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The Genius of Desire
"GENTLE AND FUNNY...From the first chapter...to the very touching ending, The Genius Of Desire is a good story worth telling."
--San Francisco Chronicle
Michael Bellman is not your average little boy. He speaks to plates, banisters, and other household objects (preferring them to people). He frequently confesses to sins he never committed (like adultery). And he's hopelessly drawn to the romantic notion of a secret, double life.
Michael spends summers in Monsalvat, Michigan, coming of age in a loving tangle of great aunts, great uncles, cousins once-removed (but ever-present), and one tough-looking, silently scary grandmother. The Kaisers are a wild, highly eccentric Great Uncle Jimmy speaks to his dead wife during meals and proudly proclaims himself the Fattest Man in the World; Cousin Anne torments and taunts Michael beyond endurance; reckless Cousin Tommy secretly smokes cigars and can't wait to "kick butt in 'Nam"--and Michael watches every magical move he makes.
A few years and one driver's license later, as family alliances change and long-silent desires surface, Michael begins to understand his attraction to the double life because he's living one--at roadside rest stops, in library washrooms and public parks. Coming out is the first step, coming to terms is the next....
"[A] DEEPLY FELT FIRST NOVEL of childhood and adolescence...by a cool and philosophical young writer."
--Publishers Weekly
"WONDERFULLY INTELLIGENT...An auspicious wise, funny, and courageous."
--Charles Baxter, Author of Shadow Play
From the Trade Paperback edition.
--San Francisco Chronicle
Michael Bellman is not your average little boy. He speaks to plates, banisters, and other household objects (preferring them to people). He frequently confesses to sins he never committed (like adultery). And he's hopelessly drawn to the romantic notion of a secret, double life.
Michael spends summers in Monsalvat, Michigan, coming of age in a loving tangle of great aunts, great uncles, cousins once-removed (but ever-present), and one tough-looking, silently scary grandmother. The Kaisers are a wild, highly eccentric Great Uncle Jimmy speaks to his dead wife during meals and proudly proclaims himself the Fattest Man in the World; Cousin Anne torments and taunts Michael beyond endurance; reckless Cousin Tommy secretly smokes cigars and can't wait to "kick butt in 'Nam"--and Michael watches every magical move he makes.
A few years and one driver's license later, as family alliances change and long-silent desires surface, Michael begins to understand his attraction to the double life because he's living one--at roadside rest stops, in library washrooms and public parks. Coming out is the first step, coming to terms is the next....
"[A] DEEPLY FELT FIRST NOVEL of childhood and adolescence...by a cool and philosophical young writer."
--Publishers Weekly
"WONDERFULLY INTELLIGENT...An auspicious wise, funny, and courageous."
--Charles Baxter, Author of Shadow Play
From the Trade Paperback edition.
- GenresFictionGay FictionLGBT
274 pages, Hardcover
First published May 18, 1993
3 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
About the author
Brian Bouldrey
22 books38 followersBrian Bouldrey, is the author of the nonfiction books Honorable Bandit: A Walk Across Corsica (University of Wisconsin Press, September, 2007), Monster: Adventures in American Machismo (Council Oak Books), and T he Autobiography Box (Chronicle Books); three novels, The Genius of Desire (Ballantine), Love, the Magician (Harrington Park), and The Boom Economy (University of Wisconsin Press ; and editor of several anthologies. He is recipient of Fellowships from Yaddo and Eastern Frontier Society, and the Joseph Henry Jackson Award from the San Francisco Foundation, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Western Regional Magazine Award. Teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and Lesley College MFA Program for Writers.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 3, 2009
I quite liked this book -- a genuinely touching coming-of-age story setin Michigan. It was unusual in that it does not have a tightly structured plot. I think I enjoyed the descriptive language the best. It's a good read -- in fact, I think I read it in three sittings.
November 13, 2014
Glad I finally read it. While it is well-written and “literary” in merit, some things troubled me about it. It’s probably just me, but I believe this family is TOO BIG. The “aunts” and “uncles” all ran together in my mind (may be my problem). Language is somewhat clunky at times, a shade purple at others.
August 14, 2014
I've been rereading several of the books that are still on my shelves to answer the inner question, "Why do I still own this?"
Many novels of the 1990s have a specific style of the time, but Bouldrey's touching family drama stands the test of time, and stands outside any literary trend. His narrator Michael's emerging gay identity is mostly overshadowed by the boisterous clan of his Michigan family, which includes an extended array of cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.
Bouldrey captures the vicious antagonism between children and teenagers with flair, the comical foibles of adults, and the narrator's growing awareness of the absurdity of misguided Catholic rituals.
Michael's awkward feelings toward a handsome older cousin are one of many small dramas that develop, and while interconnected, nearly every chapter stands alone as a powerful evocative short story. What's also fascinating is his skill with depicting the multi-character choreography of placing the many relatives and neighbors in the story at the right moments.
