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The Old World
In a Massachusetts mill town in the early 1960s, an elderly teacher of languages runs her car off the road one afternoon, and is killed. A refugee from wartime Germany and Spain, disciplined, exacting Anna Aylmer is a mystery to her neighbors and colleagues. For her prize pupils, four young men on the cusp of gay manhood, the shock waves of her death ripple forward through the remainder of their lives. From Boston in the 1970s to a Caribbean island where the four are reunited in the AIDS-ravaged 1980s, The Old World lays the bones of a troubled past at the doorstep of the present.
176 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1997
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August 10, 2024
(I have found an excellent article in the Michigan Review of 2011 about Jonathan Strong and his work which I am posting to all my reviews of his Books: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text...)
This was the first novel I read by Jonathan Strong, it was also the first novel I was able to acquire by him, in the UK his novels are unavailable in public libraries and buying them usually involves expensive delivery charges. I only discovered Mr. Strong this year through serendipitous exploration of various web site references and links which no doubt is in part a reflection of the extensive gaps in my literary knowledge but also reflects the lamentably low profile this outstanding author has (as of August 2024 mine is still the only review on Goodreads for this novel). I don't know why he has failed to attract a greater following - maybe that is a sign of what a good writer he is.
So to begin with let me say that Jonathan Strong is a great, new, wonderful reading experience for me. There is something very unique about his writing. I am not a skilled enough dissector of literary themes to explain what it is that makes him so unique and special but that he is special is unquestionable. I almost feel I should apologise for pigeon holing him so reductively as literary fiction-queer-interest but as no one else has bothered to review, rate or label him (how easy it is to feel like Giovanni Drogo on the ramparts in 'The Tartar Steppes' awaiting an invasion which never comes or which in our case has come and left us defending a fortress and a cause that has been forgotten).
I hope to provide an unsatisfactory and limited introduction to both this novel and Jonathan Strong.
This novel about four men, gay as it turns out, who meet and are drawn together while at high school by a unique emigre English teacher (she is a refugee from Europe and the rise the Nazis and the civil war in Spain). Their lives are permanently affected by her in a, I hate to say it, Jean Brodie like way with a passion for life, literature and a belief in things bigger than their New England town. Defiance of class, money, power and respectability are all subtly touched on. The four boys graduate and escape her - or rather she escapes them so that she is always part of them.
Interestingly the boys being gay, or accepting being gay, is not part of the story, not because it is ignored but because it is irrelevant or more honestly so entwined with what their teacher Anna Aylmer is attempting to make them understand that it doesn't need to be said. But let me be clear this is not avoidance but acceptance. If I had not already abandoned the shelving category of 'gay novel' I would have had to do after reading this novel because while every one the boys are gay it is not a novel about being gay.
Jonathan Strong was of the generation as writers like Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Ethan Mordden, Felice Picano and Christopher Bram (amongst many others) yet Strong, while very queer, has always remained outside and rather ignored by the 'gay' mainstream. Possibly because although after his first book 'Tike and Five Stories' was published in 1969 he was hailed as a new young voice in gay writing he never moved to New York and followed up the success of 'Tike and Five Stories' with a brilliant novel 'Ourselves' which the likes of Christopher Bram thought was insufficiently 'gay'. This seems to have banished him permanently from the lists of canonical significant 20th century 'gay' writers.
I think Strong is a wonderful writer who will be read long after the likes of Bram, Picano or Mordden have sunk into the obscurity of historical footnotes. 'The Old World' is a beautiful novel which has a great deal to offer and as a novel emerging from the AIDS years manages to speak beyond them. I must admit that I find it impossible to reread much of the fictional writing about AIDS, particularly what was written from within it.
I can remember reading novels like 'a Married Man' by Edmund White or story collections like 'Monopolies of Loss' by Adam Mars-Jones and being emotionally devastated as well as impressed with them as writers. They still sit on my shelves but I cannot bring myself to read them again. I recently read 'Sacred Lips of the Bronx' by Douglas Sandowick and the parts dealing with growing up in the Bronx and his first love for a Puerto Rican boy is still fresh, vital and relatable, perhaps even more so when class and racial divisions seem more insurmountable. But the parts about his crumbling relationship in Venice Beach against the ACT-UP years seem much more dated.
