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Second Nature
When Alan, a successful forty-year-old surgeon and father of two children, becomes aware of immensely powerful sexual desires, his new feelings threaten his wife's identity and the security of their marriage
275 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
13 people want to read
About the author
Gordon Glasco
7 books2 followersFrancis Gordon Glasco is a former Jesuit who lived in Los Angeles and was commended for his ability to create memorable characters.
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October 15, 2016
“Kill faggots” spray painted on the sidewalk reminds him of his father’s stories about anti-Jewish slogans on the walls of Berlin.
In a fugue of terror, a middle-aged man stands at the threshold of gay life. Is this preference he’s struggling with? Or identity? Does he even have options?
It was a different world: written nearly forty years ago, this novel practically qualifies as historical documentation. “Have you ever thought what it would be like to be homosexual and wake up, say at 50, and find that you’re alone?” Loneliness, that ocean, remains an engulfing possibility for every human being. Yet it was not so very long ago that it was so much more of a threat for the LGBT community, who often endured without the traditional comforts and protections of family. (Arguably, some members of the community are not so much better off even after all these decades.) That sense of isolation is chronicled in Glasco’s novel – the baths, the bars, the beaches. What could be lonelier than a crowd?
About to lose his family, the main character realizes that his children will eventually come to think of him as the man who used to be their father, and this insight entails an almost physical pain, a sorrow both paralleled and reflected by the agony of his wife. For her, life has become meaningless, a humiliating joke. How many of us could forgive the man who deprived us of purpose? Yet these people love each other, and their struggle to stay together forms the body of the novel. The things worth fighting for are the things that make us bleed.
When the protagonist visits his father – to break it to him about his marriage and about himself – the older man is shocked. “Do you want to be that?” But the father pulls himself together with touching dignity. “Some things in life are merely given,” he tells his son. He goes on to speak of his brother, who died in Auschwitz. After a lifetime of pretending to be a Gentile, the brother went to the gas chamber denying to the Jews around him that he was one of them. Of all the millions who perished, the father explains, perhaps only he truly died in vain.
In a fugue of terror, a middle-aged man stands at the threshold of gay life. Is this preference he’s struggling with? Or identity? Does he even have options?
It was a different world: written nearly forty years ago, this novel practically qualifies as historical documentation. “Have you ever thought what it would be like to be homosexual and wake up, say at 50, and find that you’re alone?” Loneliness, that ocean, remains an engulfing possibility for every human being. Yet it was not so very long ago that it was so much more of a threat for the LGBT community, who often endured without the traditional comforts and protections of family. (Arguably, some members of the community are not so much better off even after all these decades.) That sense of isolation is chronicled in Glasco’s novel – the baths, the bars, the beaches. What could be lonelier than a crowd?
About to lose his family, the main character realizes that his children will eventually come to think of him as the man who used to be their father, and this insight entails an almost physical pain, a sorrow both paralleled and reflected by the agony of his wife. For her, life has become meaningless, a humiliating joke. How many of us could forgive the man who deprived us of purpose? Yet these people love each other, and their struggle to stay together forms the body of the novel. The things worth fighting for are the things that make us bleed.
When the protagonist visits his father – to break it to him about his marriage and about himself – the older man is shocked. “Do you want to be that?” But the father pulls himself together with touching dignity. “Some things in life are merely given,” he tells his son. He goes on to speak of his brother, who died in Auschwitz. After a lifetime of pretending to be a Gentile, the brother went to the gas chamber denying to the Jews around him that he was one of them. Of all the millions who perished, the father explains, perhaps only he truly died in vain.
Displaying 1 of 1 review