Gaya Scienza

The Samurai and the Gold Fish

The title of Paul Veyne's last book, Foucault, Sa pensée, sa personne (Albin Michel, 2008), is not the most elegant, and, more than anything else, is misleading. The essay is mainly a discussion of Foucault's thinking (which is fine, after all he was an intellectual), making abundant references to Dits et Écrits (ed. Defert et Ewald, Gallimard, 1994, 4 vol.), the posthumous volumes of all texts besides his books published during his lifetime by the philosopher. I will not even attempt to quote, in English translation, some of Veyne's views: his sharp and rhythmic prose is by moments difficult to follow and the references he makes often exceed my expertise. He is not always convincing though, for instance when he tries to justify some of Foucault's political and activist involvements like his support for Khomeini and the Iranian Islamic Revolution... The TLS will no doubt soon publish a review of the book. Only the last chapter is specifically dedicated to his personal memories of Foucault. We would have liked more of that captivating material. Veyne who was 4 years younger, had known him since he was a student at the prestigious École normale supérieure and Foucault already a teacher. He was a member of the inner circle who gathered around him at 285, rue de Vaugirard, his apartment in Paris fifteenth arrondissement. Foucault had awarded him the title of Honorary Homosexual, not without adding somewhat disapprovingly: "How can a man like you, open, well-read, prefer women?"

Foucault was a Skeptic. Humans at any time period in history are like gold fish in a bowl: their world is restricted but only the outside observer realizes it, writes Veyne. “Skeptics are double-edged individuals. When they are thinking they stand outside the bowl, and watch the fish making circles. Then, because life must go on, they join their fellow fish in the bowl to decide whom to vote for in the next election (without claiming that their choice is the truth). Skeptics are both observers outside the bowl which they dismiss as suspicious, and gold fish. This dualism is all but tragic.” (my, far from optimal, translation…) Because he used his pen as if it were a sword, Veyne likens Foucault to a samurai, borrowing the image from J.-Cl. Passeron. As he concedes in the introduction he could have titled his book Le Samouraï et le poisson rouge (“The Samurai and the Gold Fish”). It would have been a great title.

***

Part mystery, part coming of age novel, part love story, Half-Life is a noteworthy first novel. I came upon it by chance. The book was given to me by an internet hookup. Our encounter happened to be a total flop. He had arrived before me at the West Village bar where we were supposed to meet. I recognized him thanks to the picture (not the most recent though…) he had traded with me. He joined me at a table in the back. John (as I will call him) told me he had already had a shot and a beer. He was fed up with his day at the office. We chatted while sipping our drinks. We realized we both liked reading... He seemed very happy about it. He had another beer and left to go smoke a cigarette outside, but not before taking a book from his briefcase and handed it to me. It was Half-Life, a novel published several years ago, by an author I had never heard of (Aaron Krach, Alyson, 2004). John came back, we continued discussing, he drank another beer and went to smoke another cigarette. This time he was gone for a long time and I started reading the novel. When he resurfaced I understood he had been laid by someone at the bar. I told him I had to leave. He insisted in my keeping the book. In fact he did not like it and he seemed embarrassed by the situation.

Half-Life is written in short sections, in a cinematographic style, with a good dose of humor, especially in the dialogs. The story is set up in Los Angeles and spans two weeks in June 1999. Adam and Jeff are two well adjusted gay men. Jeff is a 38 years old police officer living by himself with a young black lab. His favorite pastime is surfing on the ocean. Adam is a smart kid, just about to graduate from High School. He is eighteen and is living with his divorced chronically depressed father and a younger sister. The novel main thread is the sudden attraction between Jeff and Adam, despite their age difference, when their lives come across each other, right after the latter is confronted to his father's death.

