Paul Monette

[meridannight]

I finished this a couple days ago, I forgot to come back and let you know. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending and the last parts of the book in general. I have a lot of mixed feelings about the book in general. But I'm glad I read it. He certainly led an interesting life.

hmm.... well, you must have some kind of feeling(s) about it, even if they are mixed or contradictory, even.

i know i didn't like the end parts much. that thing he did whoring around with all those women --- it felt fake and he was kind of a sell-out with what he did there. i felt disappointment when i read those parts. i'm not being judgmental -- i still love the guy -- i didn't live his life, and maybe that was necessary for him to go through that, but those parts cannot be put into positive light for me.

he knew from quite early on that he liked men, that much was very clear. that bullshit he did with those women was pure self-deception. and i can't ever respect that.

i pretty much forced myself through it because i respected him as a person, but i couldn't wait till he got over with it already.

i'm curious as to what your opinion was on those particular parts. ??

and i'm glad it was not a bad read for you (to say the least). i do think it is a very important work of our time. it might take a certain perspective to be able to relate to him, but even if you can't relate, it is still something that should stir and something that offers substance. i don't know, i kind of feel that it hasn't even reached its height of recognition yet. but i would place it unhesitantly on the same level with Zola, Proust, Baudelaire, etc not to even mention this wasn't fiction. give it a hundred years, and it will be a classic.

[Emiliano]

hmm.... well, you must have some kind of feeling(s) about it, even if they are mixed or contradictory, even.

i know i didn't like the end parts much. that thing he did whoring around with all those women --- it felt fake and he was kind of a sell-out with what he did there. i felt disappointment when i read those parts. i'm not being judgmental -- i still love the guy -- i didn't live his life, and maybe that was necessary for him to go through that, but those parts cannot be put into positive light for me.

he knew from quite early on that he liked men, that much was very clear. that bullshit he did with those women was pure self-deception. and i can't ever respect that.

i pretty much forced myself through it because i respected him as a person, but i couldn't wait till he got over with it already.

i'm curious as to what your opinion was on those particular parts. ??

and i'm glad it was not a bad read for you (to say the least). i do think it is a very important work of our time. it might take a certain perspective to be able to relate to him, but even if you can't relate, it is still something that should stir and something that offers substance. i don't know, i kind of feel that it hasn't even reached its height of recognition yet. but i would place it unhesitantly on the same level with Zola, Proust, Baudelaire, etc not to even mention this wasn't fiction. give it a hundred years, and it will be a classic.

I guess it speaks of the era he is writing about and was living in, and if his own internalized issues, that he was more able to deal with his sexual history as a general sexual disfunction than as homosexuality. It's interesting that he said the time he spent with women is what allowed him to be able to get into deep relationships with men. But I didn't like that part either. In some ways it's like when people hit 21 they just binge drink. He was so repressed that when he finally did have sex he just went all out. I see that kind of thing in people I've known too.

It's an important step in his journey though, and that's why I guess it was interesting in some ways. We all have such very different paths to accepting and embracing sexuality. And his wasn't perfect and glamorized, and it doesn't fit I guess what is expected of gay men either. Which I appreciate.

I did feel like the ending was really rushed. Is have rather read more about how true love entered his life and all that. But it seemed to me like "and then I met this great guy who I love and now we are both dying and it sucks the end." I want more of that part of his story, but maybe that's what other books of his cover.

[meridannight]

I did feel like the ending was really rushed. Is have rather read more about how true love entered his life and all that. But it seemed to me like "and then I met this great guy who I love and now we are both dying and it sucks the end." I want more of that part of his story, but maybe that's what other books of his cover.

that's true that it ended abruptly in that respect. but this book wasn't about that, and i knew it when i started reading it. in any case, that didn't bother me.

he writes about Roger, his lover, in this book:



i actually just received Borrowed Time myself, and i am going to read it soon.

then there's also his elegies for Roger (which i also plan to read):




i still have other comments on what you said, and on the second half of the book, but i have to think them through a bit.

