Recent reading

[luzula]

The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu, volume 1 of 3, by Erskine(??), mid-18th century
This is not a novel in the modern sense, but a collection of digressions and short stories tied together by a frame story. Possibly it's what is called a picaresque? Anyway, the frame story is delightful: an orphaned young woman with some money disguises herself as a man in order to travel around Europe, encouraged by her aunt who is a nun and always wished she could do the same. Here she is: "Why truly, as your Notion of a Woman is, that ſhe is a domeſtic Tool deſigned for no other Uſe but to ſatisfy the brutal Inclinations of her Lord and Maſter Man, my Scheme of Life muſt give you offence, and your Indignation will ſtill riſe higher, when I very fairly and plainly tell you, that I abhor the ſhameful Drudgery to which my Sex is fatally ſubjected in propagating the Species, that I am highly ſenſible of our Miſery in this Diſpoſition of Nature, and find that I have a Soul as capable of noble and refine Sentiments, as thoſe male Things who would fain make us meer Machines formed by God and Nature, for no other Purpoſe but to ſerve their Pleaſures."

On page 9 the book digresses into kingship in general and the kings of France in particular.
Me: ...this is not what I'm here for.
Narrator, on page 19: Ha ha, aren't you bored yet?
Me: Yes, in fact I am.
Narrator, on page 29: ...and we're done with that, what a terrible piece of drudgery it was to copy it out from that book where I found it! I only put it in to satisfy serious readers.
Me: Aaaaaah, now will you get back to your own story?
Narrator: No, I'll give you a salacious story of someone trying (and failing) to seduce a Jesuit priest?

I do wonder if some of this is from the perspective of the British author, since the picture it paints of the kings of France is not very complimentary. Anyway, some of the stories are enjoyable and some are less so, but really, I do hope there is more in volumes 2 and 3 about the actual narrator and her eventual romantic friend and partner in cross-dressing.

Imre: A Memorandum, by Edward Prime-Stephenson (1906)
This will soon be available on Gutenberg courtesy of regshoe, for whom I proofread it....also, this review will be written to reflect EPS's tastes in punctuation; which are rather idiosyncratic--among other things, he uses the length of ellipses as a creative tool!..... regshoe decided to leave these in, of which I approve, but standardized the quote marks. But I suppose part of the non-standard punctuation is from the book being privately printed, since White Cockades had standard punctuation. Anyway, this short book is a gay love story with a happy ending, and I thought most of it was quite sweet...! It uses a host of words other than "homosexual": there's "Uranian", "similisexual", and probably more I've forgotten.. Both protagonists have encountered psychologizing/medicalized views on their sexuality, which influenced them in different ways,....but they ultimately reject these.

I smiled when I encountered the slash trope of "oh no, my presumed straight crush is hugging me, I must back away before he can tell I'm turned on!"; but in other ways it's very different...the very long monologues, for example, and also we don't even get a kiss at the end!.....One thing I found off-putting is the protagonist's "I'm a homosexual, but that's okay because I am still the manliest of men, and so is my crush, he is so manly he can [insert improbable physical feat]." Here's a quote about homosexual men who are not manly: ...those patently depraved, noxious, flaccid, gross, womanish beings! perverted and imperfect in moral nature and even in their bodily tissues!. regshoe, did you get the impression that some of this is the author's view..?, or just meant to reflect the character's issues in accepting himself? I will choose to interpret it as the latter, but I suppose one would find out if one read EPS's non-fiction brick of a book about homosexuality......

Comments

[osprey_archer]

The EPS-style punctuation is absolutely sending me. Will I be able to cope with a whole book of it? Or, more dangerously, will I fall so in love with Lengthy Ellipses as a Creative Tool that I begin to use them myself..........?

"I may be homosexual but not like those UNMANLY homosexuals, GROSS," seems to be a big 20th century trope for gay fiction. I've seen it in Renault and Baldwin, anyway... does it ever come up in Forster's Maurice? I can't recall that Forster comments on it directly, but definitely Maurice and Alec are pretty manly types. (Clive perhaps less so? But also not endgame, and not noticeably effeminate either - just not up there on the manliness scale with a gamekeeper.)

[sovay]

I've seen it in Renault and Baldwin, anyway... does it ever come up in Forster's Maurice?

I don't remember it in the novel, where Maurice's otherwise bog-standard English masculinity seems to be much less about how butch gay men are better and more about how you can't actually tell people by stereotype. It sort of exists in Walter Baxter's Look Down in Mercy (1951) in the sense that the protagonist is surprised to discover that sex and love between men can exist outside of the homophobic forms he's absorbed and internalized, although the novel does not then go out of its way to valorize one kind of queerness over another except by the general rule that being honest with yourself is better than not. Agreed that it is a common enough trope, however, that I mark the exceptions as they go by.

[luzula]

Oh, thanks for the link to your review of Look Down in Mercy! *puts on long list of books to someday check out*

[sovay]

Oh, thanks for the link to your review of Look Down in Mercy!

You're welcome! Valancourt's line of twentieth-century queer fiction has been a revelation. I can highly recommend Forrest Reid's Denis Bracknel (1947), more cautiously recommend Rodney Garland's The Heart in Exile (1953), and need to write about Reid's Uncle Stephen (1931) because I don't know why it's not a queer YA classic.

[osprey_archer]

Someday I should read Look Down in Mercy. Perhaps once the move is over and life is a little quieter.

[sovay]

Perhaps once the move is over and life is a little quieter.

"And life is a little quieter" would help just about everyone I know with everything, honestly. Good luck with the move in the meantime.

[luzula]

I thought the eccentric punctuation was rather charming......but I don't think the world is ready for EPS-style punctuation everywhere.

I haven't actually read Maurice, though I suppose I should someday!