What do you think?
Rate this book
Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story
The critically and popularly acclaimed coming of age/coming out story from the author of Borrowed An AIDS Memoir . "Witty as it is anguished and as full of understanding as of anger, this is Monette's best book."-- Booklist
278 pages, Paperback
First published June 22, 1992
157 people are currently reading
5509 people want to read
About the author
Paul Monette
43 books152 followersOnline Guide to Paul Monette's papers at UCLA:
http://findaid.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/...
In novels, poetry, and a memoir, Paul Monette wrote about gay men striving to fashion personal identities and, later, coping with the loss of a lover to AIDS.
Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1945. He was educated at prestigious schools in New England: Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, where he received his B.A. in 1967. He began his prolific writing career soon after graduating from Yale. For eight years, he wrote poetry exclusively.
After coming out in his late twenties, he met Roger Horwitz, who was to be his lover for over twenty years. Also during his late twenties, he grew disillusioned with poetry and shifted his interest to the novel, not to return to poetry until the 1980s.
In 1977, Monette and Horwitz moved to Los Angeles. Once in Hollywood, Monette wrote a number of screenplays that, though never produced, provided him the means to be a writer. Monette published four novels between 1978 and 1982. These novels were enormously successful and established his career as a writer of popular fiction. He also wrote several novelizations of films.
Monette's life changed dramatically when Roger Horwitz was diagnosed with AIDS in the early 1980s. After Horwitz's death in 1986, Monette wrote extensively about the years of their battles with AIDS (Borrowed Time, 1988) and how he himself coped with losing a lover to AIDS (Love Alone, 1988). These works are two of the most powerful accounts written about AIDS thus far.
Their publication catapulted Monette into the national arena as a spokesperson for AIDS. Along with fellow writer Larry Kramer, he emerged as one of the most familiar and outspoken AIDS activists of our time. Since very few out gay men have had the opportunity to address national issues in mainstream venues at any previous time in U.S. history, Monette's high-visibility profile was one of his most significant achievements. He went on to write two important novels about AIDS, Afterlife (1990) and Halfway Home (1991). He himself died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.
In his fiction, Monette unabashedly depicts gay men who strive to fashion personal identities that lead them to love, friendship, and self-fulfillment. His early novels generally begin where most coming-out novels end; his protagonists have already come to terms with their sexuality long before the novels' projected time frames. Monette has his characters negotiate family relations, societal expectations, and personal desires in light of their decisions to lead lives as openly gay men.
Two major motifs emerge in these novels: the spark of gay male relations and the dynamic alternative family structures that gay men create for themselves within a homophobic society. These themes are placed in literary forms that rely on the structures of romance, melodrama, and fantasy.
Monette's finest novel, Afterlife, combines the elements of traditional comedy and the resistance novel; it is the first gay novel written about AIDS that fuses personal love interests with political activism.
Monette's harrowing collection of deeply personal poems, Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog, conveys both the horrors of AIDS and the inconsolable pain of love lost. The elegies are an invaluable companion to Borrowed Time.
Before the publication and success of his memoir, Becoming a Man, it seemed inevitable that Monette would be remembered most for his writings on AIDS. Becoming a Man, however, focuses on the dilemmas of growing up gay. It provides at once an unsparing account of the nightmare of the closet and a moving and often humorous depiction of the struggle to come out. Becoming a Man won the 1992 National Book Award for nonfiction, a historical moment in the history
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 244 reviews
June 23, 2011
I came out at 17. I came out when I fell for a man 11 years my senior. I fell for a man who, in relation to me, was in a position of authority. It was one of the luckiest things to have ever happened to me in my entire life.
There are many who will read this and self-righteously pronounce it to have been damaging. How very wrong they would be. Damaging is what my life would have been like if I had not met this man. That life is the life that Paul Monette has written about in this book: A life of self-loathing encounters with gay men as equally filled with self-hate, a constant battle to suffocate yourself, to turn yourself to ice. For those who have not experienced it, it is the equivalent of cutting out your heart, gouging out your eyes, lancing your eardrums, and cutting out your tongue because that is the only way to get through the each-and-every-day when you look at, talk to, laugh with, but not fall in love with the other young men that surround you.
We had a relationship that lasted for a year. For the most part, we enjoyed it although he found it frustrating not to have me around more often than I could be. Through him, I found a community of gay men: educated, professional, and well-adjusted. The most critical lesson they taught me was that you could be gay and a man, gay and successful. They taught me that I did not have to be ashamed.
I read this book, and I give thanks that the years he suffered were not my years. And I give thanks for the laughing man by my side today, a thanks that goes as much to men like Paul Monette who, a lifetime and a continent away, made it possible for men like me to not live the life he had to live. Where ever you are Paul, a big sloppy kiss thank you.
Pink Dot: Singapore's Very Own Version of a Gay Parade
[image error]
There are many who will read this and self-righteously pronounce it to have been damaging. How very wrong they would be. Damaging is what my life would have been like if I had not met this man. That life is the life that Paul Monette has written about in this book: A life of self-loathing encounters with gay men as equally filled with self-hate, a constant battle to suffocate yourself, to turn yourself to ice. For those who have not experienced it, it is the equivalent of cutting out your heart, gouging out your eyes, lancing your eardrums, and cutting out your tongue because that is the only way to get through the each-and-every-day when you look at, talk to, laugh with, but not fall in love with the other young men that surround you.
We had a relationship that lasted for a year. For the most part, we enjoyed it although he found it frustrating not to have me around more often than I could be. Through him, I found a community of gay men: educated, professional, and well-adjusted. The most critical lesson they taught me was that you could be gay and a man, gay and successful. They taught me that I did not have to be ashamed.
I read this book, and I give thanks that the years he suffered were not my years. And I give thanks for the laughing man by my side today, a thanks that goes as much to men like Paul Monette who, a lifetime and a continent away, made it possible for men like me to not live the life he had to live. Where ever you are Paul, a big sloppy kiss thank you.
Pink Dot: Singapore's Very Own Version of a Gay Parade
[image error]
May 10, 2019
Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story is a memoir written by Paul Monette in 1992 as he was fighting AIDS and it also won him the National Book Award. He died three years later at the age of 49.
This book was written about the first half of his life — from childhood into his twenties. Monette was a gay man who came of age in the 60’s and attended elite schools like Andover and Yale. He knew early on that he was different sexually and unsurprisingly had major identity issues as he was in the closet and remaining invisible was so difficult for him. He expressed as bi-sexual.
The writing in spots was really quite good. Not as consistent as I would have liked but I probably wasn’t the target audience. While I have empathy I can’t relate as viscerally to many of the situations. The writing was self indulgent at times, as memoirs often are. There aren’t a lot of characters other than the author that this book focuses on for more than a few pages. I found the sections around his prep school life far and away the best part of the book, 5 star stuff. He writes poignantly about his teenage obsession with Liz Taylor and how he felt he was the opposite of Holden Caulfield, the main character in The Catcher In the Rye.
4 stars. The discussions around sex are pretty explicit or at the very least are consistently peppered throughout the book. This was similar to my experience in reading And The Band Played On by Randy Stilts which was a remarkable read by the way.
This book was written about the first half of his life — from childhood into his twenties. Monette was a gay man who came of age in the 60’s and attended elite schools like Andover and Yale. He knew early on that he was different sexually and unsurprisingly had major identity issues as he was in the closet and remaining invisible was so difficult for him. He expressed as bi-sexual.