[meridannight]

[MENTION=21558]Emiliano[/MENTION],
a few things i want to add about the second half of the book:

i loved the account of what he had with Greg. although it was so unhealthy and illicit i found the fact that he shared it so honestly truly remarkable. not all men would have the guts. i think it was one of the best parts of the book.

the boldness, the desperation and need behind what happened with that was excruciating. this life is not just about flowers and sunshine, beauty and goodness. it's also pain and torment, and they are necessary parts of feeling alive, parts of what make us human. Monette understood this. and it is this utterly human quality in him that i cannot but love.

i am interested to hear your own take on that part of his story (the thing with Greg). how did you react to that?


then there's the quote associated with his tryst with the US Navy guy that just expresses the plain bare truth of life:

When I bucked and shot myself, hearing him greedily swallow, I knew I had tasted life at last -- and wouldn't end up sobbing in a wheelchair after all.

this is to me, one of the most beautiful and basic insights into life: being with another man is what brings this life into being. it's the moment when a blind gains vision, when a man is pulled back from the brink of death, when black-and-white attains the colors. you only need to know another man to want to live.

Monette realized this, which is something that makes him my kindred spirit, albeit one i never met.


and this pure undeniable forcefulness of his expression:

Far too much in control of my histrionic rhetoric to let it fall into a whine, which is mostly what it was, I came off like the prince of my own darkness, ever so stylish in black.

the pure poetic expression of underlying emotion:

The cry I make when I'm coming is like an animal caught in a trap, or a vampire's groan at the first light of day.

...this is breathtaking.


yes, he was unhealthy and unappealingly closeted along the way, made mistakes and took wrong turns, but he retained his sanity and vitality. he pulled through it beautiful and breathing, not beaten and broken down. it is this force of life in him, that is ultimately entirely attractive. this sense that he is so alive, even in his pain and misery, that is what i get and am able to connect with.

he didn't dull the pain with the narcotics. he lived it. and he came through unbroken. that is remarkable.

even though the particulars of his and my life are quite different, the underlying dynamics and reactions we have are very much the same. there is something essential like that that i detect is exactly the same in my life and which makes me feel close to him. i have lived the same life as he, although different in details.

[Emiliano]

[MENTION=21558]Emiliano[/MENTION],
a few things i want to add about the second half of the book:

i loved the account of what he had with Greg. although it was so unhealthy and illicit i found the fact that he shared it so honestly truly remarkable. not all men would have the guts. i think it was one of the best parts of the book.

the boldness, the desperation and need behind what happened with that was excruciating. this life is not just about flowers and sunshine, beauty and goodness. it's also pain and torment, and they are necessary parts of feeling alive, parts of what make us human. Monette understood this. and it is this utterly human quality in him that i cannot but love.

i am interested to hear your own take on that part of his story (the thing with Greg). how did you react to that?

I definitely found it unhealthy and illicit. I didnt like Greg from his introduction to his departure. But I agree that Monette was brave to write about it and to put it out there in general. It definitely does show how his desperation at the time allowed for him to put himself in such a vulnerable and dangerous situation.

The whole theme of horny, closeted, and for the most part sexless teachers and older male figures in the academic setting contrasted with the attractive students and younger boys, who through sex or inappropriate touch and contact, manipulate the men around them... I was pretty put off by that throughout the whole book. It's just too familiar of the really negative stereotypes of gay men as leering perverts and predators, slaves to our sexual desires and urges, and as being unfit and unable to serve as teachers or mentors.

Obviously it happens though, as Monette observes in his youth and then participates in as he's older. And its not restricted to gay men - things like this happen with straight men, and its often exposed as happening with female teachers and male students. Im sure there are cases of it with lesbian teachers too. But its so heavily applied to gay men, and in the USA at least, its used to prevent gay men from participating in things like the Boy Scouts, and discourages gay men from working in education.

