>>REVIEWS
FINISTÈRE
Fritz Peters
Arsenal Pulp Press, 336 pp.
WHISPER THEIR LOVE
Valerie Taylor
Arsenal Pulp Press, 256 pp.
Two new books in the Little Sister imprint led me to question how works of queer literature are canonized, and ask: what are the criteria for classic queer fiction?
Finistère and Whisper Their Love both chart the coming-of-age of two young homos, Matthew and Joyce, who have in common emotionally distant mothers, absent fathers and hyper-homosocial private schools brimming with budding sexuality where they find older partners to guide in their explorations. These tropes are among the mainstays of gay and lesbian pulp, and yet the series distinguishes itself from scads of formulaic and forgettable novels with the careful selection of these two novels first published in the 1950s.
In his introduction to the Finistère, Michael Bronski charts the life of its elusive author, Fritz Peters. Peters was not directly involved with queer or literary communities, was raised by noted lesbian writer Margaret Anderson and her lover, fought in the Second World War and subscribed to an obscure religion, on which he later wrote a book. Some of these themes appear in Finistère, and Bronski describes it – one of the very few books that the author wrote – as a "quintessential homosexual novel of the postwar decade."
Matthew is a young American who moves to France with his mother following his parents’ divorce. He projects his need for a male role model onto his mother's friend Scott and the longing, acceptance, love and disappointment he experiences eventually foreshadow the tribulations of his relationship with his older teacher, Michel. The imprint of Matthew's relationship with Scott is traced through to his intimacies with Michel, and it's a hardcore, emotional rollercoaster comparable with even today's most overblown queer dramas.
Some of the most vivid images in the book are the summer when the closeted Matthew holidays in rural France with Michel, his mother and her domineering new husband. Later, he meets his long-lost dad in the lobby of his hotel, and while they're not overt with their relationship, Matthew's father and step-mother also greet Michel with surprising affection and warmth. This group of overbearing adults practically cannot help themselves from smothering Matthew with conflicting attentions, and even Michel's possessive love eventually adds to the young boy's despair.
While many of the lesbian pulp novels of the time were written by men and focused on titillating lesbo sex romps, several women sought to change the genre and reclaim a space for their own stories.
Enter Valerie Taylor's Whisper Their Love. A lifelong advocate for lesbian rights, political organizer, editor of influential lesbian magazine The Ladder and co-founder of Chicago's chapter of the Mattachine Society, Taylor was not only a writer but also a fierce queer who embedded her hard-fought social and political ideas within her fiction.
Whisper Their Love is an easy yet sensitive novel that gives contemporary readers a chance to revisit the historical depths of queer/lesbian literature. Like many of the characters in queer pulp novels, Joyce is alternately cast as a young woman with little positive experience of sexuality and an emerging mistfit who flirts dangerously with queer life. She is caught between the values of her aunt and uncle, the freewheeling mother from whom she receives money, postcards, clothes and little else, and the fresh new world of an all-girl private school. Her emotional and sexual relationship with Miss Bannister offers Joyce access to affirming sexual tenderness and a debauched queer life that presents a stark challenge to her upbringing. Even their introductory passions are often out-emo'ed by the interpersonal turmoil of Joyce and her school chums. Their relationship peaks in a scene where Miss Bannister's older queer friends are vilified as Joyce witnesses their cosmopolitan and eccentric queer fete. These are the only characters in the book who are "out," and yet the experience finally leads her to eschew her own lesbian desires for fear of growing up to be them.
The book is a worthwhile read as a primer in lesbian pulp, but it also departs radically from the genre because of Taylor's frank discussion of gender, class, rape, abortion and suicide. It's most compelling as a document of a particular time and as a reminder of the many social constraints that governed the lives of women in the ’50s. These complexities elevate the book from the conventions of lesbian pulp novels and allow us to read it on its own terms. Barbara Grier's introduction remains sensitive to contemporary contexts and interest in queer history by furthering the connection between Joyce's story and the time in which it was written.
The two reissues are just as valuable for their "special features" as they are for the stories. By making a commitment to these works, Little Sister and Arsenal Pulp are asserting the value of these stories as great works that deserve to be read today. But the series also offers broader context, the history and details into the fascinating lives of the book's authors, their eccentricities and why their writing was remarkable at the time it was published. They lend currency to the presentation of queer cultural perspectives and give them a place. Like many queer history projects – among them, The Pride Library at the University of Western Ontario, with the largest collection of queer literature in Canada – this series serves to illustrate the cultural impact of queer writing, its ability to resist exclusion and preserve the narratives of queer lives.
Other works in the series illuminate the heavyweight queer themes of the past century: Larry Duplechan's Blackbird, the first story on coming out and coming-of-age as a young black man, urban sexual identities in Empathy by New York queer agitator Sarah Schulman and struggles to find love and acceptance amid AIDS and prejudice in Franny, the Queen of Provincetown by John Preston. |
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