The writing in spots was really quite good. Not as consistent as I would have liked but I probably wasn’t the target audience. While I have empathy I can’t relate as viscerally to many of the situations. The writing was self indulgent at times, as memoirs often are. There aren’t a lot of characters other than the author that this book focuses on for more than a few pages. I found the sections around his prep school life far and away the best part of the book, 5 star stuff. He writes poignantly about his teenage obsession with Liz Taylor and how he felt he was the opposite of Holden Caulfield, the main character in The Catcher In the Rye.
4 stars. The discussions around sex are pretty explicit or at the very least are consistently peppered throughout the book. This was similar to my experience in reading And The Band Played On by Randy Stilts which was a remarkable read by the way.
July 2, 2017
To say that I love this book would be a pathetic understatement.
I do not rank myself among lovers of memoirs, and here I am, having finished my next non-fiction book by Paul Monette, and desperately trying to find the right words that could do justice to Monette's life and his amazing personality.
In Becoming a man Paul Monette told a life story of growing up, coming out, finding himself. It's a long painful process, full of fears, angst, shame, suffering from low self-esteem, self-hatred,doubts and giving up hope of ever being happy. It's about his closet-I. A period of time from his birth to the day when he met Roger Horwitz, his soul mate, who become his lover for twelve years, and whom he lost to AIDS.
A very intimate and poetic prose, beautiful, emotional and absolutely non-put-down-able. Paul Monette can convey emotions like nobody else. It's one of his greatest talent.
I know whom I have toBLAME THANK for my infatuation for this author: even if Ije says that she is just a bit nerdy, I consider her as an expert of Paul Monette. Since my first book by Monette, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, we haven't stopped talking about him, and if you have a look at his profile page and see how many informations, links, videos, Ije posted there, you won't doubt her passion for Paul Monette. And I'm so glad that we read this book together(thank you, Ije!), and shared our opinions about this amazing MAN.
It is the most fascinating thing about GR - you can find the most interesting books that you can discuss with the same reading nerds like you, books that you'd probably never come across if you be on your own.
It's why I'd recommend you to read Ije's review.
Just a little advice from me:
If you have never read anything by Paul Monette, don't start with this book. YOU HAVE TO READ Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir BEFORE. Of course you can read his fiction novels or his poems first, and then Borrowed Time and ONLY after it you can read this one.
And then(VERY IMPORTANT!) watch the documentary:
Paul Monette: On the Brink of Summer's End
Our BR with Ije here
I do not rank myself among lovers of memoirs, and here I am, having finished my next non-fiction book by Paul Monette, and desperately trying to find the right words that could do justice to Monette's life and his amazing personality.
In Becoming a man Paul Monette told a life story of growing up, coming out, finding himself. It's a long painful process, full of fears, angst, shame, suffering from low self-esteem, self-hatred,doubts and giving up hope of ever being happy. It's about his closet-I. A period of time from his birth to the day when he met Roger Horwitz, his soul mate, who become his lover for twelve years, and whom he lost to AIDS.
A very intimate and poetic prose, beautiful, emotional and absolutely non-put-down-able. Paul Monette can convey emotions like nobody else. It's one of his greatest talent.
I know whom I have to
It is the most fascinating thing about GR - you can find the most interesting books that you can discuss with the same reading nerds like you, books that you'd probably never come across if you be on your own.
It's why I'd recommend you to read Ije's review.
Just a little advice from me:
If you have never read anything by Paul Monette, don't start with this book. YOU HAVE TO READ Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir BEFORE. Of course you can read his fiction novels or his poems first, and then Borrowed Time and ONLY after it you can read this one.
And then(VERY IMPORTANT!) watch the documentary:
Paul Monette: On the Brink of Summer's End
Our BR with Ije here
April 28, 2015
There are not enough stars for this book.
I don't even know if I can ever review this meaningfully and fully capture my reading experience. This book won the National Book Award for 1992 and I am not surprised because it is simply amazing but also deeply haunting and painful. This is one story, a true story that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
This is more than a coming out story, it is indeed a life story or half a life story as the author describes it and I am grateful that the author managed to share this story before he died in 1995.
We are taken along the journey of Paul Monette's childhood, adolescence and early adulthood as he grapples with everything that life throws at us as we grow, but also struggles with his own closeted existence.
What an amazing man to be able to fully understand what was happening in his life and then years later explain this to the world.
His writing is phenomenal as he takes us to his simple but loving upbringing, his childhood in Andover, his parents, the struggles and resillience of his disabled brother, his uncles, school and the way in which he tried to cope with his sexuality by hiding his feelings and over compensating for this hiddeness in the way he interacted with others. By this I mean he had a 'straight' facade which he thought would fool others but didn't fool everyone and sustaining this facade consumed much of his teenage years and early twenties. Living in the closet cast a shadow over his high school experience and his University days and early career because it denied him the opportunity to be who he truly was and also led him to make some dangerous and unhealthy choices in all sorts of ways.
His writing shows us a young American white male, who isn't from a privileged family but who manages to ride on the cusp of 'upper class white privilege' because of his intellectual ability. He gained access to prep school and Yale because of his intellect and managed to negotiate these stages of his life because of his intellect.
And that intellect flows through this powerful writing as Paul Monette shows us how his years in the closet both shaped and mis-shaped him as a person and individual. The way in which the fear of being seen as homosexual influenced his choice of friends and his behaviour, not just in high school but in University, is heartbreaking but also fascinating. Of course people do often present themselves in the best light and hide all kinds of things about themselves, but this need to hide and present a false fascade had a deep impact on Paul's early life, his teen years and early adulthood. The closet for him was a place that cast a shadow on his daily activities, on the way he saw himself and the way he interacted with people around him. Although he was extraordinarily clever he couldn't enjoy life fully and truly because he couldn't be himself.
For me as I read his story I felt the loss of freedom and the lack of self love and it has left me feeling quite heartbroken that anyone should have to experience life in this way. Of course people can experience this in all kinds of way because the world is a difficult place. Societal pressure, family expectations, lack of opportunity, low self esteem can cast shadows into any life and cause people to neglect their desires and hopes. Freedom is such a gift but for so many people it has to be fought for and it is not just the freedom to do things but also the freedom to be.
The writing just drew me in and gripped me and I was so happy that I read this together with my friend Lena so that we could share our experiences. Sometimes I was horrified by the emotions and the strain that being in the closet must have placed on Paul at such a young age and it made me think about the need to support all young people to be fully who they really are.
As a priest I appreciate Paul's anger against the way the bible was used to beat gay people and rob them of their humanity, an utterly disgraceful way of using the bible which persists today. Although he was not Catholic and was brought up Episcopalian like myself, his anger against the Roman Catholic church flows off the page in a way I could only describe as scorching. It is a well deserved anger because the religious condemnation at the time had little to do with Jesus and much to do with religious politics and the need for the religious institutions to retain power over the masses, something that religious institutions and political institutions and so many other societal organisations, have been doing since the dawn of time: the creation of the 'other' who is then vilified and outcast as a way for the power holder to retain that power. I am glad for the religious leaders and communities all over the world who seek to welcome and include all people and to value and love them which is what the bible requires of us: real love, real welcome, not the hatred and exclusion that Paul and so many others have experienced.
There is a lot of pain in this book. It is a kind of invisible pain and Paul Monette speaks about it very early on. It is the deep relentless pain of being disconnected from who you really are and having to pretend so you can fit in. In some ways this was his choice because he met other gay men who chose to live openly, so if he had wanted to he could have done the same, but for him the desperate need for conformity and acceptance was overriding and consuming. In the end it was a deep love for his partner Roger, who he met in his late twenties, that enabled him to break free and live and love openly as a gay man and that is what love should do. Love should enable us to flourish. This made me realise the importance of community because Paul didn't have the gay role models or communities and the kinds of social groups that we have today.