Many novels of the 1990s have a specific style of the time, but Bouldrey's touching family drama stands the test of time, and stands outside any literary trend. His narrator Michael's emerging gay identity is mostly overshadowed by the boisterous clan of his Michigan family, which includes an extended array of cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.
Bouldrey captures the vicious antagonism between children and teenagers with flair, the comical foibles of adults, and the narrator's growing awareness of the absurdity of misguided Catholic rituals.
Michael's awkward feelings toward a handsome older cousin are one of many small dramas that develop, and while interconnected, nearly every chapter stands alone as a powerful evocative short story. What's also fascinating is his skill with depicting the multi-character choreography of placing the many relatives and neighbors in the story at the right moments.
July 26, 2021
There are novels primarily about families; there are novels that are primarily about the growth of individuals – coming-of-age novels, for instance. In fact the latter kind derives most of its tension and satisfaction from the individual’s relationships with family members. This makes the latter half or so of Bouldrey’s novel fairly successful, but the former half is a tedious mess.
So let’s start off with the family. Michael Bellman is a kid growing up in an Irish (paternal) and German (maternal) family. Mom becomes pregnant, and little Michael is freighted off to the extended maternal family for the summer while she comes to term. This action is remarkable in itself and left entirely unexplored by Bouldrey. What’s more, the entire action of the novel takes place in the extended maternal family over the course of various summers, during which the parents are entirely absent, and one Christmas-New Year’s season, in which they make a trivial appearance as nonentities. The number of times they, or the kid brother, appear in the novel at all can be counted on one hand. His mother makes a four-word appearance at the funeral of one of the maternal uncles. Kid Brother shows up for the concluding wedding and is mentioned once; whether Michael’s parents attended is left to the reader’s imagination. The nine months out of the year in which Michael presumably lives with his own nuclear family are similarly brushed off. When he describes in the last chapter how, now at college, he began to derive strength from hating his family, he doesn’t even mention his parents. The ultimate form of hatred? Yet if all this is supposed to imply or signify his rejection of his nuclear family, Bouldrey fails to problematize it.
Now to the extended maternal family. It’s traditional Catholic, which means it’s large. (We can note in passing that it’s large, clannish, superstitious, and more or less matriarchal and even matrilineal, although it’s German-American whereas Michael’s Irish-American dad is good for only two kids. That, and Bellman, as Irish surnames go, is uncommon to say the least.) Here Bouldrey faces a structural problem that he negotiates astonishingly poorly, throwing at the reader fistfuls of relatives poorly differentiated if differentiated at all. One understands the need to take pencil and paper and map out a family tree when reading something with the dimensions of, say, War and Peace; it shouldn’t be necessary for a novel that can be read in a day, and it’s hardly worth the trouble. The result suggests poor narrative control – or, worse, undigested autobiography. It also doesn’t help that Bouldrey refers to one of the really important relatives alternatively as “grandmother,” “great-grandmother,” and “golden grandmother”; there is also an only-grandmother cowering in the shadows somewhere, whose relationship with her daughter is, of course, unexplored. It’s not much of a comfort to find out at the end of the novel that Michael, though still apparently a young man, is losing the ability to remember which relative did what.
This authorial attitude, or lack of it, has a detrimental effect on even significant characters. Michael’s cousin Tommy, for instance – Michael’s first crush – announces in one chapter that he’s joining the Marines and going to Vietnam; in the next chapter we find out that he became a draft dodger. But the only way one could expect to be a Marine was to volunteer, in which case Tommy would have been deserting, not dodging the draft. It’s true that the Marines were forced, at the high point of the war, to take draftees, but this happened sporadically and only once the draftees had appeared at the induction center, literally waiting for the bus to boot camp. Whether this is sloppy research or fuzzy autobiographical memory on Bouldrey’s part, or sloppy writing (did Tommy mean “I hope the Marines take me?” Was he joking? Did Bouldrey confuse desertion with draft dodging?) is anyone’s guess. Oh, and guess what? Tommy does eventually become a Marine after all. Why? How? "Shut up, Michael" is his cousin Anne's response -- she had broken that bit of news to him at her wedding -- and she (or, better, Bouldrey) follows that with a remarkable non-explanation ("He was always a good citizen").
Pay little heed to Michael’s childhood quirks as much ballyhooed in the promotional blurb: confessing to uncommitted sins is purely a Chapter 1 phenomenon; talking to inanimate objects has ceased by Chapter 5; neither seems to contribute to or illuminate the development of his personality although they are, within their limits, cute. By the way, otherwise the novel is unrelievedly ponderous, even stifling, in atmosphere.
