Allan Stein

by Matthew Stadler

Allan Stein Stadler, Matthew

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Gay, Queer, American, Novels, Queer Lit

272 pages, Paperback

First published December 6, 1999

About the author

writer

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

[I have read this novel again, this is probably my third reading, though the first in nearly a decade. I pulled it off the shelf to read because I was bitterly disappointed with many recently published novels which I had found excruciatingly bad and wanted to refresh myself by reading something I knew to be exceptional. I must report that 'Allan Stein' was a joy - like diving into a clear mountain lake after too long spent in the chemical tainted waters of a swimming pool. It has only reconfirmed my desire, no my need, to read all of Stadler's oeuvre.

[My previous review, found below, I regard as more than adequate because reading the novel again has not led me to change opinions or feel the need to alter it. If anything it only reinforced my opinions.]

My original review:

"Comic, erotic, and richly imagined, Allan Stein follows the journey of a compromised young teacher to Paris to uncover the sad history of Gertrude Stein's troubled nephew Allan. Having been fired from his job because of a sex scandal involving a student, the teacher travels to Paris under an assumed name -- that of his best friend, Herbert. In Paris, "Herbert" becomes enchanted by Stephane, a fifteen-year-old boy. As he unravels the gilded but sad childhood of Allan Stein, "Herbert" is haunted by memories of his own boyhood, particularly his odd, flamboyant mother. Moving from the late twentieth century back to the 1900s, effortlessly blending fact and fiction, Allan Stein is a charged exploration of eroticism, obsession, and identity." From my 1999 UK edition of this novel because I am not sure if the edition I read has any synopsis on Goodreads.

A brilliant novel which I want to read again but I have further novels by Matthew Stadler waiting to be read and I can not view this novel except within the context of his other novels all published between 1990 and 1999. It was highly praised by, amongst others, Edmund White who said:

"What makes Allan Stein unusual is the lyric suppleness and restraint of the writing, a kind of mandarin American casualness that is peculiar to such West Coast writers as Dennis Cooper, Dodie Bellamy, Kevin Killian and Robert Gluck, a school of refined but deceptively offhand stylists. Matthew Stadler is its newest star. In Allan Stein we encounter the trademark passages of stark beauty...With it Stadler demonstrates that he is among the handful of first-rate young American novelists, one with a wide reach and a quirky, elegant pen."

The incredibly conservative UK Spectator said it was "Blackly comic. Thrilling. Truly original" so it wasn't only gays who liked it (but then can you ever really be sure about English conservatives? All that boarding school education!).

And Stadler was viewed as a gay author and Allan Stein as a gay novel, it was awarded the 1999 Lambda award for Best Gay novel, but with the new millennium came, in the USA, Canada and Europe at least, much greater acceptance of gay men which has lead to a radical reevaluation of what 'gay' meant and as a result novels like Allan Stein were looked upon with suspicion. Almost every reviewer on GR praising this novel also goes through various contortions about how 'distasteful' or 'problematic' the reviewers found the story-line even though they were awarding it five stars. The reviewers believe it necessary to assure everyone that they do not and never felt any level of attraction for a 15/16 year old boy. I wonder what those same reviewers would think of the inclusion of an excerpt from 'Jonathan Dies' in the 1995 'Penguin Book of international Gay Writing' edited by David Mitchell and David Leavitt? They might even be more surprised if they read some of works in 'My Deep Dark Pain is Love: A Collection of Latin American Gay Fiction'? I am sure they would would be most discomforted by Stadler's previous novel 'The Sex Offender'.

This is a long preamble to say that Allan Stein is not an apologia for man-boy love. The 'Herbert' who lusts after Stephane and manages to seduce him is not even a boy lovers image of a poster boy for pederasty. Why everyone who reads a novel like this feels it necessary to assure us that they are free of similar urges is odd. No one bothers to assure everyone that although they enjoy murder mysteries they don't want to murder anyone. Are all those virile gays who lust only for age appropriate subjects protesting to much?