Having to live up to the expectations of others is a kind of pain that I rebelled against even as I read this book. My life has not been easy as a 20th/21st century black African woman but I have always been free, free to be me and I have revelled in it even when people have disliked me and excluded me. Being myself is my version of resistance because I come alive most when I am truly me. So to read this story of a young man having to deny who he truly is, is just painful and i am glad that Paul Monette found love with Roger and then Steven and Winston, even if Roger and Stephen were lost to AIDS.
It struck me that there was a noticeable lack of political awareness in Paul's youth. His life seemed to be focused on studying, working to earn money and trying to fit in with others and to hide his sexuality. All of this seems to happen in a vacuum or through a lens of closeted sexuality. Paul does experience the assassination of Kennedy but only because it provided him with an opportunity to cope with a date that he had arranged with a young woman. Paul mentions in his writing that being in the closet and trying to pass as a straight person very much consumed him and I suppose together with studies and work he wouldn't have had the time or the inclination to engage or absorb political and social change. His life was very much focused on what was immediate to himself which in many ways makes sense. Why explore the world outside when you are trying to stabilise the world inside?
Paul avoids the draft to the Vietnam war by declaring his sexuality on the forms he is asked to fill in. He was rejected for being gay. The one time in his early twenties where he comes out and ironically it benefits him. He is aware of the civil rights movement and the Stonewall riots but only through a glass darkly, but he eventually gets to see things face to face when he meets Roger Horwitz and his political engagement eventually rose to the fore in the most powerful way as an AIDS activist.
I think Paul's writing has a way of comforting those who struggle with life, not just people who are LGBT, but anyone who struggles with where life has placed them. This is not just a story about an individual, it is also a story about family and the difficulties of raising a disabled child. Indeed his brother's childhood and all the operations his brother endured show us what it was like to be disabled in the fifties and sixties and the ways in which disabled people were excluded, separated in institutions and hidden away. So here Paul shows us another kind of closet which is one that is created for people who have physical health or mental health conditions.
Paul's work is also a commentary on the cost of 'privilege and power'. He shows us how he was touched by this life of privilege even though he was at the margins, and how this privileged class retains their power and privilege by the process of exclusion but not all of those privileged people were happy especially some of the women whom he taught poetry to. They were in gilded cages and closets of their own.
This is indeed a beautiful story which portrays an underlying pain and struggle to fit in but which also shows a journey towards truth, the truth of being who you really are and the need for self love.
And when love arrives the writing evokes hope even though that hope is tested years later in the grip of the AIDS crisis. Thankfully Paul Monette was able to travel this journey and experience love and friendship and despite his untimely death, his life shows us how we should embrace who we are and allow others to do the same, allow others in our society, churches and other institutions to be different and to be who they fully are.
But his writing and his life are also a beautiful testimony about the power of love, not just love from another person but love of self and the life that flows from within us if we allow it to.
And at the end it is also a testimony of life. I think about my gay brothers. They are my only brothers and they love me as their sister. And I think about Paul Monette and all those lost to Aids and I am grateful for my brothers who visit me and bring me Baileys indulging my sweet tooth, and they listen to my difficulties and I listen to their's and we plan trips to Stonehenge and who knows where else beyond. And they too have stories of pain but thankfully they found their way with courage and are living life to its fullest. I think of Paul and Roger and Stephen and I delight in the lives of my brothers.
And I am grateful to have taken this time to read and reflect on the early life of Paul Monette, grateful that we have the knowledge, the strength and the vision to protest and not allow homophobia and hate to ruin our society, our governments, our Churches and our lives. And I am grateful that Paul's words and his testimony give us the fire and the courage to continue the struggle.
I don't even know if I can ever review this meaningfully and fully capture my reading experience. This book won the National Book Award for 1992 and I am not surprised because it is simply amazing but also deeply haunting and painful. This is one story, a true story that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
This is more than a coming out story, it is indeed a life story or half a life story as the author describes it and I am grateful that the author managed to share this story before he died in 1995.
We are taken along the journey of Paul Monette's childhood, adolescence and early adulthood as he grapples with everything that life throws at us as we grow, but also struggles with his own closeted existence.
What an amazing man to be able to fully understand what was happening in his life and then years later explain this to the world.
His writing is phenomenal as he takes us to his simple but loving upbringing, his childhood in Andover, his parents, the struggles and resillience of his disabled brother, his uncles, school and the way in which he tried to cope with his sexuality by hiding his feelings and over compensating for this hiddeness in the way he interacted with others. By this I mean he had a 'straight' facade which he thought would fool others but didn't fool everyone and sustaining this facade consumed much of his teenage years and early twenties. Living in the closet cast a shadow over his high school experience and his University days and early career because it denied him the opportunity to be who he truly was and also led him to make some dangerous and unhealthy choices in all sorts of ways.
His writing shows us a young American white male, who isn't from a privileged family but who manages to ride on the cusp of 'upper class white privilege' because of his intellectual ability. He gained access to prep school and Yale because of his intellect and managed to negotiate these stages of his life because of his intellect.
And that intellect flows through this powerful writing as Paul Monette shows us how his years in the closet both shaped and mis-shaped him as a person and individual. The way in which the fear of being seen as homosexual influenced his choice of friends and his behaviour, not just in high school but in University, is heartbreaking but also fascinating. Of course people do often present themselves in the best light and hide all kinds of things about themselves, but this need to hide and present a false fascade had a deep impact on Paul's early life, his teen years and early adulthood. The closet for him was a place that cast a shadow on his daily activities, on the way he saw himself and the way he interacted with people around him. Although he was extraordinarily clever he couldn't enjoy life fully and truly because he couldn't be himself.
For me as I read his story I felt the loss of freedom and the lack of self love and it has left me feeling quite heartbroken that anyone should have to experience life in this way. Of course people can experience this in all kinds of way because the world is a difficult place. Societal pressure, family expectations, lack of opportunity, low self esteem can cast shadows into any life and cause people to neglect their desires and hopes. Freedom is such a gift but for so many people it has to be fought for and it is not just the freedom to do things but also the freedom to be.
The writing just drew me in and gripped me and I was so happy that I read this together with my friend Lena so that we could share our experiences. Sometimes I was horrified by the emotions and the strain that being in the closet must have placed on Paul at such a young age and it made me think about the need to support all young people to be fully who they really are.
As a priest I appreciate Paul's anger against the way the bible was used to beat gay people and rob them of their humanity, an utterly disgraceful way of using the bible which persists today. Although he was not Catholic and was brought up Episcopalian like myself, his anger against the Roman Catholic church flows off the page in a way I could only describe as scorching. It is a well deserved anger because the religious condemnation at the time had little to do with Jesus and much to do with religious politics and the need for the religious institutions to retain power over the masses, something that religious institutions and political institutions and so many other societal organisations, have been doing since the dawn of time: the creation of the 'other' who is then vilified and outcast as a way for the power holder to retain that power. I am glad for the religious leaders and communities all over the world who seek to welcome and include all people and to value and love them which is what the bible requires of us: real love, real welcome, not the hatred and exclusion that Paul and so many others have experienced.
There is a lot of pain in this book. It is a kind of invisible pain and Paul Monette speaks about it very early on. It is the deep relentless pain of being disconnected from who you really are and having to pretend so you can fit in. In some ways this was his choice because he met other gay men who chose to live openly, so if he had wanted to he could have done the same, but for him the desperate need for conformity and acceptance was overriding and consuming. In the end it was a deep love for his partner Roger, who he met in his late twenties, that enabled him to break free and live and love openly as a gay man and that is what love should do. Love should enable us to flourish. This made me realise the importance of community because Paul didn't have the gay role models or communities and the kinds of social groups that we have today.
