A DOMESTIC ANIMAL, an early gay-themed novel without a tragic ending

A DOMESTIC ANIMAL
FRANCIS KING (intro. Rumaan Alam)
McNally Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Francis King's 1970 novel A Domestic Animal is the story of Antonio Valli, a brilliant young Italian philosopher, who arrives to do a year's research at a well-to-do university. He lodges with Dick Thompson, a successful middle-aged novelist, and his good looks and impulsive yet immensely likeable character soon have Dick captivated.

Valli is someone who needs to be admired and loved and has an insatiable craving for attention from everyone he meets; he needs an audience to perform to and he finds this at the university, but especially in Dick's company. It is not long before Dick Thompson has fallen completely in love with his charming—but very heterosexual—lodger.

What follows is an ill-fated relationship that can only end in disaster, but in A Domestic Animal King has created a novel of bitter longing and painful complexities.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Is it easier to fall in love with someone who can't return your feelings, or someone who won't? Unlike the girl who doesn't love you back, Dick Thompson's love object Antonio Valli can't reciprocate his feelings...Antonio Valli is a straight man.

This is how the story frames its unhappy ending, or at the most charitable of my responses, its bittersweet ending: A straight man with a very intense psychological need to seduce and captivate those he's identified as powerful chooses a gay man whose lust is barely concealed to ensorcel. It was written in the 1960s, so this was pretty advanced stuff. Dick Thompson is not presented as sick,or weird, or as a pervert. He's simply made a bad bet on a man...everyone can relate to that.

Nowadays we'd call Dick Thompson "sapiosexual" and Antonio Valli a "queerbaiter". I suspect that, in a novel written on this model in 2026, Antonio would be heteroflexible if only to cement his conquest of Dick. It is a conquest, a thoroughly (though not consciously, I think) intentional act of subjugation for the purposes of the conqueror's ego gratification.

Antonio Valli is an unapologetic bounder...fucks Pam, a loud, vulgar woman despite pretending (in my opinion it's a pretense) not to know how much this hurts his inappropriately-but-consensually emotionally attached host Dick Thompson, despite being married and having a family with the wife left in Italy. He is fully in control of Dick Thompson's emotions. Only when Dick Thompson dares to display some liveliness of spirit in an indirect calling-out of his caddish behavior towards both women does Antonio Valli deign to treat Dick Thompson's feelings as real, as something not deliberately evoked as part of his power-play, his ownership of Dick Thompson's feelings.

Dick Thompson is utterly besotted by Antonio Valli in so many ways. He's queer, knows he's queer, but does nothing to approach sexual activity with Antonio Valli because, in that time, bottoms like women waited to be approached or risked serious consequences...physical, reputational, emotional. Dick Thompson revels in his emotional subjugation for the same reason submissives everywhere enter into Dom/sub relationships: I'll let you hurt me if you'll really choose me, own me, care for me. If this book was ever filmed it would have to be made like Pillion, an exploration of the consuming need some people have to be the full focus of another's attention. It is a deep, and from what I know about it, life-long need that finds a way to get met that can change over time...but is never satisfied. That fact is never clearer than in the ending of this novel.

Antonio Valli, in his lordly disdain for anything not immediately satisfying to his own clawing desperation to be central to the life of someone he actually admires, chooses Pam over Dick as his bedmate...but never lets Dick off his emotional hook, or allows Pam to be more than a sexual obsession. He is a man of his time, the kind we all hope is disappearing: the thoughtless user, convinced he should be able to do just as he likes and you should do just as he likes as well. It was the privilege of maleness at that time. I suspect that 1970 readers of this novel really didn't interrogate that Antonio Valli was perfectly ordinary, at least until they were confronted by Dick Thompson's emotional responses to his arrogance.

Has all that much changed? Heavens yes. Has it changed for the better? Mixed bag on that one. As a member of Dick Thompson's native minority, I'll say mostly yes on his behalf. One thing that's changed is the desuetude of the unrequited love/unhappy ending novel. I think the point of this story stands out in relief against that uglier truth of the ending: Men loving each other the way Ralph and Mervyn do can exist, men can and do fall in love with each other (even relentlessly heterosexual ones), and gay love is fraught, complicated, and very much as interesting as cishet love.

