LGBT Literature is a Readers and Book Lovers series dedicated to discussing books that have made an impact on the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. From fiction to contemporary nonfiction to history and everything in between, any book that touches on LGBT themes is welcome in this series. LGBT Literature posts on the last Sunday of every month at 7:30 PM EST. If you are interested in writing for the series, please send a Kosmail to Chrislove.
This review will (I hope) be part of the Readers and Book Lovers series and in particular the sub-portion of that series devoted to LGBT-themed literature.
Let me get the important stuff out of the way first: The book is so good it is almost scary. I first read it a couple of months ago and subsequently recommended it to my local book group. And then I asked to contribute this piece as part of the LGBT literature stream within Readers and Book Lovers. It's not that unusual for me to reread a book I've enjoyed. I cannot tell you how many times I've read Isaac Asimov's Foundation series over the years. Still I'd typically consider a second reading of a book so soon after my initial reading as sort of a slog. But not in this instance.
Continue beyond the Fleur-de-Kos for some background and discussion.
Tom Spanbauer is an American novelist who grew up in Idaho. He spent a number of years living in New York, where he obtained an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University and currently resides in Portland, OR. He is a long-term AIDS survivor. He is a gay man who has also had relationships with women. All of this is pertinent to his work generally and to this particular book most especially. Spanbauer practices a literary form he refers to as "Dangerous Writing," which the Wikipedia entry on him describes as follows:
Dangerous Writing focuses on a minimalistic style and “writing from the body,” the act of overcoming fear to write painful personal truths.
Dangerous Writing can thus be viewed as an emotionally cathartic exercise. All of Spanbauer's novels are written in the form of first-person remembrances.
I Loved You More, published in 2013, is Spanbauer's fifth novel. I am not familiar with his first novel, Faraway Places, which was published in 1989 but I did read his next novel, The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon, published two years later. The latter book received significant critical acclaim at the time of its publication. Spanbauer was diagnosed with AIDS in 1996, which explains why he did not publish another novel for ten years. His 2001 work, In the City of Shy Hunters, documents life in New York City during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. There is another book I'm thus far unfamiliar with (though I plan to fix that soon), Now Is The Hour, published in 2007. The books I am familiar with cover the themes of troubled childhoods, spiritual and sexual abuse, sexual awakening, thwarted love, emotional betrayal, HIV and AIDS and Native American spirituality.
Upon gaining entry to a highly sought-after writing seminar, Idaho native Ben Grunewald meets Hank Christian. Ben is a gay man, though he'd been married to a woman. Hank is straight but not narrow, macho yet sensitive, worldly and at the same time perhaps a bit naive, the product of a working class upbringing in rust belt Pennsylvania who is about ten years younger than Ben. Ben is deeply wounded emotionally while Hank, to all appearances, is pretty well-balanced--regular guy, athletic, always seems to have a very attractive girlfriend. After first being annoyed with Hank, Ben becomes impressed with him and soon realizes not only that he is in love, but that in some sense, Hank loves him back.
Within the book's first fifty or so pages (somewhat difficult to be certain of page count when you're reading something on a Kindle) Spanbauer manages to take us from Ben and Hank's initial encounter, through their first social interaction and then on to the true beginning of their friendship/love affair while simultaneously backtracking into his own childhood and youth and then returning. Spanbauer's powers of description are prodigious. He describes the Lower East Side on a hot, muggy summer evening and you're there; he describes the city at the dawn of a winter morning and you're just as present.
There are so many vivid scenes in this novel. One one occasion, Hank suggests that Ben take him to a gay bar, the Spike on Manhattan's West Side (it's a real bar; I've been to it). In the midst of the packed bar, surrounded my men on all sides, there is a discussion about the nature of anal sex--instigated by Hank--which is both hilarious and touching.