Having to live up to the expectations of others is a kind of pain that I rebelled against even as I read this book. My life has not been easy as a 20th/21st century black African woman but I have always been free, free to be me and I have revelled in it even when people have disliked me and excluded me. Being myself is my version of resistance because I come alive most when I am truly me. So to read this story of a young man having to deny who he truly is, is just painful and i am glad that Paul Monette found love with Roger and then Steven and Winston, even if Roger and Stephen were lost to AIDS.
It struck me that there was a noticeable lack of political awareness in Paul's youth. His life seemed to be focused on studying, working to earn money and trying to fit in with others and to hide his sexuality. All of this seems to happen in a vacuum or through a lens of closeted sexuality. Paul does experience the assassination of Kennedy but only because it provided him with an opportunity to cope with a date that he had arranged with a young woman. Paul mentions in his writing that being in the closet and trying to pass as a straight person very much consumed him and I suppose together with studies and work he wouldn't have had the time or the inclination to engage or absorb political and social change. His life was very much focused on what was immediate to himself which in many ways makes sense. Why explore the world outside when you are trying to stabilise the world inside?
Paul avoids the draft to the Vietnam war by declaring his sexuality on the forms he is asked to fill in. He was rejected for being gay. The one time in his early twenties where he comes out and ironically it benefits him. He is aware of the civil rights movement and the Stonewall riots but only through a glass darkly, but he eventually gets to see things face to face when he meets Roger Horwitz and his political engagement eventually rose to the fore in the most powerful way as an AIDS activist.
I think Paul's writing has a way of comforting those who struggle with life, not just people who are LGBT, but anyone who struggles with where life has placed them. This is not just a story about an individual, it is also a story about family and the difficulties of raising a disabled child. Indeed his brother's childhood and all the operations his brother endured show us what it was like to be disabled in the fifties and sixties and the ways in which disabled people were excluded, separated in institutions and hidden away. So here Paul shows us another kind of closet which is one that is created for people who have physical health or mental health conditions.
Paul's work is also a commentary on the cost of 'privilege and power'. He shows us how he was touched by this life of privilege even though he was at the margins, and how this privileged class retains their power and privilege by the process of exclusion but not all of those privileged people were happy especially some of the women whom he taught poetry to. They were in gilded cages and closets of their own.
This is indeed a beautiful story which portrays an underlying pain and struggle to fit in but which also shows a journey towards truth, the truth of being who you really are and the need for self love.
And when love arrives the writing evokes hope even though that hope is tested years later in the grip of the AIDS crisis. Thankfully Paul Monette was able to travel this journey and experience love and friendship and despite his untimely death, his life shows us how we should embrace who we are and allow others to do the same, allow others in our society, churches and other institutions to be different and to be who they fully are.
But his writing and his life are also a beautiful testimony about the power of love, not just love from another person but love of self and the life that flows from within us if we allow it to.
And at the end it is also a testimony of life. I think about my gay brothers. They are my only brothers and they love me as their sister. And I think about Paul Monette and all those lost to Aids and I am grateful for my brothers who visit me and bring me Baileys indulging my sweet tooth, and they listen to my difficulties and I listen to their's and we plan trips to Stonehenge and who knows where else beyond. And they too have stories of pain but thankfully they found their way with courage and are living life to its fullest. I think of Paul and Roger and Stephen and I delight in the lives of my brothers.
And I am grateful to have taken this time to read and reflect on the early life of Paul Monette, grateful that we have the knowledge, the strength and the vision to protest and not allow homophobia and hate to ruin our society, our governments, our Churches and our lives. And I am grateful that Paul's words and his testimony give us the fire and the courage to continue the struggle.
January 15, 2022
The best reading experiences often have that invasively intimate feel to them that lets you know it will be significant and formative in a way that seems specific to you. Paul Monette's Becoming a Man was exactly that kind of book for me. The prose felt like the deft work of a master but also like the diary of a close friend. The story pointedly called me out while also graciously letting me in on so much of Monette's intensely personal, complex and raw memories from half a life spent ducking in and out of the closet. His nothing-left-to-lose attitude in writing this memoir makes the writing crackle with unfettered and unbothered honesty. For me, this was the perfect book at the perfect time. It always feels like a small miracle when that happens.
I've always loved Monette's writing whether in fiction or in his poetry and it worked just as well for me here. He is so skillful with a sentence that he somehow comes across as both direct and flowery at the same time. Everything from his word choice to his sentence structure flows effortlessly and conversationally while also feeling carefully concerted and meticulously crafted. His account of growing up gay is unflinching and uncensored. It manages a candid relatability laced with vivid personal detail that simultaneously involve and intrigue the reader. This man has quickly become one of my favorite writers of all time. I can't help but wish that he was more widely read and perhaps that it due to his work not being as readily available as other classic queer authors. Either way, it's a shame that should be corrected so that others like myself could be let in on the secret of this incredible author and poet.
Being a memoir of half of his life, the narrative is a linear account of his childhood up into adulthood and Monette holds nothing back. He lets the reader in on every seedy detail as he recounts the beautiful, the unseemly and the uncomfortable rites of passage that queer youth go through on the journey to finding and loving their true selves. His childhood was particularly engaging to me as he remembers each bewildering revelation and befuddling confusion of adolescence. Coming of age in the fifties, this portion reminded me of one of my favorite films, Stand By Me. Monette is every bit the Gordie complete with a motley cast of complicated and impactful supporting characters deserving of a River Phoenix performance.
The timeliness of this read in my own life was constantly shocking and engrossing. I literally had Roshomon playing on the TV in the background as I read the pages that referenced the Kurosawa classic. A few moths ago I had another thrillingly transformative reading experience in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Monette repeatedly references his own time with that book in the final pages. I felt a pang of jealous envy as he recounted his reading that classic text in the doorway of the cabin where it is set and lounging nude on Walden pond itself. I'm just grateful I got to live vicariously through him and got the gift of reading Monette's own sort of review of that new favorite of mine. It was an added, exciting treat to see the specifics that he mentioned standing out to him and recognize my own sentiments in his thoughts about Thoreau and all his transcendental idiosyncrasies.
This is an instant classic and new favorite of mine. I have dog-eared and highlighted my used copy to reference and reminisce on for years to come. I look forward to recommending this everyone I know, especially queer young people. Monette incapsulates and artfully illustrates a common experience with uncommon grace and grit. This is why books are important and it is a glorious testament to the power of sharing your story.
I've always loved Monette's writing whether in fiction or in his poetry and it worked just as well for me here. He is so skillful with a sentence that he somehow comes across as both direct and flowery at the same time. Everything from his word choice to his sentence structure flows effortlessly and conversationally while also feeling carefully concerted and meticulously crafted. His account of growing up gay is unflinching and uncensored. It manages a candid relatability laced with vivid personal detail that simultaneously involve and intrigue the reader. This man has quickly become one of my favorite writers of all time. I can't help but wish that he was more widely read and perhaps that it due to his work not being as readily available as other classic queer authors. Either way, it's a shame that should be corrected so that others like myself could be let in on the secret of this incredible author and poet.
Being a memoir of half of his life, the narrative is a linear account of his childhood up into adulthood and Monette holds nothing back. He lets the reader in on every seedy detail as he recounts the beautiful, the unseemly and the uncomfortable rites of passage that queer youth go through on the journey to finding and loving their true selves. His childhood was particularly engaging to me as he remembers each bewildering revelation and befuddling confusion of adolescence. Coming of age in the fifties, this portion reminded me of one of my favorite films, Stand By Me. Monette is every bit the Gordie complete with a motley cast of complicated and impactful supporting characters deserving of a River Phoenix performance.