2008.03.30

Gay Porn; Becoming Gay, a novel

Nothing very exciting has been published recently in French. This was my conclusion after visiting Les Mots à la bouche, the Parisian gay bookstore in the Marais, during my recent visit to the City of Lights. I was surprised, though, to find on display a stack of Critique, the journal founded in 1946 by Georges Bataille. Its March issue features a strange review of a book published in 2004 by the University of British Columbia Press: Gay Male Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination, Christopher N. Kendall.In the article, Pénétration, inversion, révolution, le cas de la pornographie gaye, Thierry Hoquet disagrees with Kendall's awkward view that gay pornography should be banned because it reinforces the sexist stereotype of the opposition tops vs. bottoms, thereby putting inequality at the center of the sex act and normalizing intercourse based on domination and humiliation: nothing that warrants being an important symbol of gay and sexual liberation, deeply rooted in gay culture. To make it short, because the passive and active roles are interchangeable in gay sex, argues Hoquet, a professor of philosophy specialized in the history of Naturalism, at any time can the roles be reversed in gay porn, and this is truly revolutionary. In the article the adjective gaye is strangely used when combined with a feminine noun ("la pornographie gaye"). It produces a weird, artificial impression! Is it a new fashion, like the usage of words like professeure or auteure? I nevertheless found a gem in the review: the charming expression "faire une feuille de rose" to describe a very intimate act of love...

Paul Veyne's important book on Foucault was to be released on March 19th. I will come back to it.

***

I read an unpretentious but very entertaining coming-of-age novel which brings out significant aspects of the journey to becoming gay (The Sixth Form, Tom Dolby, Kensington Books, 2008). It is the story of two adolescent boys during their high school senior year in a prestigious New England boarding school, Berkley Academy. Ethan Whitley is the son of a couple of Californian teachers. His mother is dying from cancer and his parents have decided to send him to the East Coast to somehow preserve him. He is a good student, lonely, introvert, with low self-confidence, and very limited experience with girls. Todd Eldon is a confident looking outgoing boy who has had many girlfriends. His mother is a bestseller author living on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. His father has left the family and tries to make a living in real estate in Florida. Ethan and Todd become friends during the first weeks of the new school year. The novel's backbone is the peculiar relationship which progressively develops between them - specially Ethan - and an English teacher, Hannah McClellan, an attractive woman in her thirties with a mysterious past who lives by herself in a seclusive house on the campus. The resulting tension makes you turn the pages almost as in a thriller.

At the start of the novel Todd is dating Alex, a pretty girl also at Berkley, and they are having sex most nights, although lately Todd has been doing it almost automatically, as a kind of obligation. He soon breaks up with her. He has become attracted to Ethan. The attraction is part physical (he becomes hard the first time he sees his naked body under the shower) and part sentimental: "He wanted Ethan to become his friend, to draw him into his life, to fill that gap that had been empty for so long." One night (they have both been drinking, it's Halloween evening) Todd kisses Ethan on a bench in the graveyard near Berkley's campus. After the kiss, Ethan runs back to his room. When he is back in his own room Todd cannot sleep. He feels shame. But Todd is clever: "The kiss was such a revelation that he felt conflicted. He wanted more, but he also wanted to run away: to get back together with Alex, to reconcile with her, to acknowledge that this was all a mistake. Maybe he was attracted to girls and guys, destined to be one of those chameleons who refuse to be labeled. He considered the possibility as he threw on a pair of pajama bottoms. Going back to Alex would be safe and secure, but stifling, a prison. Going in the other direction, whatever that might be, was the only option."

As the novel advances, Ethan's relationship with Hannah becomes more and more complex and consuming, and he drifts away from Todd, while the latter has to come to grips with his gayness. He does not identify with gay boys at school, "little faggots like Jeremy, scrawny, lisping queens - kids who had been kicked out of their homes, kids who were beaten up at school". He feels the need to talk to someone, but doesn't know who to turn to, torn between Ben, a gay masculine writer 10 years his senior who lives in Soho, Nick, his mother's agent, and his effete boyfriend Eduardo, Kyle, Alex's older brother who, he discovers, has recently come out ("It had never occurred to him that Kyle Roth might be gay. How could a family like the Roths (rich, successful, conservative) produce a gay son?"). He wonders how his mother ("It would thrill her, he couldn't bear it."), his brother would react to his own coming out...

Tom Dolby's novel provides powerful insights into the life of young gay men, seen from their perspective. Many gay men will remember things they felt when they were going through the same journey as Todd. What it is like to kiss a man: "But he didn't want a girl's kiss, sweet like fruit. There was no mystery in her, no deep caverns to explore. He recalled his kisses with Ben, his kiss with Ethan. It was different, a guy's kiss, skin rough and scratchy like sandpaper, teeth harder, larger, tongue more firmly pressed against lips." What it is about having gay sex for the first time: "It was happening so quickly, so easily. Was this what sex was like between men? Were they even about to have sex? Would Ben just stick it in him, or would it happen the other way around? Was that something people did on a first date? Was this even a date?" He knows he is gay, but he does not want to be perceived as such, and he is still full of prejudices.

The Sixth Form is also an insider's account of the life in the privileged prep schools in America. Berkley Academy is based on The Hotchkiss School in Northwest Connecticut which Dolby attended. It is also about the divide between generations, and, besides generations, between people. Most characters in the book go on with their lives, without even their closest relatives or friends suspecting what is going on. When Ethan opens a book he grabs from his mother's nightstand, during an afternoon he is spending at her bedside, a sentence stands out, underlined by a light pencil: We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. It is from a book by Virginia Wolff (On Being Ill) and it provides a good sense of what Dolby's novel is about.

2008.03.23

Parmigianino's Antea, an Androgynous Vision?

If you are in New York City between now and April 27 visit the Frick Collection.

Not to see the art treasures amassed by Henry Clay Frick, one of New York's most ruthless robber barons, in his former mansion on Fifth Avenue, in front of Central Park, "a superb assembly of works, and as good a glimpse as you'll find of the sumptuous life enjoyed by New York's early industrialists", according to The Rough Guide to New York City, the best mainstream guide of the city today. But to admire Parmigianino's Antea, one of the most enigmatic portraits of the Renaissance, lent by the Museo di Capodimonti in Naples. The large canvass is displayed on a stand in the Oval Room, facing the central courtyard, from the other side of which you can spot it when you enter the museum. Antea stares at you.

"Christina Neilson, an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow and curator of the exhibition, spent the last year researching the painting, whose subject has puzzled art historians for centuries," wrote Carol Vogel in The New York Times last October, "The portrait depicts a woman clad in a sumptuous yellow dress, wearing rubies and pearls, with a fur throw over one shoulder. Antea stares directly, almost eerily, at the viewer. Yet no one knows who she is or what the message Parmigianino wanted to convey." This is the topic of Ms Neilson's fascinating catalog for this one-painting temporary exhibition, which reads as a whodunit (Parmigianino's Antea: A Beautiful Artifice, The Frick Collection, 2008).

"Parmigianino depicted his young subject set against a green-brown background, facing frontally, gazing out at the viewer with surprising frankness. Her perfectly oval head rests on an improbably ample body, with wide shoulders and hips and a hint of her left breast. She appears to be around sixteen years old, no longer a child but not yet a woman, and the artist plays with this uncertain state by contrasting her childlike head and womanly body and by creating an ambiguous facial expression, which suggests both naïve curiosity (her eyes are opened so wide that the whites appear beneath her irises) and knowingness. One scholar has interpreted her expression as bearing malice, while another has described it as melancholic. With her bare left hand she fingers a gold chain that hangs around her upper body and points to her heart, while her gloved right hand grasps a chain attached to the marten fur that is draped over her right shoulder.
Antea wears an extravagant yellow dress, probably satin, embellished with horizontal appliquéd passementerie bands in silver and a golden partlet that covers her chest. Her white apron and the cuffs of her underdress, visible at her writs, are decorated with delicate blackwork embroidery. She wears a leather glove on her right hand and holds the other. The marten fur hanging over her shoulder was an accessory believed to possess magical properties that aided fertility. Jewels supplement her luxurious costume: she wears a ruby and pearl head-brooch attached to her braided hair with a black ribbon ending in gold bands, earrings with pendant pearls, a filigree (open-work) chain with contrasting gold and black enamel links, and a ruby ring. All of these were items owned by only the wealthiest women.
Who is the enchanting young woman that Parmigianino depicted in his enigmatic Antea? For centuries scholars have tried to identify her."

After exploring the traditional hypothesis: Parmigianino's beloved or mistress, the artist's daughter (but he had no daughter), a servant, a bride, a niece of Francesco Baiardi his aristocratic protector in Parma, Ms Neilson concludes "that the painter has placed the viewer in the position of lover, with Antea an idealized invention. She calls the painting 'a beautiful artifice'. We know that the artist read Petrarch, whose poems elevated art above the flesh-and-blood woman, whose absence made her all the more desirable. Antea may be an amalgam of beauty and desire - a visual sonnet," as writes Amy Finnerty in her review for the Wall Street Journal.