Its important he shared the story, for all the reasons you very eloquently described. And as a reader, I'd much rather read his own account and have had him include it himself in a memoir than to be looking up information on him and come across it somewhere else, as if Monette had attempted to hide it or purge it from his life story. For him as a writer, I understand the value of what he has written in the book. But it did nothing to really endear him to me on a human to human level.

He wrote very powerfully about both the beautiful experiences he had and the ugly ones. Im glad that you were able to enjoy that so much and to point it out, because your insights help me to read it in a different perspective. I think you've read a lot of beauty into it - which is something any sort of great art should allow for, the personal connections.

And even though I don't feel as strongly about it, I really like that you share how much of an impact the book had on you. I'm the kind of person who really likes observing and learning about the perspective of others, even better if I am being invited to. Even if I can't relate directly to what Monette was describing, I can relate to the broader themes. And I can relate to the impact it had on you. Again, its as enjoyable and fascinating for me to see what impacts other people as it is to be impacted by it myself.

[meridannight]

But its so heavily applied to gay men, and in the USA at least, its used to prevent gay men from participating in things like the Boy Scouts, and discourages gay men from working in education.

And as a reader, I'd much rather read his own account and have had him include it himself in a memoir than to be looking up information on him and come across it somewhere else, as if Monette had attempted to hide it or purge it from his life story. For him as a writer, I understand the value of what he has written in the book. But it did nothing to really endear him to me on a human to human level.


He wrote very powerfully about both the beautiful experiences he had and the ugly ones. Im glad that you were able to enjoy that so much and to point it out, because your insights help me to read it in a different perspective. I think you've read a lot of beauty into it - which is something any sort of great art should allow for, the personal connections.

And even though I don't feel as strongly about it, I really like that you share how much of an impact the book had on you. I'm the kind of person who really likes observing and learning about the perspective of others, even better if I am being invited to. Even if I can't relate directly to what Monette was describing, I can relate to the broader themes. And I can relate to the impact it had on you. Again, its as enjoyable and fascinating for me to see what impacts other people as it is to be impacted by it myself.

thank you for your point of view. where you enjoy learning about the perspective of others, it's not exactly that for me. in my case, i enjoy comparing my own viewpoint on a specific work with the viewpoint of some guy's i know and see how different or similar they are. and i liked exchanging views with you.

i've been meaning to order one book you once recommended to me, Donovan's Androphilia. i probably will order it in the next couple of months, and when i've read that one i'd like to do the same -- to compare our views and impressions. if you don't mind, that is.

PS. the thing you said about teachers, gay men in education and USA -- that's not applicable in Europe. the atmosphere over here is not like that. so that background wasn't there for me when i read it.

[meridannight]

well, i'm finishing up on Borrowed Time.

it's a different book than Becoming a Man. less of that force and power that was so explicit in the first one (Borrowed Time was actually written before Becoming a Man, but for me it's the reverse by the order that i read them). this one is full of pain and anguish, heavy with loss and sadness. it's not a light read by far. it's dark.

i'm only 30 pages from the end, and i don't know how much the ending is gonna affect it, but overall it's a heavy and an emotionally difficult read. it's still quality writing, of course, Monette is a great artist, but the content will weigh on you like a block of concrete. so, on one end i want to give it the highest rating there is -- for Monette, because he deserves it -- but on the other i'm not sure i am even capable of putting this work into any context of measure, because it's largely incomparable with most everything else i've read in my life.

one thing -- i come away from it all with a better understanding of AIDS, and what men went through in those first years when the disease went mostly uncontrolled. because it's all in here, every detail, every discomfort, and rage, the whole struggle with its victories and losses. i wouldn't have been able ever to see the reality of it without having read Monette. but i will be thinking about this whole book -- the moments in it -- the life of it -- for weeks, months to come, and i don't know if i will ever be able to not feel anguished about it all.