Readers who, despite all this, manage to slog it past Chapter 4 will be rewarded with a few story lines that are touching and effective, even if the prose rarely rises above the level of the pedestrian: Michael’s first crushes and the development of his relationship with Anne being the most notable, as well as the account of the wisdom he refuses to absorb from his (great-)grandmother. But a good editor would’ve taken a merciless blue pencil to much of the first two chapters, thinned down the number of named characters (some of whom, to be fair, do eventually emerge with distinct personalities), and cut either Chapter 3 or Chapter 4 in its entirety – my vote would be to eliminate the former – for contributing little if anything to an understanding of Michael or what is, in essence, the only part of the family that isn’t disposed of offstage.
3 ½ stars for Chapters 5-end; 1 star for Chapters 1-4. On balance 2 stars.
So let’s start off with the family. Michael Bellman is a kid growing up in an Irish (paternal) and German (maternal) family. Mom becomes pregnant, and little Michael is freighted off to the extended maternal family for the summer while she comes to term. This action is remarkable in itself and left entirely unexplored by Bouldrey. What’s more, the entire action of the novel takes place in the extended maternal family over the course of various summers, during which the parents are entirely absent, and one Christmas-New Year’s season, in which they make a trivial appearance as nonentities. The number of times they, or the kid brother, appear in the novel at all can be counted on one hand. His mother makes a four-word appearance at the funeral of one of the maternal uncles. Kid Brother shows up for the concluding wedding and is mentioned once; whether Michael’s parents attended is left to the reader’s imagination. The nine months out of the year in which Michael presumably lives with his own nuclear family are similarly brushed off. When he describes in the last chapter how, now at college, he began to derive strength from hating his family, he doesn’t even mention his parents. The ultimate form of hatred? Yet if all this is supposed to imply or signify his rejection of his nuclear family, Bouldrey fails to problematize it.
Now to the extended maternal family. It’s traditional Catholic, which means it’s large. (We can note in passing that it’s large, clannish, superstitious, and more or less matriarchal and even matrilineal, although it’s German-American whereas Michael’s Irish-American dad is good for only two kids. That, and Bellman, as Irish surnames go, is uncommon to say the least.) Here Bouldrey faces a structural problem that he negotiates astonishingly poorly, throwing at the reader fistfuls of relatives poorly differentiated if differentiated at all. One understands the need to take pencil and paper and map out a family tree when reading something with the dimensions of, say, War and Peace; it shouldn’t be necessary for a novel that can be read in a day, and it’s hardly worth the trouble. The result suggests poor narrative control – or, worse, undigested autobiography. It also doesn’t help that Bouldrey refers to one of the really important relatives alternatively as “grandmother,” “great-grandmother,” and “golden grandmother”; there is also an only-grandmother cowering in the shadows somewhere, whose relationship with her daughter is, of course, unexplored. It’s not much of a comfort to find out at the end of the novel that Michael, though still apparently a young man, is losing the ability to remember which relative did what.
This authorial attitude, or lack of it, has a detrimental effect on even significant characters. Michael’s cousin Tommy, for instance – Michael’s first crush – announces in one chapter that he’s joining the Marines and going to Vietnam; in the next chapter we find out that he became a draft dodger. But the only way one could expect to be a Marine was to volunteer, in which case Tommy would have been deserting, not dodging the draft. It’s true that the Marines were forced, at the high point of the war, to take draftees, but this happened sporadically and only once the draftees had appeared at the induction center, literally waiting for the bus to boot camp. Whether this is sloppy research or fuzzy autobiographical memory on Bouldrey’s part, or sloppy writing (did Tommy mean “I hope the Marines take me?” Was he joking? Did Bouldrey confuse desertion with draft dodging?) is anyone’s guess. Oh, and guess what? Tommy does eventually become a Marine after all. Why? How? "Shut up, Michael" is his cousin Anne's response -- she had broken that bit of news to him at her wedding -- and she (or, better, Bouldrey) follows that with a remarkable non-explanation ("He was always a good citizen").
Pay little heed to Michael’s childhood quirks as much ballyhooed in the promotional blurb: confessing to uncommitted sins is purely a Chapter 1 phenomenon; talking to inanimate objects has ceased by Chapter 5; neither seems to contribute to or illuminate the development of his personality although they are, within their limits, cute. By the way, otherwise the novel is unrelievedly ponderous, even stifling, in atmosphere.
Readers who, despite all this, manage to slog it past Chapter 4 will be rewarded with a few story lines that are touching and effective, even if the prose rarely rises above the level of the pedestrian: Michael’s first crushes and the development of his relationship with Anne being the most notable, as well as the account of the wisdom he refuses to absorb from his (great-)grandmother. But a good editor would’ve taken a merciless blue pencil to much of the first two chapters, thinned down the number of named characters (some of whom, to be fair, do eventually emerge with distinct personalities), and cut either Chapter 3 or Chapter 4 in its entirety – my vote would be to eliminate the former – for contributing little if anything to an understanding of Michael or what is, in essence, the only part of the family that isn’t disposed of offstage.
3 ½ stars for Chapters 5-end; 1 star for Chapters 1-4. On balance 2 stars.
sony-or-android
May 29, 2025ebook Pima
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews