BOOKS
APRIL 7, 1995 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 27
Victorian novel is a rich, romantic experience
The God in Flight
by Laura Argiri
Random House, 478 p. $23 hardcover
Reviewed by Timothy Robson
This remarkable first novel is as rich and romantic as anything one is likely to find on current bookstore shelves. Eighteen years in its genesis, The God in Flight is a dark and complex mix of fundamentalist religion, inter-generational sex, violence, and erotically sensuous prose.
Laura Argiri has invented a style which engulfs the reader in the word-world of an anachronistic pseudo-Victorian novel. It is as if one is reading Dickens, but with the
sensibilities of Anne Rice. The book has the
Laura Argiri
same kind of shocking appeal as Dickens' works probably had to his early readers.
Simion Satterwhite, the sickly but spunky child of a drunken and de-
mented West Virginia fundamentalist preacher, survives his childhood under the protection of his tubercular tutor Simeon
With new material, Preston's
first book becomes his last
Franny, The Queen of Provincetown
by John Preston
St. Martin's, 102 p. $15.95 hard
Reviewed by Timothy Robson Franny, The Queen of Provincetown was John Preston's first published book, originally released in 1983 by Alyson Publications. The book was completed before the onslaught of AIDS, and it had always been Preston's intention to write a second portion
John Preston
that would describe Franny's response to the epidemic. During the months prior to his death from AIDS on April 28, 1994, Preston was at work on this new material. His editors at St. Martin's Press have appended an edited working draft of the material to a slightly revised original text, both of which are now published in a handsome hardcover edition. John Preston's first book also became his last book.
We all know someone like Franny. A rather bulky, archetypal gay hero, Franny is part parent, part teacher, part friend. He is crude, blunt-speaking, and always willing to fight for his rights as a human being. The book traces the history of Franny and his friends from the 1950s through the 1970s:
Isadora (a black drag queen); Leonard (the professor he rescues from alcoholism and who becomes his lover); the disco bunnies; the muscle boys; the leather guys-they are all here, hopelessly devoted to the Queen of Provincetown. Franny is the symbol of Gay Pride.
This story is told in the first person by the characters themselves. There is no narrative content besides the words of Franny and his boys.
The new material carries Preston's working title, "Franny, Isadora, and the Angels." It is 1993, and Franny has turned his Provincetown home into an AIDS hospice for people who have no one else. Preston's anger is never far from the surface in these passages:
"There's a new chapter to the story . . . I stand outside the back doors of the most rundown guesthouses and I beg for their old sheets... You see, by the time a boy comes to my house, he's probably going to mess up a mountain of sheets. He's going to shit in his bed. Probably he'll bleed. Lots of times they throw up all over the place. I have to have an endless supply of sheets. The boys never care if they came from Bloomingdales's or Sears, Jordan's or Penney's, if they're old or new, torn or whole. When I get a boy, he only cares that they're clean. And let me tell you something. Listen to me! Pay attention. When a boy comes to my house, by God, he gets as many clean sheets as he wants, as many clean sheets as he needs. Ten a day. Twenty. I don't care. I'll go beg for more ifI have to. I'll wash them by hand if need be. You know what? I'll even steal them . . .”
66
Franny never cries in his own home; he goes out to the edge of town early in the morning to be by himself. The book closes with a description of Franny's memorial to his boys: 'Everyone should know that there's a mantel with his photograph on it.' That was all that Franny would say. I looked over to see if he would break his rule, but he didn't. Franny refused to shed a tear while he was still in his house. We stood there and listened to Mike's horn and looked at the pictures, all the pictures as they streamed over the mantel and over the walls."
For All of Your Insurance Needs...
Lincoln to become a sixteen-year-old Yale student in 1878. He soon meets the handsome Greek-born professor and artist Doriskos Klionarios, who has his own hidden past.
Through a series of violent events, Simion comes to live in Dori's house, as the object of Dori's unconsummated virginal passions. It is not until Simion survives a near-fatal illness that he comes to understand the depth of Dori's love. Simion is the inspiration for Dorisko's sculpture "The God In Flight," which wins a prestigious European prize. The "chorus" observing and commenting on the progress of this relationship is another couple of the "lavender persuasion," a Yale medical professor and his "manservant." (The term homosexuality was not used in print until 1892.)
Argiri has adopted the verbal conventions of the time to describe the concept of homosexuality. It is interesting to note, however, that sex between men, without love, is—at least in Argiri's world-fairly common, just not spoken about. Concealment and fear of exposure were the watchwords of 1870s homosexuals, when public admission of one man's love for another was to risk career, property and life. It is a spurned student of Doriskos who is the catalyst for the book's melodramatic climax. As in all good romances, the ending is bittersweet and inconclusive.
Even in our time, Argiri's material is strong stuff: for most, the idea of a 31-year-old taking up with his 16-year-old student is simply unacceptable. Yet Argiri makes this relationship seem inevitable and natural. These are not stock characters; each has a persona of values, virtues and flaws. The sex scenes are erotic without being pornographic. In this book human imagination continues
to have more power than photographic imagery. Reality is not of prime importance here: the effects of southern Reconstruction are glossed over, and the idea of a young, unknown American sculptor winning a prestigious European prize is a bit far-fetched. But this is romance; we want to be lifted out of our ordinary selves.
With The God in Flight Laura Argiri steps into the pantheon of gay male romance novels, joining company with Patricia Nell Warren and Gordon Merrick. This reader was genuinely sorry to leave Simion, Dori, and their friends. May there be a sequel.
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