Nor is Allan Stein a gay Lolita, the most telling difference being that the novel is not named for Stephane, the object of obsession. Poor Stephane is not even the main obsession, that is the eponymous nephew of Gertrude Stein and possible Picasso model. The comparison to Lolita is just lazy - every writer who creates a character with a letch for young flesh is not writing about a new Humbert Humbert. The fact that many reviewers confuse the names Herbert with Humbert suggests their acquaintance with Lolita, either as a novel, film, or Cliff notes digest, is limited to non-existent.

Allan Stein is everything I have quoted about it and it is also a work by one the finest prose writers produced in the USA. I don't know if it is a gay novel, I don't believe 'gay' novels exist anymore, not if you take David Leavitt's definition:

"...a gay story (can be) defined as one that illuminates the experience of love between men, explores the nature of homosexual identity, or investigates the kinds of relationship gay men have with each other, with their friends, and with their families...."

If you do accept that definition then 'gay' fiction would fill a very small shelf.

[Richard Jespers · Rating 5 out of 5]

1999:
Read twice in succession. Absolutely loved it. The greatest combination of nonfiction and fiction I’ve read. Hard to tell where his prose takes up and others’ leaves off. And . . . the most sensual, sexual development . . . since Lolita. This is a gay male Lolita. Lovely.

[One of my friends has failed to return my hardback copy. You know who you are. Locate my name stamped on the inside front cover, and return it now or face dire consequences. Please. Since I wrote the above I purchased another copy, this one signed by the author! So there, thieving friend.]

2025:
Since I read this novel the first time, I’ve also read Stadler’s The Sex Offender, and in some ways they deal with the same subject matter. Both books concern youngish male school teachers who are disgraced by having affairs with male pupils of theirs. Both books have the filthy protagonist flee to Europe or a European-like country (Sex Offender). In both books the older male finds a new young protégé over which to make a fool of himself. Stadler approaches this subject in both cases without judgment (except the judgment the protagonist bears against himself) and with great sensitivity.

In Allan Stein, in order to take flight from his recent fling and disgrace, a young gay American travels to Paris assuming the name of a friend who wishes for him to do some business research on his behalf (he can “vacation” while “Herbert” is gone and also deduct the travel expense for his business). The “new” Herbert is to stay with long-distance friends who’ve never actually met the real Herbert. And . . . they happen to have a fifteen-year-old son who seems very seducible, and Herbert spends a great deal of time attempting to do just that.

The real beauty of the novel (otherwise it might just be a salacious story) is the parallel pursuit he makes: 1) To locate some drawings of Allan Stein (Gertrude Stein’s nephew) on behalf of the real Herbert, an art dealer. 2) To try to gain the confidence of his host’s son, Stéphane. Does “Herbert” indeed seduce the winsome Stéphane? I’m not at liberty to say, but the ending in any case is a satisfying one.

[Leezus · Rating 4 out of 5]

An epheboph

This book was so close to being an utter bore that I thought about putting it down for good on a few occasions. Its style lacks the range for its intended atmospherics effects, creating vast blocks of run-on paragraphs with repetitive diction and sentences that are confusing, if not poorly constructed at times. The Allen Stein subplot stretches out an already over-indulgent "Lolita" clone filled with irritating Parisian socialites in the cynical nihilism so commonly overused in contemporary fiction.
However, I stand by my rating, this book is worth reading. What is lacks in substance its makes up for in risk, its ephebophilic narrator storming out of the gate with an unstoppable momentum that carries beyond the end of the book. There is no shame, not even any overt criticism, but more of a flippancy in its examination of a grown man's relationship with a sixteen year old boy, a relationship that, due on going scandals, can finally be talked about openly in an historical and ongoing context. The novel's illustrative properties are invaluable creating character's lost in the gray areas of perspective, ambiguity, and chemical attraction. There are very few ironic narrators as strong as Stadler's and what he lacks in descriptive, emotional, scenery he makes up for in the creation of characters who are truly alive.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allan Stein is one of the most profoundly difficult novels to approach as a reader or reviewer. The primary theme, that a gay man in early middle-age who is a teacher is attracted to boys in their mid teens, is certainly going to disturb many people and the novel is thus often described as a "gay retelling of Lolita". There's a lot that can be said on that front alone, but the foremost thing to note is that this is fiction: the topic of inter-generational love and sex should not be seen as the author endorsing such practices any moreso than claiming P.D. James endorses murder by writing whodunits. It is however an interesting topic in a novel and one that allows for plot devices that are unique and challenge the reader's emotions in ways that a typical romance would not. Beyond that, the ethics of the man-teen relationship are the tip of the iceberg here with questions of identity and morality, as the narrator travels from the Pacific Northwest to France under an assumed identity on a mission for a friend.