To support her thesis Ms Nelson puts forward how Antea's features are shared by an angel in the Madonna of the Long Neck, now in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and more extraordinary, by a garzone, or workshop assistant, pictured in a recently discovered pen-and-ink drawing, A Head of a Young Man, both painted in the same period. The similarities of the latter with the Antea "serves to suggest," ads Ms Neilson, "that the artist's aesthetics was androgynous, as was the taste of his patron Baiardi (who owned several works depicting androgynous figures by Parmigianino), and that Parmigianino was interested in creating not only an ideal of female beauty, but of male beauty too. It supports also the theory that the woman in his Antea was an ideal. Her beauty, though possibly derived from a model, was refined in the artist's imagination. The repetition of the figure's features indicates that Parmigianino created a type that could be either male or female and therefore whose identity was of no importance to the appreciation of the work by Renaissance audience." Maybe. We will never know for sure. In the long last chapter of her monograph, The Renaissance Economy of Desire, Ms Neilson provides a few leads.

Parmigianino was born in Parma in 1503 and died in Casalmaggiore in 1540 at the age of 37. Not very much of his life is known, and the most extensive account of it is contained in the second edition of Giorgio Vasari's Lives (1568). At the end of his short life he became obsessed by alchemy, and started neglecting his art. According to Ms Neilson's study Antea was painted between 1531 and 1535 for Francesco Baiardi, as was a picture he undertook "for the Cavaliere Baiardo, a gentleman of Parma, who was one of his intimate friends. This is a Cupid, occupied in preparing himself a bow: at his feet are two boys seated, the one is taking the other by an arm, and laughingly endeavours to make him touch Cupid with his finger; but he who is thus exhorted, refuses and weeps, as one who fears to be scorched by the fires of Love." (Vasari)

"But Francesco [Parmigianino], still having his thoughts filled with that alchemy, as happens to all those who have once given themselves to running after its phantoms; and having changed from the delicate, amiable, and elegant person that he was, to a bearded, long-haired, neglected, and almost savage, or wild man, became at length strange and melancholy, thus constantly falling from bad to worse. In this condition he was attacked by a malignant fever, which caused him in a very few days to pass to a better life; and so it was that Francesco found an end to the troubles of this world, which had never been known to him but as a place full of cares and pains." (Vasari)

I fancy the garzone was not totally invented. Maybe he was Parmigianino's model, and had something to do with the painter...

2008.03.16

Gay Power; The Bishop's Daughter

Although gay couples may not legally marry in the state, a New York appellate court recently ruled that valid out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples must be legally recognized in New York, just as are those of heterosexual couples. The decision was hailed by a New York Times editorial comment.

It is difficult to realize today what being gay was like 50 years ago. Gays were portrayed as effete homosexuals and predatory deviants, they were caricatured with mincing gaits and sex addictions. Being gay was labeled a sickness, a perversion, along with pedophilia, transvestitism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sadism, and masochism. It was considered a sin. Sodomy was considered a crime. No wonder most gays would remain closeted. As long as they did not act like the silly pop of the insane 'pervert', they were straight in the eye of their coworkers and maybe their wives, says David Eisenbach in Gay Power: An American Revolution (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006). "Negative characterization of homosexuals were so common in the media that it was impossible for even the most self-confident and successful gays and lesbians to completely escape feelings of inferiority."

The way gays are considered today is mainly the result of the gay civil rights movements which rose in the US in the mid 50s. It started with a book published in 1951, which had a profound influence on a new generation of young gays. The Homosexual in America, written by Edward Sagarin under the pseudonym Donald Webster Cory, "questioned the barrage of antigay stereotypes, police practices, and laws that pounded American homosexuals" and "offered an analysis of the condition of homosexuals from the point of view not of of psychiatrist or a criminologist but of a gay man. For the first time, a nonfiction book was not demonizing, diagnosing, or patronizing the homosexual. Instead, Cory celebrated him for his unique perspectives and talents and assigned him a central role in the defense of America's liberty." Gay Power is the fascinating story of the gay movements which transformed the way society looks at homosexuals. In 300 pages David Eisenbach, a professor of History and Literature at Columbia University, provides a very convincing account of the three decades which saw the gays become a recognized minority, the homosexual stereotypes falter, and homosexuality stop being considered a sickness. It did not happen by chance. It was the result of a fierce fight by a handful of men, progressively joined by more and more individuals.