The timeliness of this read in my own life was constantly shocking and engrossing. I literally had Roshomon playing on the TV in the background as I read the pages that referenced the Kurosawa classic. A few moths ago I had another thrillingly transformative reading experience in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Monette repeatedly references his own time with that book in the final pages. I felt a pang of jealous envy as he recounted his reading that classic text in the doorway of the cabin where it is set and lounging nude on Walden pond itself. I'm just grateful I got to live vicariously through him and got the gift of reading Monette's own sort of review of that new favorite of mine. It was an added, exciting treat to see the specifics that he mentioned standing out to him and recognize my own sentiments in his thoughts about Thoreau and all his transcendental idiosyncrasies.
This is an instant classic and new favorite of mine. I have dog-eared and highlighted my used copy to reference and reminisce on for years to come. I look forward to recommending this everyone I know, especially queer young people. Monette incapsulates and artfully illustrates a common experience with uncommon grace and grit. This is why books are important and it is a glorious testament to the power of sharing your story.
September 13, 2017
Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story was Paul Monette's response to readers of his first memoir, Borrowed Time, who wanted to know how he and his partner Roger got together and fell in love in the first place. Here, Monette examines his childhood, his realization that he was gay, and his first furtive attempts to do something about it, eventually leading to his finding true love at the age of 26. Monette seems to feel that 26 is a really long time to wait for true love (some of us would beg to differ), but this feeling was no doubt exacerbated by the many years he had to spend hiding this aspect of himself, and the shame that accompanied that hiding. Some of this is dark stuff, but given both Monette's copious writing talents and his biting sense of humor, Becoming a Man is always a pleasure to read.
Both Borrowed Time and Becoming a Man were groundbreaking at the time of their publication. In some parts of the world, we've thankfully moved beyond the idea that being gay is something that needs a lot of explaining in order to be accepted—although obviously that's far from being true everywhere, even today. The value of Becoming a Man now is twofold: It serves its original purpose for those who still resist full acceptance of LGBTQ* people, and for the rest of us it offers a moving, beautifully written reminder of how far we've come and how vigilant we must be in protecting that progress.
Both Borrowed Time and Becoming a Man were groundbreaking at the time of their publication. In some parts of the world, we've thankfully moved beyond the idea that being gay is something that needs a lot of explaining in order to be accepted—although obviously that's far from being true everywhere, even today. The value of Becoming a Man now is twofold: It serves its original purpose for those who still resist full acceptance of LGBTQ* people, and for the rest of us it offers a moving, beautifully written reminder of how far we've come and how vigilant we must be in protecting that progress.
January 10, 2015
First published in 1992 and yet, here in 2015, in a small town at the bottom of the world, I read the words of Paul Monette and am in shocked awe of how much I see my own life in his. I think if I read this at an earlier age I would have thrown the book aside or dismissed it completely; obviously still in doubt about my own guilt. But now, at 33, I'm glad to have come across it and read it.
The impact of his words are so real it actually hurt to read them. But then, I guess, that is the reality of it. That when shit is real, it hurts. The writing is beautiful and tragic and revealing and vulnerable. I've highlighted so many passages in this book that most pages are pink.
'I can't believe it myself sometimes, how fresh the wounds of the deep past sting, how sharp the dry eyed tears are even at this distance....For an hour or a a day the pain wins. It throws a veil of amnesia over my real life.'
Paul's story just tells it as it happened. It's tortured and hopeful. It's a life. One that I can surely identify with.
The impact of his words are so real it actually hurt to read them. But then, I guess, that is the reality of it. That when shit is real, it hurts. The writing is beautiful and tragic and revealing and vulnerable. I've highlighted so many passages in this book that most pages are pink.
'I can't believe it myself sometimes, how fresh the wounds of the deep past sting, how sharp the dry eyed tears are even at this distance....For an hour or a a day the pain wins. It throws a veil of amnesia over my real life.'
Paul's story just tells it as it happened. It's tortured and hopeful. It's a life. One that I can surely identify with.
February 23, 2009
This is one of those books that I went in wanting to like. Resurrecting texts from former classes, hellbent on actually reading the books that I was introduced to during my 4 years at college, I picked this one off the shelf, remembering some of the discussions we had about it in my Gay and Lesbian Lit Class.
Monette's story started out a bit dry, but I figured that he had to "set the stage" before he could really get into "it"--his feelings, his experiences. Unfortunately that passionate jolt never came and instead it just seemed like drawn-out half recollections from a man still not at ease with the way his life played out. Although I understand the difficulty of his struggle to be a gay man in a time when being such was strictly forbidden, Monette's constant self-analysis and critical analysis of everyone around him, along with the drawn-out expositions and overused phrases/metaphors (the suffocating/agonizing/claustrophobic closet; "the laughing man" he desired to find for himself) became redundant.
Also, it was difficult at times to connect with his horrible suffering and struggles as an "outsider" because he "wasn't as rich as" his peers at Andover Prep School and later, Yale. It felt like even though he wrote this memoir from the stance of understanding, a time where he had grown beyond his insecurities, that he was still very much insecure. His constant dissection of what he and everyone around him really meant, what they were really trying to prove by their actions, instead of just telling the story, was distracting.
More so, I thought that book would lead us to the great climax of when Monette would finally let himself love and be loved as a gay man. Although he did share that, it only came in the final pages. And sadly, the introduction of Roger, his lover of 17 years, was the only part that really seemed heartfelt.
Monette's story started out a bit dry, but I figured that he had to "set the stage" before he could really get into "it"--his feelings, his experiences. Unfortunately that passionate jolt never came and instead it just seemed like drawn-out half recollections from a man still not at ease with the way his life played out. Although I understand the difficulty of his struggle to be a gay man in a time when being such was strictly forbidden, Monette's constant self-analysis and critical analysis of everyone around him, along with the drawn-out expositions and overused phrases/metaphors (the suffocating/agonizing/claustrophobic closet; "the laughing man" he desired to find for himself) became redundant.
Also, it was difficult at times to connect with his horrible suffering and struggles as an "outsider" because he "wasn't as rich as" his peers at Andover Prep School and later, Yale. It felt like even though he wrote this memoir from the stance of understanding, a time where he had grown beyond his insecurities, that he was still very much insecure. His constant dissection of what he and everyone around him really meant, what they were really trying to prove by their actions, instead of just telling the story, was distracting.
More so, I thought that book would lead us to the great climax of when Monette would finally let himself love and be loved as a gay man. Although he did share that, it only came in the final pages. And sadly, the introduction of Roger, his lover of 17 years, was the only part that really seemed heartfelt.
July 8, 2013
Thus in my own crippled way I had no choice but to keep on looking in the wrong places for the thing I'd never even seen: two men in love and laughing. For that was the image in my head, though I'd never read it in any book or seen it in any movie. I'd fashioned it out of bits of dreams and the hurt that went with pining after straight men. Everything told me it couldn't exist, especially the media code of invisibility, where queers were spoken of only in the context of molesting Boy Scouts. Yet the vision of the laughing men dogged me and wouldn't be shaken, more insistent with every lonely month, every encounter that didn't quite happen. The searching became as compulsive as any insatiable need, till I sometimes thought I'd lost my mind--but I also think it kept me alive. (178)
This is among the most beautiful and important books I have ever read, and well worth my recent re-read.
Concerned about the reductive responses to his earlier memoir, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, Monette decided to write this book, his coming-out story, to show that his life was not an idyllic gay dream (until AIDS happened). While, yes, Roger was/is the best thing to have happened to him, Monette did spend the first 25 years of his life in the closet, and the acidity of his self-loathing brought him close to death by his own hand. I first read this book as a closeted college student myself, and I found it so relatable, so true-to-life, and so indicative of the journey I hoped to take toward happiness and my own Laughing Man.
