What do you think?
Rate this book
Ron
A compelling novel of one “well-adjusted” American man’s sexual ambiguity—how he deals with it, how it deals with him. Insightful, frank, au courant, it is a story of a man caught between revealing his homosexuality and trying to maintain a heterosexual facade. Drawn into his honest dilemma, we move with him between two separate worlds and view the jolting realities of his shadow existence. A powerful novel that takes us behind the deceptively prosaic life of a man, his different and yet not so different world, and the astonishing resolution he chooses.
338 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
4 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
Want to read
December 11, 2024I am not actually sure I want to read this novel but having discovered it on Peter Cameron's interesting website: https://extremelegibility.typepad.com... as a 'gay' novel I am reposting what he said:
"Ron by Carl Tiktin (Arbor House, 1979)
"Ron Starr (nee Stansky -- his Jewish father changed the name for "professional" reasons) grows up in a sort of fake Leave-It-To-Beaver home in upstate New York in the 1950s. His father is an ineffectual and defeated lawyer, his mother is a pretentious hysteric, and both and his older brother, Lenny, are homosexual.
"Lenny, who is dark and semitic, is less able, or interested, in hiding his sexuality and is banished from the family when he's discovered having sex with his high school friend. Ron, a golden boy, learning the value of discretion, keeps his queerness hidden. In college he discovers an interest and ability in playwrighting and moves to New York City, where he falls in with a bohemian theater crowd. But his play gets worse and worse the more he rewrites it, and he finally gives up on his dream of Broadway fame and fortune. He begins selling life insurance, which, thanks to his confidence and charm, he excels at, and is soon managing a team of salesmen, married to a secretary, and the father of a daughter.
"But of course his homosexual urges persist and he soon sets up a young lover in a Greenwich Village apartment where he spends about half his time. He begins drinking and misbehaving in various ways that threaten his career and his marriage, but when he is offered a promotion to management he cannot resist the lures and comforts of a straight life and renounces. his true nature.
"Ron is crudely conceived and written but does afford an interesting and entertaining, if skewed, look at midcentury queer life in middle America."
I can't helping thinking that this novel rather then affording 'an interesting and entertaining, if skewed, look at mid century queer life in middle America' provides more of insight into the ignorance and prejudice of middle America towards gays.
"Ron by Carl Tiktin (Arbor House, 1979)
"Ron Starr (nee Stansky -- his Jewish father changed the name for "professional" reasons) grows up in a sort of fake Leave-It-To-Beaver home in upstate New York in the 1950s. His father is an ineffectual and defeated lawyer, his mother is a pretentious hysteric, and both and his older brother, Lenny, are homosexual.
"Lenny, who is dark and semitic, is less able, or interested, in hiding his sexuality and is banished from the family when he's discovered having sex with his high school friend. Ron, a golden boy, learning the value of discretion, keeps his queerness hidden. In college he discovers an interest and ability in playwrighting and moves to New York City, where he falls in with a bohemian theater crowd. But his play gets worse and worse the more he rewrites it, and he finally gives up on his dream of Broadway fame and fortune. He begins selling life insurance, which, thanks to his confidence and charm, he excels at, and is soon managing a team of salesmen, married to a secretary, and the father of a daughter.
"But of course his homosexual urges persist and he soon sets up a young lover in a Greenwich Village apartment where he spends about half his time. He begins drinking and misbehaving in various ways that threaten his career and his marriage, but when he is offered a promotion to management he cannot resist the lures and comforts of a straight life and renounces. his true nature.
"Ron is crudely conceived and written but does afford an interesting and entertaining, if skewed, look at midcentury queer life in middle America."
I can't helping thinking that this novel rather then affording 'an interesting and entertaining, if skewed, look at mid century queer life in middle America' provides more of insight into the ignorance and prejudice of middle America towards gays.
Displaying 1 of 1 review