Of course you can smile, have a contemptuous view of these events, consider that homosexuality is a private matter - and it is. But read Eisenbach's book. You will realize why the gay rights movement matters, why the mainstream view of homosexuality is so important for gays. When kids or teens come to realize that they are gay, their surroundings are the first influence on how they will accept it: parents, friends, teachers. Their family is not the natural heaven where they will find the support and positive feedback that other minorities find. Society as a whole has to evolve in order for young gays, in particular, to feel acceptance in their own family and close relationships. Despite the progress made, we are not yet there! The 'gay liberation movement' produced a reaction in the late 70s and 80s, which through the Reagan years, became very much politicized. Republicans understood that they could use the gay issues to gain votes from a large fraction of American democrats. The last line of defense against a wide acceptance of homosexuality became the preservation of the American family. The AIDS epidemics in the 80s fueled the attacks from the traditional right but at the same time led an unprecedented number of gays to come out, forced them to alter their sexual practices, and "sparked the revolutionary movement to gain legal recognition for gay marriage."

 Gay Power is a book worth reading. Let me finish by quoting the last lines of the book.

"Heroes of this history of the gay rights movement - Bob Martin, Marty Robinson, Jim Owles, Morty Manford, Bruce Voeller, Lenny Matlovich, and Randy Shilts - were all lost to AIDS. The dream that these men shared, however, was not lost. In 1951 Donald Webster Cory suggested that the way to secure equal rights for gays and lesbians was for homosexuals to be recognized as a minority, for American liberals to embrace their cause, and for the conspiracy of silence to be broken by serious media coverage of homosexuality. Thirty years later, the gay rights movement had achieved these goals and transformed America into a country where most homosexuals could confidently abandon the closet and identify themselves proudly as gay men to their families, friends, and co-workers. As Cory predicted, all Americans have benefited from the gay power revolution. By establishing a media presence, the gay rights movement was able to reeducate and liberate a majority of Americans. Numerous television programs and news reports showed straights that homosexuals were not threats to society. Parents were not longer told to be embarrassed by their 'deviant' children but were encouraged to form loving, honest relationships with them. Employers no longer feared the impact of homosexual workers on office morale but were free to exploit the talents of all their employees. A majority of Americans were freed from the pervasive homophobia that kept generations of gays and straights from becoming friends. The number of people who reported having a gay friend or close acquaintance doubled from 1985 to 1994 (form 22 to 43 percent) and rose to 56 percent by 2000. Having a gay friend of family member was predictive of liberal sentiments toward homosexual and gay rights. (...) While significant portions of the population, most notably televangelists, opportunistic politicians, and government agencies, have continued to resist granting equal rights to homosexuals, a majority of the American population has made great strides toward the day when all citizens can live openly and contribute their talents freely to the wealth and strength of the nation."

***

Paul Moore was the diocesan Episcopal bishop of New York from 1972 to his retirement in 1989. He married twice and had nine children from his first marriage. He died at 83 in May 2003. According to The New York Times: "Bishop Moore was a famously outspoken Christian voice. His truth-to-power pastoring spanned almost half a century, including as leader of the Episcopal Diocese of New York from 1972 until his retirement in 1989. He marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was among the early opponents of the Vietnam War, railed at presidents and mayors for ignoring the plight of the poor, and, shortly before his death, took the opportunity of his last sermon at St. John the Divine, the seat of the diocese at 112th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, to deliver a scathing attack on President Bush and the war in Iraq." He ordained women priests and, in 1977, the first openly lesbian priest. Honor Moore, his eldest daughter, a poet, wrote a poignant short text in the New Yorker dated March 3rd in which she reveals how she discovered after her father's death that he had had lifelong gay relationships. She is publishing a memoir, The Bishop's Daughter (Norton), in May.