Monette realizes early on that he's different. In elementary school, he has a pseudo-sexual relationship with his friend Kite, meeting up behind barns and in tree houses to rub each other's dicks. He doesn't understand what he's doing, but knows it's wrong when his mother catches him.
For decades after the initial discovery, Monette torments himself with his mother's words: "What were you doing with Kite?"
What was he doing? Is he one of the faggots, the mythical creatures always discussed in derogatory terms among his father's friends? Is this just a phase? There were no "gay" people in Monette's midcentury childhood, only deviants and outlaws.
As Monette grows up, he experiences depression, unrequited crushes, and anonymous sexual encounters, all of which I could relate to in my own journey out of the closet. I was especially fond of his mythic terms for homosexuality. As he grows and meets other gay men, he sees the various caricatures that the closet threatens to turn him into: the desexualized eunuch, the nonthreatening friend among women; the professorial bachelor, working among boys, soaking in their admiration, but never their affection; the Dan-Savage-esque "bisexual," intending to have relationships with women and downplaying/subjugating/justifying his true homosexual desires; and the predator, pursuing homosex at the expense of friendships, trust, and above all, love. These are all guises Monette adopts, but ultimately grows from. Pain is not insurmountable; the Laughing Man is waiting.
I also appreciate Monette's willingness to get ugly, a quality he is largely lacking in Borrowed Time. There are explicit sex scenes, describing . Pedophilia also arises: These are unpleasant, cringe-worthy moments in Monette's coming-out story, but they are essential parts of his story, and that's why they're here.
However ugly the journey, Paul Monette became a man.
And this feeling that I'm the last one left, in a world where only the ghosts still laugh. But at least they're the ghosts of full-grown men, proof that all of us got that far, free of the traps and the lies. And from that moment on the brink of summer's end, no one would ever tell me again that men like me couldn't love. (278)
Buy this title from Powell's Books.
May 14, 2013
This is the first work of non-fiction I have read since I began writing my novel just over five months ago. Since my novel is about a gay man in his late teens I have focused most of my recreational reading on other works of fiction where the protagonist is gay and/or coming of age. I chose to read Paul Monette’s 1992 agonizing, painful yet beautiful memoir which won the National Book Award for non-fiction because it is not only an important piece of 20th century literature but also one of the most significant books of all time by a gay author.
Monette who died from AIDS in 1995 struggled for the first 30 years of his life accepting his homosexuality much as I did for the same period of time. The parallels do not end there. Since Monette, born in the fall of 1945, was exactly 6 months older than me, I could so well relate to the cultural biases of that time as well as the self-loathing and denial he experienced through his teens and twenties. Like Monette I lived in constant fear in that early part of my life that someone would find out I was sexually drawn to men rather than women. Like him I submerged myself in my studies throughout my college years to avoid coming to terms with who I was. I too lived a lie for nearly thirty years, ashamed of my desires and fearing rejection or worse if those whom I knew discovered my darkest fantasies.
Like Monette I sought professional help to “cure” me of my “illness”. In the last two chapters of his memoir the author recounts his absurd attempts to heterosex himself, having a series of intimate relations with women over several years while occasionally falling off the wagon and getting down and dirty with another man. Some of these women he cared for deeply. Later he came to realize his adventures were feeble efforts to convince everyone, most importantly himself, that he was straight. While I did not bed down with the number of women Monette did, in one respect I actually did take the deception one step further by actually getting married in 1969 and staying in the marriage more than six years. There were other similarities in our lives’ experiences but I think you get the point that this was a story to which sadly I could so well relate.
Reading Monette’s memoir was a painful remembrance of my own life experience. It also was a reminder of how far I have come since that time. Just as I have, Monette thankfully found self-acceptance, happiness and love before his death at the age of 49. Yes at times the memoir is very hard to read because of the self-loathing, shame, sadness, anger, and loneliness that Monette had to endure for more than half his life. Ironically though it is a joy to read because it is so beautifully written and brutally honest. The author taught writing and literature and his mastery of the written word is apparent throughout the book. If I had to find one flaw in the work it would simply be that his descriptions of his attempts to heterosex himself got to be a bit confusing at times. Because of his sleeping with multiple women at that time in his life I would find myself thinking “Now who was she again?” But that is a minor criticism in what I regard as an otherwise stellar work. The book ends just after he has met Roger Horwitz, the man who would be his life partner for the next ten years, sadly ending with the AIDS-related death of Horwitz in 1985. Though I have not yet read it, Monette’s 1988 Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, chronicles his years with Horwitz and how that time turned him into one of the nation’s leading AIDS activist. I fully intend to read this book as well as some of Monette’s fiction.
I am sure that for anyone growing up in or after the Will & Grace era it is difficult to fully appreciate just how oppressive life was for gay people a generation or more earlier. Let’s be honest: even with the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage there is still a strong undercurrent of homophobia rampant in this country.
This was truly a wonderful book and one I am so glad I took the time to read.
Monette who died from AIDS in 1995 struggled for the first 30 years of his life accepting his homosexuality much as I did for the same period of time. The parallels do not end there. Since Monette, born in the fall of 1945, was exactly 6 months older than me, I could so well relate to the cultural biases of that time as well as the self-loathing and denial he experienced through his teens and twenties. Like Monette I lived in constant fear in that early part of my life that someone would find out I was sexually drawn to men rather than women. Like him I submerged myself in my studies throughout my college years to avoid coming to terms with who I was. I too lived a lie for nearly thirty years, ashamed of my desires and fearing rejection or worse if those whom I knew discovered my darkest fantasies.
Like Monette I sought professional help to “cure” me of my “illness”. In the last two chapters of his memoir the author recounts his absurd attempts to heterosex himself, having a series of intimate relations with women over several years while occasionally falling off the wagon and getting down and dirty with another man. Some of these women he cared for deeply. Later he came to realize his adventures were feeble efforts to convince everyone, most importantly himself, that he was straight. While I did not bed down with the number of women Monette did, in one respect I actually did take the deception one step further by actually getting married in 1969 and staying in the marriage more than six years. There were other similarities in our lives’ experiences but I think you get the point that this was a story to which sadly I could so well relate.
Reading Monette’s memoir was a painful remembrance of my own life experience. It also was a reminder of how far I have come since that time. Just as I have, Monette thankfully found self-acceptance, happiness and love before his death at the age of 49. Yes at times the memoir is very hard to read because of the self-loathing, shame, sadness, anger, and loneliness that Monette had to endure for more than half his life. Ironically though it is a joy to read because it is so beautifully written and brutally honest. The author taught writing and literature and his mastery of the written word is apparent throughout the book. If I had to find one flaw in the work it would simply be that his descriptions of his attempts to heterosex himself got to be a bit confusing at times. Because of his sleeping with multiple women at that time in his life I would find myself thinking “Now who was she again?” But that is a minor criticism in what I regard as an otherwise stellar work. The book ends just after he has met Roger Horwitz, the man who would be his life partner for the next ten years, sadly ending with the AIDS-related death of Horwitz in 1985. Though I have not yet read it, Monette’s 1988 Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, chronicles his years with Horwitz and how that time turned him into one of the nation’s leading AIDS activist. I fully intend to read this book as well as some of Monette’s fiction.
I am sure that for anyone growing up in or after the Will & Grace era it is difficult to fully appreciate just how oppressive life was for gay people a generation or more earlier. Let’s be honest: even with the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage there is still a strong undercurrent of homophobia rampant in this country.