Stadler's writing is simply stunning: he is a first-rate writer with a strong lyrical ability with the English language and a gift of detail. Yes, his strength with this overshadows and possibly even overrules his capacity for the overall plot of the book, but still the novel is a joy to read. His descriptions of Paris are for the most part alluring though if you know the city well, you'll feel perhaps that he leaves out aspects he could have worked in and given that he is in fact so skilled with detail, there's just a wealth of aspects you wish he'd described given how beautiful and prone to glowing literary treatment Paris is, after all.

The sub-plot (on which the plot itself is actually predicated) of the narrator's quest to learn about Allan Stein is both interesting and a little awkward in places: the novel is rather short and a lot of thread is woven into a small cloth, so to speak. While the man-teen love/sex aspects didn't bother me a great deal, the narrator as a character is not that easy to like or feel empathy for given his ease in tricking people to his own ends and playing fast and loose with morals and ethics in general. He at points comes across as a sad sack of sorts whom you do feel sympathy for because he seems like a bright guy and one who winds up in bad situations not fully of his own doing, yet he also often makes things only worse for himself. The whole pretext for his journey to France is also a little hard to believe and could have been designed better: we get a lot of things going on more or less just for show and window dressing including the narrator's assumed name of "Herbert" as a shout-out of sorts to Lolita. These mechanisms also are used to insert the author to an extent into the role of the narrator and can make one question how autobiographical the novel is, though as I already stated I do not see the lurid topics as being endorsed by the author just because the apparent lengths he goes to identify himself with the narrator (we learn at the end that the narrator's real name is "Matthew"—the same as the author's own).

The best reason for reading this book is, in a manner of speaking, the story-telling contained within versus the story being told. Even for many gay male readers the plot will be a bit creepy and it also is a plot that rambles about a bit then lacks detail where additional detail could well be favored and appreciated. Stadler can freakin' write, of that there is no doubt. He seems in places better-suited however to the short story than full novel and I've not read any of his later novels so I cannot fairly comment on whether his plot-building has improved. Despite this, the book is still an easy and solid four stars. It's charming and awe-inspiring in how lyrical, how deft, it is on most pages. Stadler, though it was not his debut novel, certainly lacked the ability in places to not appear a bit unseemly and giddy over the fact he was, in fact, writing a novel. There's too much cloying fascination of this type in several aspects, but again, it's not enough damage to remove a single star from a stellar work. I just found myself liking the book, wishing it were longer, but also wishing the author had been as adept in the plot construction as the nuts and bolts. In this case, the devil was in fact not in the details but instead in the blueprints.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

A discerning gay reader might be inclined to take a pass on yet another story situated in a privileged layer of society that can obsess about art and fritter away time in Paris. What offsets that in Allan Stein is the middle class background of the protagonist, a young teacher living in Seattle who, having lost his job over a false charge of impropriety, uses his friendship with a campy art lover to live down to expectations in France. So grounded, the story, a melodrama of constant motion, builds on a firm base.