2008.03.09

Gay Publishing in the Post-Stonewall Era

What are gay books? What is gay literature? Felice Picano knows. Not only is he a bestselling author and gay literary pioneer. He was also an editor in New York for two decades not so long ago. He founded one of the first gay publishing houses in America during the mid 70s, SeaHorse, and was one of the pillars of Gay Press New York until its closing in 1994. Last year he published a memoir based on these years.

First a few complaints. The memoir, Art and Sex in Greenwich Village (Caroll & Graf, 2007) is printed on a very thin and cheap paper. The title selected is certainly not the best... There is no table of contents, no index! Felice Picano is not the most humble person in town and sometimes he even seems to be settling a score with former business acquaintances. He certainly pushes too far at times. But his memoir is nevertheless an important little book, full of interesting details on the publishing industry and on the gay literary life in the last quarter of the twentieth century!

During an interview more than ten years ago Picano said that there was no gay literature before the mid 70s... Of course there were famous homosexual male novels in the previous decades. But they did not reflect "the post-Stonewall gay world, but instead an earlier era, an earlier mindset - one in which the Stonewall Rebellion and gay politics were not only never anticipated, but also a complete improbability." Only a handful of books with gay themes were published every year by mainstream editors, remembers Felice Picano: "highly commercial usually, but always 'safer' in terms of material and story lines, and usually fiction - predominantly novels". Poetry, drama, short stories, satire, humor, history, memoir or autobiography were ignored. The situation changed only in the 90s "when gay lit became a genre - like children's books, or self-help, or cookbooks". Therefore when Picano started SeaHorse Press he was little worried about finding books to publish. His main problem was to learn fast enough how books were actually made and marketed! He chose as his first author... himself. This meant, no advances to be paid out, and "no other artistic ego to deal with immediately"! Other authors followed: Harvey Feirstein (Torch Song Trilogy), Dennis Cooper, Brad Gooch, Gavin Dillard, Robert Peters who had written a powerful memoir (Feather: A Child's Death and Life), Martin Duberman, etc.

Several pages are a first-hand account of the Violet Quill Club, the famous group of seven gay writers including Picano, Andrew Holleran, Edmund White, George Whitmore and Robert Ferro, who met regularly between 1979 and 1981 to discuss their works and share their concerns for their art. The book brings back the atmosphere of New York, and specially Greenwich Village, in the 70s and 80s, with its sexual liberation flavor. It is filled with very sharp and lively portraits of writers and intellectuals of the period, many of whom would die of AIDS in the subsequent years. The gargantuan Harvey Feirstein with his hoarse voice in his small cramped Brooklyn apartment telling his life story and showing his closet, filled with women's clothing: "In truth, he had far more women's clothing than men's clothing. No surprise really, when he told us that he'd been dressing in drag and doing his own makeup since he was fifteen years old." The mysterious and distinguished Charles Henri Ford, living in the Dakota Apartments with his younger partner, who together with Parker Tyler was the author of The Young and Evil, "thought by many to be the first true homosexual novel, and probably the first 'coming-out' book", published in 1993, and reissued by Gay Presses of New York. The academic specialist of French literature George Stambolian who had published a study of Proust and put together for SeaHorse a book of in-depth anonymous interviews with gay men, Male Fantasies/Gay Realities. And there are also portraits of famous authors with whom Felice Picano flirted without actually concluding: Cocteau, Purdy and Vidal.

Because he was very involved with the design of his books, Picano took great interest in potential artists for their cover. Robert Mapplethorpe was one of them. One evening, after a previous very business-like conversation in the afternoon, he summoned Picano to his apartment in order to take a picture of his genitals... Picano obliged, and, in a typical tone, remembers: "As I was leaving his studio an hour later, he showed me a file cabinet drawer he said was filled with photos of men's genitalia he'd taken over the past decade while having sex with them - among which I wasn't too surprised to recognize a few dicks I'd seen and had myself. He had hundreds of such photos he said, and he was premeditating a huge exhibit of them all once he was better known, and, crucially, once he'd reached the magic number of one thousand. He'd then add his own cock, Robert said, and call it One Thousand and One Nights."

Entertaining and informative. Read it while playing Patti Smith's Horses on your stereo.

2008.03.02