Another amazing episode takes place in the town of Atlanta, ID (another real place. Spanbauer chooses to use many actual places as venues for the unfolding drama). Following the publication of their first novels Ben and Hank undertake a brief book tour in Ben's home state, stopping first in Pocatello where they give a reading at a local bar/literary hangout. In a rented car they head towards Boise to rendezvous with some of Ben's college era friends, most of them gay men who still live locally. The trip takes them to Atlanta, a once-thriving goldmining town located in the Sawtooth National Forest, where one of Ben's friends owns a house. Atlanta is rustic. It's accessible only by unpaved logging roads; there is no electricity and only a handful of permanent residents. Ben and Hank do their reading in an old social hall. The following morning they all decide to take mushrooms; Ben's description of his experience is perhaps the most incredibly evocative I've ever read. Don't ask me how I'd know this. I admit nothing.
Given the autobiographical nature of Spanbauer's writing it should not be surprising that Ben tests positive for HIV and then later on, after relocating from New York to Portland, OR, is diagnosed with AIDS (Spanbauer's status as a long-term survivor is well-documented). One incident provides insight into what it is like to be newly infected with HIV; he describes it as a week-long hangover. The reality becomes apparent only later. I can relate; my own experience was quite similar.
Ben's character experiences an enormous amount of trauma. He continuously unpacks the damage brought about by his religious upbringing, the guilt and shame and ongoing sense of inadequacy, not to mention on-going sexual dysfunction which Ben deals with continually. On the other side there is the damage wrought by his family's own particular dysfunction, the expectations everyone has of him and the continuous sense of fear he carries into his adulthood based on the knowledge he can't possibly measure up to their unrealistic expectations. I've no idea how much of the material Spanbauer presents is out of his own experience (clearly his health-related issues stem from his actual life) but if even one tenth of what Ben goes through reflects Spanbauer's own history the man is quite a remarkable survivor.
Not long after the book tour Ben decides to move to Portland, pursuing a man he's met and fallen for. Before he gets there the man succumbs to AIDS. Not long after relocating Ben very nearly dies from AIDS, only to be rescued first by the intervention of one of his writing students and then later on by the advent of protease inhibitors. Ben spends a good deal of time within the mental health system; at one point Ben's therapist observes that Ben has lived under more stress than anyone she's ever treated who has not died.
Despite knowing that he's gay, Ben once again falls for a woman--Ruth, the student who essentially saves his life and nurses him back to health. They try to make it work as a romantic relationship once Ben begins to recover but of course who Ben really is ultimately trumps his good intentions (and, if I may say so, his codependency). The ultimate disaster occurs when, after another long lapse, Ben and Hank reconnect. Hank has found some literary success but also has become a cancer survivor. Hank comes for a visit, meets Ruth and the two of them strike up a relationship that results in Hank's ultimate and final abandonment of Ben. The story might seem odd. But anyone who has seen two people he or she has been emotionally involved with connect with each other, the situation strikes me as quite real and it is one of Spanbauer's great strengths as a writer to be able to unpack the emotional pain that can come of such an experience. He also has an amazing ability to create nuanced and believable characters. Hank is curious about Ben's sexuality but it becomes clear that there are limits he can't cross.
Ben knows he's gay; has some early experiences with men and develops friendships with other gay men. And yet he marries a woman. Then he falls in love with a straight man. That's seldom if ever a good idea, even or perhaps especially if the straight guy is sensitive enough to feel passionate about a male friend, as Hank clearly does.
Spanbauer's writing style, incorporating short, not-quite-full sentences into the first-person narrative and the occasional repeated phrase give the entire novel the character of a conversational quality. You feel as though you are listening to a friend tell his life story, which of course is precisely what's going on here. There are a couple of other tricks in Spanbauer's arsenal. The protagonist of In the City of Shy Hunters lives at 205 East Fifth Street. Ben lives at 211 East Fifth Street. I assume Spanbauer has more than a passing familiarity with that piece of Lower East Side real estate. There's also a coy reference to that latter novel as having been written by Ben.
Personal note here: When I read a book by a gay author I like to peruse the acknowledgements at the beginning or the end, especially if I'm reading a book by an author previously unknown to me. But even if I already know of the author's work, seeing who his or her mentors may have been can be very enlightening. So in browsing through the acknowledgments I found it quite interesting to encounter the name of...not quite a friend; more of an acquaintance of long standing, a former neighbor who I run into with some regularity as we tend to travel in the same circles. I asked him how his name might have gotten there and he told me he'd helped negotiate a movie option for one of Spanbauer's other novels. It really is a small world.
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