All this is to say that dealing honestly with questions does not necessarily mean dealing with them pedantically. The Old World is a character driven novel and a very fine one. That mine will be the first review is an honour and a scandal. I really hope it will lead someone, maybe many someones, to explore Jonathan Strong's plentiful oeuvre.
This was the first novel I read by Jonathan Strong, it was also the first novel I was able to acquire by him, in the UK his novels are unavailable in public libraries and buying them usually involves expensive delivery charges. I only discovered Mr. Strong this year through serendipitous exploration of various web site references and links which no doubt is in part a reflection of the extensive gaps in my literary knowledge but also reflects the lamentably low profile this outstanding author has (as of August 2024 mine is still the only review on Goodreads for this novel). I don't know why he has failed to attract a greater following - maybe that is a sign of what a good writer he is.
So to begin with let me say that Jonathan Strong is a great, new, wonderful reading experience for me. There is something very unique about his writing. I am not a skilled enough dissector of literary themes to explain what it is that makes him so unique and special but that he is special is unquestionable. I almost feel I should apologise for pigeon holing him so reductively as literary fiction-queer-interest but as no one else has bothered to review, rate or label him (how easy it is to feel like Giovanni Drogo on the ramparts in 'The Tartar Steppes' awaiting an invasion which never comes or which in our case has come and left us defending a fortress and a cause that has been forgotten).
I hope to provide an unsatisfactory and limited introduction to both this novel and Jonathan Strong.
This novel about four men, gay as it turns out, who meet and are drawn together while at high school by a unique emigre English teacher (she is a refugee from Europe and the rise the Nazis and the civil war in Spain). Their lives are permanently affected by her in a, I hate to say it, Jean Brodie like way with a passion for life, literature and a belief in things bigger than their New England town. Defiance of class, money, power and respectability are all subtly touched on. The four boys graduate and escape her - or rather she escapes them so that she is always part of them.
Interestingly the boys being gay, or accepting being gay, is not part of the story, not because it is ignored but because it is irrelevant or more honestly so entwined with what their teacher Anna Aylmer is attempting to make them understand that it doesn't need to be said. But let me be clear this is not avoidance but acceptance. If I had not already abandoned the shelving category of 'gay novel' I would have had to do after reading this novel because while every one the boys are gay it is not a novel about being gay.
Jonathan Strong was of the generation as writers like Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Ethan Mordden, Felice Picano and Christopher Bram (amongst many others) yet Strong, while very queer, has always remained outside and rather ignored by the 'gay' mainstream. Possibly because although after his first book 'Tike and Five Stories' was published in 1969 he was hailed as a new young voice in gay writing he never moved to New York and followed up the success of 'Tike and Five Stories' with a brilliant novel 'Ourselves' which the likes of Christopher Bram thought was insufficiently 'gay'. This seems to have banished him permanently from the lists of canonical significant 20th century 'gay' writers.
I think Strong is a wonderful writer who will be read long after the likes of Bram, Picano or Mordden have sunk into the obscurity of historical footnotes. 'The Old World' is a beautiful novel which has a great deal to offer and as a novel emerging from the AIDS years manages to speak beyond them. I must admit that I find it impossible to reread much of the fictional writing about AIDS, particularly what was written from within it.
I can remember reading novels like 'a Married Man' by Edmund White or story collections like 'Monopolies of Loss' by Adam Mars-Jones and being emotionally devastated as well as impressed with them as writers. They still sit on my shelves but I cannot bring myself to read them again. I recently read 'Sacred Lips of the Bronx' by Douglas Sandowick and the parts dealing with growing up in the Bronx and his first love for a Puerto Rican boy is still fresh, vital and relatable, perhaps even more so when class and racial divisions seem more insurmountable. But the parts about his crumbling relationship in Venice Beach against the ACT-UP years seem much more dated.
All this is to say that dealing honestly with questions does not necessarily mean dealing with them pedantically. The Old World is a character driven novel and a very fine one. That mine will be the first review is an honour and a scandal. I really hope it will lead someone, maybe many someones, to explore Jonathan Strong's plentiful oeuvre.
Displaying 1 of 1 review