This was truly a wonderful book and one I am so glad I took the time to read.
May 10, 2017
Like the best of us, I've spent a little time in therapy, aimlessly talking about my childhood, my personal interactions with family and loved ones and colleagues, and my ever evolving identity. It was a process I found incredibly fascinating and even freeing—coming to see myself as a character in my own unfolding story.
Reading Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story was a little like watching a person in therapy, as Monette retells and extrapolates and muses. It's a painful journey to watch unfold, as Monette struggles with the suffocation of a life as a closeted gay man, but his confession is a tremendous gift to anyone who has held a secret close to their heart because of shame or fear or self-hatred.
To top it all off, Monette is a lovely writer, and I would love to find some of his poetry and see how it holds up, considering he admits this verse was just as much a hiding place as it was an art.
Monette is a generous soul, and this is one of the most effective and affecting memoir I've ever read, even while it is clearly the most aching.
Reading Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story was a little like watching a person in therapy, as Monette retells and extrapolates and muses. It's a painful journey to watch unfold, as Monette struggles with the suffocation of a life as a closeted gay man, but his confession is a tremendous gift to anyone who has held a secret close to their heart because of shame or fear or self-hatred.
To top it all off, Monette is a lovely writer, and I would love to find some of his poetry and see how it holds up, considering he admits this verse was just as much a hiding place as it was an art.
Monette is a generous soul, and this is one of the most effective and affecting memoir I've ever read, even while it is clearly the most aching.
January 9, 2015
My god, this one hit me where I live. I picked it up completely at random, without realizing that it was a memoir about being deep in the closet and deeply depressed at Yale. It feels wrong to describe a book this raw as "beautiful," but it truly was. I kept thinking, while reading this book, of a passage I read once but have not been able to find again (Sedgwick? Butler?). I know I'll paraphrase it badly, but it was something to the effect of: the pain of coming out (to ourselves, even more so than to others) is what shapes our lives and defines who we are; and yet we should not, in consequence, assume that this pain is somehow necessary or purifying or integral to what it means to live a queer life. I think that's what Monette was trying to communicate in this book: that queer literature must take seriously those feelings of shame, grief, and bitterness, but must also, at the same time, keep insisting that it is possible to let them go.
July 25, 2024
Monette charts his life as the elder of two brothers in a working class Massachusetts family with loving parents. He knows early that he longs for boys. A straight-A student, he gets a scholarship to Phillips Andover (in the same town where he lives), which is filled with beautiful jocks and a handful of closeted admirers like himself. More than anything, he wants to avoid the destiny of the homely, lonely bachelor teachers who lust after the campus Adonises and can never act on it. He goes to Yale (class of '67). He knows he's gay, and is always surprised when others assume he is too - he thought he was doing such a good job of suppressing it. He teaches at prep schools - nearly getting in trouble at one after an affair with a student. Finally in his late twenties (at the very end of the memoir) he meets Roger, the love of his life, and is able to fully emerge from the closet.
Monette writes well, engagingly, poignantly, for the first three-fourths of the memoir. But the last chapters, the post-Yale years, seem interminable, as he mopes through a lengthy succession of overlapping relationships with women and men (he has told his therapist his goal is to be straight, and his therapist encourages this). The angstiness of all this trysting is off the charts - not so much the cruising for men at bars and beaches, but the pretense of girlfriends, all of whom understand he's also sleeping with men, and the whinging of his tortured poet's soul. Some of his diary entries are included, which doesn't help. The reader wants to scream, "Reach maturity, please."
October 7, 2025
“What love gives you is the courage to face the secrets you've kept from yourself, a reason to open the rest of the doors.”
Read
October 7, 2022“Tupavo sam kimnuo, preplavljen valom tuge. Tužan jer su nas moje tajne neprestano razdvajale, očajan u spoznaji kako nema nade da će se to ikada promijeniti.”
“Čudno, ali nakon petnaest mjeseci terapije, postajao sam sve neartikuliraniji, kao da mi je ponestalo stvari koje bih o sebi mogao reći. Bilo je to uznemirujuće, no ujedno me ispunilo i olakšanjem, jer mi je ponestalo izlika. (…) Morao sam ukrasti mnogo više ako kanim nadoknaditi sve one godine protraćene u ormaru.”
Rijetko naletim na knjigu čije čitanje odgađam jer se previše pronalazim u njenim redcima. Brzo bi ju vratio nazad svaki put kad bi ju podignuo jer nisam bio spreman probaviti sve te osjećaje, nade i frustracije koje su se preslikavale. Čitam fikciju kako bi nakratko pobjegao od stvarnosti, dok sam se sad morao suočiti sa stvarnošću. Pomalo.
“Čudno, ali nakon petnaest mjeseci terapije, postajao sam sve neartikuliraniji, kao da mi je ponestalo stvari koje bih o sebi mogao reći. Bilo je to uznemirujuće, no ujedno me ispunilo i olakšanjem, jer mi je ponestalo izlika. (…) Morao sam ukrasti mnogo više ako kanim nadoknaditi sve one godine protraćene u ormaru.”
Rijetko naletim na knjigu čije čitanje odgađam jer se previše pronalazim u njenim redcima. Brzo bi ju vratio nazad svaki put kad bi ju podignuo jer nisam bio spreman probaviti sve te osjećaje, nade i frustracije koje su se preslikavale. Čitam fikciju kako bi nakratko pobjegao od stvarnosti, dok sam se sad morao suočiti sa stvarnošću. Pomalo.
March 13, 2013
A beautiful, classic, poetic - nearly tragic - journey to exit the closet. This is the absolute best of all coming-out stories, not necessarily for its particulars, although they are universal and heart wrenching, but for its sheer literary excellence and intelligence. What came later in Monette's life was the real tragedy, similarly masterfully detailed in his book Borrowed Time, but that is indeed the other half of his life story.
June 3, 2009
This is an incredibly well written memoir. I picked it up on a whim based on the advice of the bookseller. Just calling this a coming out story wouldn't do it justice. It far more complex than that. I like it for its depiction of the New England upper crust in the 50s and 60s (Philips Academy, Yale etc) and his fine-tuned description of the people in his lives. It's the perspective of an outsider looking in.
August 14, 2022
This memoir is saturated with moments of scorching insight that any gay man will relate to on a visceral level. Paul Monette transforms the most abstract yet universal elements of the human condition—the deep and fundamental need to love and be loved—into elegant, accessible, and intimate prose. Monette takes loss and gives us love, shapes cruelty into compassion, and uses his painful experience of loneliness to deliver all queer wanderers the knowledge that we are not alone.
August 14, 2012
Gave me courage and gumption to pursue my own writing. Full of rage against the hate and indifference. Balanced with a tenderness and appreciation for love. Paul careful examines his past, the succession of closets through which he hid until claiming his ability to love. In owning his sexuality, he finds a deeper capacity to love and subsequently his authentic voice as an author.
September 25, 2019
A very moving story and a remarkable man! After reading this I wanted to know more about the man. Written while Monette was struggling with AIDS, which made his story that much more powerful.
July 4, 2017
I'm going to be to brief because anyway what I feel after reading this book can't really be tapped into and poured into a review without therapy of my own.
I thought Borrowed Time was the tragedy. This part of Paul Monette's life, the years before love, are sadder in many ways. But don't be fooled: he recounts those years of self-loathing, lying, self-sabotage and longing with such lucidity and jaw-dropping honesty that instead of shaking my head in disappointment with his less than impressive character and the astouding mess he made of his romantic and sexual life, I understood him.
I feel deep down inside that that was the ultimate message of this memoir. To say "look at everything I did in order not to be worthy of love and love still found and healed my heart."