The descriptive writing is good, too, the author bringing readers into touch with the teacher's sex drive in a way that avoids the pitfalls such explicit accounts often fall prey to. The narration conveys a distinct sense of homosexual desire gay readers can connect with, for the erotic overtones entail more than just the teacher's ephebophilia.

The plot is shrewd, the author using the life and physique of Gertrude Stein's nephew, who really did live in Paris a almost a century before, as a foil for the action taking place at the end of the 20th century. The location of so much of the action in Paris makes sense, and the mood of the story feels right.

All in all, this book creates the right atmosphere and deploys its settings and characters astutely. I recommend it to fans of gay fiction.

[Monty Milne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written novel with a well constructed plot dealing with obsession, betrayal, truth and lies, and an aesthetic quest played out on several different levels. I found it intriguing and enjoyable.

Some may find the sex uncomfortable. The central character is deeply morally flawed, yet we never entirely lose our sympathy for him, because Stadler gives us a feel for the moral ambiguity of his situation - which is far more nuanced than contemporary witch hunters and purveyors of moral panic would have us believe.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure if it was the book or just me, but this seemed like a rather unmemorable read. It was sort of like the homosexual Lolita; but with prose that tried so hard to outrun itself that it frequently stumbled on its own attempted profundity. The only mildly entertaining part was the angelic boy's digestive problems, and how he manipulated the retarded narrator.
I have more by Matthew Stadler (including one with a very intriguing cover) so we'll see how that turns out.

[Bryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stadler is a great writer- and apparently a bit under appreciated, as I hear little about him. I started with his Dissolution of Nicholas Dee, which is a fine novel, and I actually may have enjoyed Allan Stein even more. A vivid account of a sort of breakdown/through of an aging gay man whose ongoing obsession with young boys, both real and imagined, is treated with unusual candor and empathy.

[Fuu]

Depois de um escândalo sexual envolvendo um aluno, um professor de ensino médio viaja para Paris. Lá, hospedado em uma casa de família, ele se vê atraído por Stephane, um rapaz de quinze anos de idade. Sua estadia na França possui ainda uma outra complicação: o protagonista está usando o nome de seu amigo Herbert Widener, um curador de museu que lhe arranjou a viagem com o pretexto dele rastrear pinturas que Picasso fez de Allan Stein, sobrinho da escritora Gertrude Stein.

A trama em Allan Stein emprega sem pudor um tema tabu: a efebofilia. O texto é em primeira pessoa e o narrador se sente atraído por garotos adolescentes, e tal mergulho só é viável e verossímil com um exame genuíno desse tipo de atração, sem vergonhas ou crítica moral exagerada, pois estes seriam incongruentes com a identidade do protagonista. Esse ímpeto se estabelece no começo do livro e é sustentado até o final, e é nessa audácia narrativa que se encontra seu maior mérito.

A prosa do livro não é tão eficaz quanto seu desembaraço temático. Principalmente no começo, onde Stadler se perde em alguns trechos desastrados e pretensiosos, com metáforas que não funcionam muito bem. Felizmente, isso se reduz depois que o protagonista viaja para Paris, quando o autor para de tentar impressionar em demasia e se concentra no desenvolvimento dos personagens, na riqueza de detalhes do cenário parisiense e nas intrincarias da relação ambígua do protagonista com Stephane e sua família.

O texto é sardônico em muitas partes, o que é algo que trabalha em seu favor. O narrador é sempre consciente de suas imoralidades, tratando-as com uma irreverência que não só as torna admissíveis no contexto quanto as cobrem de necessária ironia e espirituosidade. Em um trecho do livro, ele sugere que os leitores que não aguentam as descrições eróticas explícitas pulem para a página onde a história recomeça, fazendo ao mesmo tempo uma piada consigo mesmo e um atrevimento divertido com o leitor.

