A History of Shadows

by Robert C. Reinhart

Book.

Genres: Fiction, Gay Fiction, LGBT

Paperback

Published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Stephen Evans]

This is one of the best gay-oriented social history novels I've ever read. I find it hard to believe it's been so overlooked over the years! In addition to the history, part of the fun was trying to guess who the characters were.

[Amanda Clay]

Copyright 1982 By Robert C Reinhart. Can't get a good cover photo, but mine features a very 1982 looking gent in a rugby shirt posing with a thoughtful (and in no way phallic) fountain pen.

The story of four friends whose lives intertwine, tracing their paths-- and the paths of gay life in America-- from 1936 to right around Stonewall. While the four gents themselves are slightly stereotypical (An actor, an interior designer, a film composer and a very closeted lawyer)the experiences (and even a few adventures) that they have navigating the changing times are genuine and often moving.

This book is quite good, and in the scale of Avon Paperbacks it ranks high. I love historical fiction, and I love queer history, so I very much enjoyed this story, even if the characters themselves weren't all that original. They are well-drawn for what they are, and I guess I need to keep in perspective that for a 1982 mass-market paperback they are more original than I might from this point in, well, the history of shadows.

Not much in the way of sexy, but the characters are not sexless. It's just not very explicit, which is ok (See my post for The Story of Harold as to my sexy theory). Most amusing anachronism comes near the end when Robert the closeted lawyer tells his friend that there will be no charge for his legal services, though there is a bill of several hundred dollars for the 'xerographic services' required to copy a two-page document. Where's a good Kinko's when you need one?

According to the fore-and afterwords, this book is based on real people and real stories. I wonder if any of the men are still alive, and if so, what they think of this krazy queer world today?

[Reason Restored]

I just finished the book, and I must say I really enjoyed it. I’m from the next generation, the AIDS generation, young enough and lucky enough to have lived through it. There is another generation now, and o feel quite clearly sandwiched between the two. I knew some of these men when I was very young, they were usually warmer than the sometimes brittle bitchiness related in the book (novel?) implies. I wonder if the state of queer culture today would be different if there was a continuous line from these guys to the younguns today. I think this book may prove to be more important than anticipated as time goes by and I want to thank the author for his work.

[Edward]

Interesting history of four gay men who came of age in the 1930s and lived through the Depression, WWII, the McCarthy hearings, etc.

[David Marshall]

I'd bought this back when it first came out and either never read it or read it and forgotten all of it. Now I am certain that I must never have read it because there is no way I could ever forget any of these characters or their stories. Or... maybe I did read it back when I was in my twenties and didn't pay attention to its touching story of how hard times were for those who came before, how they lived and aged and met the death of friends as they themselves grew old. Who ever pays enough attention in their twenties? Our stories may be different than those who lived before us but once you reach your late sixties, you've learned the same truths that any person uneasily grasps as time reminds you that we are all human, that the people we think of as old when we are young are the very people we one day will be. If you have a chance, pick this one up. To be honest, it's a lot better than I thought it would be and I'm grateful to have experienced it.

[Virgowriter (Brad Windhauser)]

More successful in terms of ambition than execution. I enjoyed reading about a period of gay history often under-explored in fiction (pre-1950s), and there's useful character sketches here about four people struggling to survive as gay men over the course of several decades, but there's not a major story holding all of this together--the closest the author comes to this is when events involving the McCarthy hearings comes to a head for two of the characters. Also, we're told that this group of four men are all friends, but we rarely see them as friends.

[Molly G]

Forgot it was a novel — rather than really a series of interviews — until about halfway through.

[Michael Ritchie]

Bought this in 1982 because of the cute guy on the cover but didn't get very far. Picked it up a couple of months ago and quite liked it. The conceit is that in the late 1970s, the author interviewed four older gay men about their lives over the past fifty years in order to produce a history of what it was like to live as a gay man before Stonewall. The chapters consist of chunks of each man's interview presented chronologically. They are fictional characters but all seem grounded in reality--one is a composer for Warner Bros. studios and Reinhart gets the movie references right. The four friends go through ups and downs over the years in terms of careers and love lives. Published just as the AIDS epidemic was starting, the book avoids having to deal with that, though any current-day reader will probably find the idea of AIDS haunting the final pages. This is not a diverse cross-section of types; they are all white, educated, and fairly well off, and the voices of three of the men all more or less sound alike; the only different one is of the self-loathing rich lawyer who is not terribly well-adjusted in terms of accepting his homosexuality, though he does have a loving side and is generous with his friends. It's easy to read and compelling, though the section covering the McCarthy era goes on a bit too long. Glad I finally got around to reading this.