I just have to add that what makes this book, this memoir, so captivating and moving is Paul Monette's almost ruthless deconstruction of his own feelings, motivations, mechanisms, delusions, prejudice and his authentic willingness to search out and admit his own faults. It's a lesson in humilty and forgiving oneself.
I said I'd be brief. Don't want to intellectualize the whole beautiful thing. When I shut the book last night, after reading the last lines, I felt both enraged at the injustice that Paul eventually lost his love and his own life to AIDS but also fragile and blessed and terrified at losing someone I loved again.
I turned to my own love and watched him. sleep for a while vowing all sorts of secret promises to myself. Anyway what else can we do to try and honor those who were better or kinder than most and died young?
Each of us must answer that question on our own.
I thought Borrowed Time was the tragedy. This part of Paul Monette's life, the years before love, are sadder in many ways. But don't be fooled: he recounts those years of self-loathing, lying, self-sabotage and longing with such lucidity and jaw-dropping honesty that instead of shaking my head in disappointment with his less than impressive character and the astouding mess he made of his romantic and sexual life, I understood him.
I feel deep down inside that that was the ultimate message of this memoir. To say "look at everything I did in order not to be worthy of love and love still found and healed my heart."
I just have to add that what makes this book, this memoir, so captivating and moving is Paul Monette's almost ruthless deconstruction of his own feelings, motivations, mechanisms, delusions, prejudice and his authentic willingness to search out and admit his own faults. It's a lesson in humilty and forgiving oneself.
I said I'd be brief. Don't want to intellectualize the whole beautiful thing. When I shut the book last night, after reading the last lines, I felt both enraged at the injustice that Paul eventually lost his love and his own life to AIDS but also fragile and blessed and terrified at losing someone I loved again.
I turned to my own love and watched him. sleep for a while vowing all sorts of secret promises to myself. Anyway what else can we do to try and honor those who were better or kinder than most and died young?
Each of us must answer that question on our own.
April 3, 2014
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, Paul Monette strives to be what everyone expects him to be: a straight A student, polite, kind, normal and straight. But even as a child Paul knew he was different, but he did everything in his power to push that difference deep down where no one could see it or even suspect him of being queer. He lied to himself, to his parents, to everyone around him so that he could fit in and not be singled out for the bullies and the haters.
I can hardly imagine how hard it must have been to grow up gay in the 50s and 60s. Even now, there are still such stigmas attached to being outside the norm as it were.
The book is well-written and heartfelt and pulls at the heartstrings, it's even more poignant reading it knowing that the author has died. The story is so raw and emotional at points that I just had to stop reading for a while and dry the tears.
As a straight woman, I suppose I can't really understand what gay people went through to be accepted, and even these days that isn't universally true. I was upset on Paul's behalf at what he had to do, had to pretend to be in order to be accepted by his peers.
I was always the odd one out at school, picked last for sports teams, rather be reading a book than playing sports. One day, I think I was around ten or eleven, the bullying got too much and I walked out of the classroom, out of the school and never went back. My parents refused to send me back there.
If only Paul's parents had been as understanding when they found his stash of magazines. His dad said it was fine to look at the girlie magazines, that was natural. But the others, the homosexual ones, that wasn't normal or good.
What is normal? What is natural? Homosexuality happens in nature and what is more natural than Nature itself?
The book reminds me a little of a gay version of Dead Poet's Society. It's a fascinating read on what it was really like to grow up gay in those times. Everyone should read it.
Free review copy supplied by the publisher for purposes of a review.
I can hardly imagine how hard it must have been to grow up gay in the 50s and 60s. Even now, there are still such stigmas attached to being outside the norm as it were.
The book is well-written and heartfelt and pulls at the heartstrings, it's even more poignant reading it knowing that the author has died. The story is so raw and emotional at points that I just had to stop reading for a while and dry the tears.
As a straight woman, I suppose I can't really understand what gay people went through to be accepted, and even these days that isn't universally true. I was upset on Paul's behalf at what he had to do, had to pretend to be in order to be accepted by his peers.
I was always the odd one out at school, picked last for sports teams, rather be reading a book than playing sports. One day, I think I was around ten or eleven, the bullying got too much and I walked out of the classroom, out of the school and never went back. My parents refused to send me back there.
If only Paul's parents had been as understanding when they found his stash of magazines. His dad said it was fine to look at the girlie magazines, that was natural. But the others, the homosexual ones, that wasn't normal or good.
What is normal? What is natural? Homosexuality happens in nature and what is more natural than Nature itself?
The book reminds me a little of a gay version of Dead Poet's Society. It's a fascinating read on what it was really like to grow up gay in those times. Everyone should read it.
Free review copy supplied by the publisher for purposes of a review.
July 6, 2008
I picked up this book about 5 years ago because one of my favorite authors, Kathryn Harrison (The Kiss) wrote an introduction to it. It is the biography of a man growing up gay in the suburbs, prep schools, and universities of 60s and 70s-era New England and it perfectly describes what it's like to live in the closet and try and fit in or pretend you're something you're not. I'm re-reading it, out loud this time, to my boyfriend - and every 10 pages or so I get choked up and can't go on because the words and worries on the page feel so familiar to me, and so amazingly describe how I've felt at different times growing up. The book is an inspiring reminder that 20+ years of lying and angst can resolve itself with a happy ending, and how true love can immediately erase the pointless and endless pain leading up to it. I think any gay person especially should read this Paul Monette book as well as "Borrowed Time."
September 21, 2011
This book was very hard to read, and still, it was worth every feeling it summoned.
It's the autobiography of a man who had to hide his true self, it's a journey through the pain of hiding, through the pain of pretending.
His closet and his fears are the same of each person who has to hide, no matter the reason behind it, and it's so very true.
Together with the pain this book summoned in me an incredible amount of anger. No one should go through all of this for his sexual orientation, it's horrible to put it mildly.
This man had to fight years against his inner demons as well as against a society that too many times condemned people for being gay, and when he finally found love it come with a death sentence, the same that a lot of his brothers had to face.
I still think nothing of this should have happened, and I still hope for a better world, were no one has to go through what Paul had to "become a man", ever.
It's the autobiography of a man who had to hide his true self, it's a journey through the pain of hiding, through the pain of pretending.
His closet and his fears are the same of each person who has to hide, no matter the reason behind it, and it's so very true.
Together with the pain this book summoned in me an incredible amount of anger. No one should go through all of this for his sexual orientation, it's horrible to put it mildly.
This man had to fight years against his inner demons as well as against a society that too many times condemned people for being gay, and when he finally found love it come with a death sentence, the same that a lot of his brothers had to face.
I still think nothing of this should have happened, and I still hope for a better world, were no one has to go through what Paul had to "become a man", ever.
July 29, 2025
A razor-sharp blade dissecting queer shame – maybe too clean sometimes, maybe from a rather privileged perspective, maybe too hopeful/idealistic even (but why not, after you’ve finally broken out of closet) – but honest and raw and relatable all the same. Lost some breath from the gorgeous writing, also some surprise tears at how human and familiar it felt, and lastly, lost some brain cells reading too late into the night because I just couldn’t put it down.
July 14, 2013
A classic of its era. Unforgettable. And came along just at the right moment, and also in the nick of time.
April 30, 2015
I'm so glad Mr. Monette found happiness. I only wish he had gotten to live longer and write more beautiful words. Everyone should read his book Borrowed Time also. It's truly stunning.
April 4, 2020
Wow. It took me way longer to finish this than I expected. But, I can't wait to through myself into other books by Paul Monette.
July 16, 2022
Hartverscheurend. Waarschijnlijk het beste coming-out boek dat ik heb gelezen.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 244 reviews