Uma das forças da ficção é a de nos permitir mergulhar na mente de personagens que apresentam gostos e motivações dúbias. Excêntrico, erótico e burlesco, Allan Stein é um livro que se aproveita dessa característica, tratando o proibido com uma franqueza arrebatadora.

[Mariah Oleszkowicz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I believe the point of this book is to emphasize the potential of boy-hood. Perhaps, the main character (Matthew) is looking to re-claim his childhood; perhaps Matthew is comparing his childhood to Allan's (who many people mentioned he didn't really get one). Regardless of what it was meant to be - it was Lolitaesque but with way too much descriptive prose. I was able to skip large passages/pages without losing the plot. Also, way too much description of grooming 15 year old boys and too much actual pedophilia.
However, I did find this description of a home library lovely:
"[Books] provide a barrier while also functioning as portals into other worlds. A wall of books is like a mass, a crowd, with its thousands of faces blending into one field of color. Each speck is so rich and individual, once you peer in closely enough, but it's just as easy, and pleasant, to draw away and admire their anonymity." p 94

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting read. The narrator, an admirer of teenage boys, assumes a false identity and journeys to Paris to research the life of Allan Stein, the nephew of Gertrude Stein who posed for Picasso at a young age. Using the false identity, the narrator becomes a guest in a sympathetic household and falls under the spell of the teenage son of his hosts. His research does not uncover the Picasso drawing of Allan Stein that he is seeking but he does have quite an adventure. If you are attracted to teenage boys, the writing should titillate you and if not, the book will repel you.

[Edward Amato · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially this book made me very uncomfortable. The pedophilia was upsetting and the main character was a deceitful low-life. This book made me look at my own outlook on sex, losing one's virginity and my own romantic ideals. I felt sorry for the boys that were taken advantage of. Odd that the other two books I am reading, one by Gaiman and the other by Jeanette Winterson also talk about Gertrude Stein.

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great story if you want to read about a pedophile creeping on boys on both sides of the Atlantic. I wish I could've gotten more out of it, but nope.

[_inbetween_]

Like in "TSO", the narrator/protagonist has lost his teaching post due to paedophilia and now half-heartedly pursues an obscure project. Like in "TSO", what I now know to be a common mental phenomenon (feeling outside one's body or much larger, expanding or contracting like one's surroundings) is important to the author. Like in "TSO", he was given a Guggenheim fellowship and wrote again about the beauty of boys, who have the potential to be Gods that men can never be. Like in "TSO", he does have close, non-sexual friendships with gay men of his age, and a hint of sexual attraction with old men. The way this boy, at 15 both today and in the past already a sexual being, is described ultimately makes someone like me more averse to this sort of "illegal" love. Yes, unlike in Northern Africa, men like this American don't fuck but get fucked by their young lovers, and he wants to suck and stroke, never demean, but this is all too much like everything I hate about heterosexuality (as his friend had mentioned as well), the otherness, the softness and slenderness and blabla. The fact that the protagonist himself wants to be that boy or be mothered by the boy's mother and has flashbacks to himself at that age with his own mother only makes homosexuality and the love of boys seem like the aberration born of wrong upbringing that I'm sure Stadler didn't mean to portray it as.

This book is at least in early parts indeed a bit funnier than "The Sex Offender"; it's also more like Kundera than Kafka in many ways, least of which is that it's set in Paris.

[Michael Joe Armijo · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author is an EXCELLENT writer. There is no question about that! I think what is missing here is the flow. It's not a book where you finish each chapter and you have to 'keep reading'. You can set it on a table...and quite possibly wait a year to pick it up again. The story is relatively simple--with a few eyebrow raisers here & there. The writers' writing is the only thing that captures the reader (me). I'd highly recommend this author read the book, THE HOURS by Michael Cunningham or MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA or THE NOTORIOUS DR. AUGUST...then, you'll read a story that 'flows'.

[Adamm. · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoying so far. beautifully written

[Joe]

read "call me by your name" and had to read "allan stein" again.