about the man, Slater, who was his teacher and, briefly, his lover at boarding school after World War II. His fantasies are about the young man with the mostly-severed thumb who shares the hospital room with him. A master at pacing, Merlis moves the reader from past to distant past to present, progressing story lines along several layers of narrative. There is resolution of the self-loathing for readers who hold out for his conclusion. I think Merlis is a treasure, one of the most under-appreciated gay writers in America.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is undeniably well written but the subject matter--the vicious cycle of self-loathing--doesn't make it an easy read especially when none of the characters are particularly likeable. It is, however, a timely history lesson in what it was like to be gay pre-"sexual revolution" and of the tragic consequences of conformity. Some of the author's phrases and ideas stuck to me like splinters and I liked turning chuncks of the book around in my head after I'd finished it. Given the fluid structure between the past and the present and the expansive tone of the narrative, I did better with this when i read large passages of it at a time. There was one event in the present-day story line near the end that just did not buy, but I did like how this story line resolved. All in all, well done but hard cheese.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book bridges the lives, perceptions, cultures, experiences of gay men across three generations in a way that I found moving and beautiful. Not a happy read, as it encompases anti-gay violence and self-loathing among gay men. But a raw look at the psychological costs of past gay-maleness. I want to teach this to my LGBT students just as a way for them to try to imagine how different the world used to be for gay men.

[Brett Glasscock · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Maybe the whole twentieth century is a joke, all its heroism a mere detour on the way to McDonald's."


i liked it! i didn't really connect with the tom storyline all that much, but the reeves one was kind of fascinating and emotional to me

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Reeve, 62, is hospitalized for an eye injury after a mugging from a trick. His straight roommate, only referred to as "the boy," is convalescing after damaging his thumb on the job. This story spans only a few days, but Reeve has time to reminisce over the past 40 years, coming back to the events revolving around the suicide of his mentor, Tom Slater, in 1952 and how this shaped Reeve's life.

Many beautiful parts of this writing that can only be felt through gay experience, and I look forward to reading more from Mark Merlis.

"I have always been partial to backs. I don't mean backsides, whose virtues are more generally appreciated, but backs, whose owners never see them and whose baroque, superabundant complexity is squandered, given away freely to those who will look. Here I have gone and excited myself.
After dinner, we go back to watching television, "Wheel of Fortune." I rather enjoy trying to guess the mystery phrases from the scattered letters. It's like hangman, but without the awful urgency as your body assumes its parts, one by one, on the gallows, ready to swing.
The boy is evidently more interested in the floozy who turns the letters. He has been touching himself absentmindedly through much of the show. I reach for a drink of water. He remembers me, glances over, and withdraws his hand from under the covers. For a while we both look only at the screen. I find myself feeling that it connects us, the lines of our vision meet at the vortex of the screen and we are comrades. But soon enough my shame takes over and I conjure instead a beam of disdain angling at me. It is his TV, I am an intruder, reading over his shoulder. He changes the channel as if to sever the unwanted intimacy. I turn my back on the boy. But I am aware of him as the dark side of the moon must feel the pull of the unseen earth."

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly captivating for its longing and aching disappointment, Merlis novel nevertheless displays hope amid dangerous times for a gay man dealing with his own hustler-abused closeted life.

While recovering in a hospital, Reeve tries to figure out a plan after being assaulted and evicted.
His school professor's mysterious past is revealed and he ruminates on the man's life. It's a curious tale within a tale, but also profound in its traces of hope amid the misery; a life wasted on regret, his teacher's story reflected in Reeve's own doubts.

Some wry and subtle sensuous moments are notable; Reeve's subtle flirtation with a hunky hospital roommate, his imagined sexual revenge exploits of others, including the young man who betrayed his professor. This is contrasted with his insecurity about his body, aging, and facing an open life as it could be.

But more clearly, Merlis makes the case for a then-impassable chasm between the straight and gay male. His comparison of body language include subtle nudges and winks as the dividing line between us and them, the doable versus the felonious. These are the insights to human frailties rarely depicted so well in any genre.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific book by a terrific writer! He really articulated well some things that I have felt and thought as an out gay male for years. Looking forward to reading his other titles.

Not sure how I missed this one when it came out. Maybe the awful marketing cover made me pass it by. So glad the subsequent paperback versions weren't so sexual

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not hear about this author until I read his obituary, so I decided to see if I could find his work. This was his first - sad, poignant, such an interesting point of view of the narrator. Off to read his three other novels.

[Dan Kagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I sort of loved it.

[Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic, heart-breaking book that is both a fictional retelling of the late life of F.O. Matthiessen--a towering figure in mid-20th century letters and one of the founders of American Studies--and a meditation on gay desire and culture in the age of AIDS. Not that you have to know anything about Matthiessen to like the book. (Really, I should strike the Matthiessen reference so as not to scare away folks who might think: American Studies? College? Professors? Yeesh.) How's this? Wanna read about forbidden desire and the consequences of claiming or denying it? Then read this book. Twice.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book with a title that doesn't do it justice. Mark Merlis is a great writer who really deserves more kudos than, I suspect, he receives. American Studies deals with homosexuality in the 1950s coupled with the paranoia surrounding Communism. Reeve's retrospective of his life and the life of his mentor Tom is, at times, downright depressing and often very sad, but also interesting, compelling, and real.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it - I haven't read a non-work related book in a year - a terrible statement about myself, but this was a great return to reading. Sparse, thoughtful, raw; Mr. Merlis provides characters so perfectly in just 274 pages.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Of course nothing came of it. We were two tunnels with no train."

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

An existential nightmare....

[Braeden Udy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first third of this book has some of the most beautiful writing about desire and temptation I have ever read.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A melancholy meditation by Reeve, an aging man who lies in a hospital, pondering a streak of lust that lingers from the beating he just received from a young hustler. Reeve finds himself falling into the past, thinking of his youth on a New England campus where a repressed gay professor befriended himself and scores of other male students. Merlis's debut novel zigzags through the pangs of jealousy that Reeve remembers feeling as his own close bond with Prof. Slater is displaced by the advent of Jimmy, a handsome preppy airhead who is more adept at playing with the professor's affections. What might seem like a superficial soap opera gathers suspense as McCarthyism worms its ways into the halls of ivy. Slater finds himself under double attack, hounded for both his youthful involvement with leftist politics and his all-male sherry parties that have gone on for too many years. Mark Merlis gives us a memorable tale of academic backbiting and betrayal, one that seems destined to haunt Reeve as he heads into a lonely retirement. We can try to imagine that Stonewall changed all that decades ago, yet today's senior gay community still looks over its shoulder, uncertain it will ever have genuine respect from the Establishment or affection from the younger gay generation.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Project: This was the third stop in a series of writers who I haven't read before!

General Review: For as much as I don't see the world in the same way that the narrator (and perhaps Merlis himself) does, I felt compelled to keep reading. What could have been an exclusively tawdry spin on age-gap infatuation and grooming antics unfolded into a stirring meditation on victimization, age, and the Lavender Scare. I chalk up the narrator's jadedness to the generational gaps between the boomers and the millennials. At one (very spooky) point, an older character muses: "Oh, guys my age, I don't think they'll ever let us retire. You know, the boomers, who the hell's going to support us in 2020?" Who indeed. After reading that line, I found out that Merlis is only 10 years older than my mom. It shows, in both good and bad ways.

Further Reading (?): Yes, definitely. Merlis's body of work is small. I plan on reading his remaining novels: "An Arrow's Flight," "Man About Town," and "JD." Of those three, "Man About Town" will likely be my next stop.

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read as part of a book club assignment. Otherwise, I'm not sure I would have ever known about this story. Nothing quite "happens" in the narrative, but floats along within a deep ocean of life experience never specifically constructed to stay in the shadows of time.

Lives considered wasted due to having to come to terms with the most unforgivable of lifestyles, but a beacon of hope for those that may not see a way out from under an oppressive moral regime. The connecting of two lives lived during a changing cultural background from opposite ends of the spectrum examines how that difference experience can completely change an outcome.

Beautifully written and easy to understand, even when it veers into fantastical personal history from the modern-day linear storytelling.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting narrative of how LGBTQ+ individuals overcame social and economic challenges in the 1950s. The shift between present and past to support an argument in the present was well done, though it gets a bit predictable as the novel progresses. The ending leans into a speculative take on how the mentor he admired might have spent his final weeks before taking his own life—basically, he overthought his late mentor’s final moments on earth.

A more shallow take would be: All that build-up just to suck a guy in the hospital.

[Virgowriter (Brad Windhauser) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Effective paralleling of two separate storylines--one of a college professor who kept his gay identity hidden during a time when being gay was illegal, the other of a sixty two year old man--former mentee of the professor--who's recovering from an assault. In his hospital bed, reflects on his former professor's life. Both show that being gay has never been safe. Interesting how the narrative present has little action but still feels like things happen (and not just with young roommate).

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific read! The description might sound like its a little dreary but Merlis' writing is lively and witty and he injects a good deal of humor into what could have been a long sad slog Most stories about aging Gay men are filled with regret and loneliness but Merlis manages to stay on the side of self-deprecation rather than self-pity. Sorry I am only now discovering this writer. I will read more of his books that are available.

[Sergei · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite extraordinary. A touching reminder of what the generation of gay men before ours went through. Their sad, limited views of love and sexuality, the veils and shame and secrecy and violence. In a way, the author reflects this generation without fully understanding the limits of his worldview, which makes it all the more poignant.

[OK · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as part of an individual study. I mean, it was decent, fine, but it wasn’t revolutionary to me. Perhaps of its time? Then again I am also not a sixty year old white gay man living in a university during the McCarthy era. The book’s use of POV and speculation was interesting and useful to study. I was moved by the scene where Reeve remembers his assailant pinning him down, looking over him, imagining him (Reeve) as a doorway to pass through.

3/5