Lest y'all think Francis King was simply talking about the subject, know that he was my fellow AIDS widower. He, much like Dick Thompson, led a quietly queer life in a time where this could easily have led him onto nasty legal troubles à la Alan Turing. I suspect but cannot prove that Pam, Antonio Valli's object of sexual obsession, was modeled after King's friend Anne Cumming (albeit unflatteringly). King was not exoticizing or fetishizing his straight man in love with a man he had no desire to fuck. He was most likely discussing his own life in too-thinly veiled terms.

Brave of him. A major step towards accurate representation of gay life in the days before liberation began. Still not that great, it's centering desire for a cishet man, but definitely honest and in its day quite positive.

DREAMING OF ROSE: A Biographer’s Journal, a deeper dive into the life of a pre-feminist ikon of independence

DREAMING OF ROSE: A Biographer’s Journal
SARAH LeFANU
Handheld Press
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Said: The companion to Sarah LeFanu's biography of Dame Rose Macaulay.

Dreaming of Rose: A Biographer’s Journal is a fascinating account of a biographical quest and of a personal journey. While working on her biography of the writer and traveller Rose Macaulay, Sarah LeFanu kept a journal that charts the details of that quest: the people she met, the places she visited, and her strange dreamworld encounters with the very subject of her biographical pursuit.

Research trips to Varazze in Italy to look for Rose’s childhood, and to Trabzon in Turkey to find traces of The Towers of Trebizond, were remarkably intuitive ventures that found treasures in unexpected places.

Dreaming of Rose is also a memoir of a woman juggling the demands of teaching, research and writing while patching together a living. LeFanu’s work on Rose was squeezed in between many other commitments and responsibilities: she wrote for the BBC and taught creative writing and English literature. Suffused with the tensions and dramas of everyday life, and the necessity for intellectual integrity, this is an important memoir of women and writing.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Do you watch the end-credits of films? Are you by nature (or nurture, can't be sure which) a completist? Is the world a maze of maddening omissions and lacunae that you *know* were worth including but simply got...left behind?

My friend, do I have a reading experience for you!

I'll begin my praise for this book with things that will cause Some Eyebrows to rise like theatre (note: misspelling intentional) curtains: 1) I am a man; 2) I am an American; and 3) I am utterly ignorant of Rose Macaulay as anything except the author of Towers of Trebizond and its utterly mesmerizing, loathsome Father Chantry-Pigg, that personification of Religion in all its malevolent, seductive self-righteousness. There was, I am now aware, a LOT more to Rose Macaulay than I ever knew.

And the weird part is that I never knew that I never knew this entire life existed. Macaulay doesn't get a lot of public mention, though goodness knows it seems she should. Author LeFanu wrote an entire biography of Macaulay (non-affiliate Kindle link), for heavens' sake! And how I wish I'd read it first....

What makes me say that about a read I'm rating four stars, you could reasonably ask. Well, it's this simple: While this is not a book about Rose Macaulay, it *is* about the author's quest for her life and doings. The fact is that Author LeFanu went down several rabbit-holes in her quest to comprehend the life of a very, in fact a notoriously, private person. Had I had a sense of Macaulay's trajectory (beyond reading a single, late work of fiction by her) I would've had a frame of reference to put the anecdotes into. The challenges of LeFanu's quest would've felt more immediate to me had I had the recent experience of learning Macaulay's life's details.

I liked the read a lot. I wanted to know what the heck was going on to cause Author LeFanu to have these specific collywobbles, so I would've benefited from reading her biography of the writer...and that is something I shall now do. I will, as I've only recently read this fascinating companion to the main book, have an even richer experience of the read.

I urge the read on anyone who thinks the conundrum of living life and making art has one correct answer.

CHINA COURT, deeply satisfying read by a "snoozer biddy" extraordinaire

jacket of my mother's 1961 Viking Press edition
CHINA COURT
RUMER GODDEN
Open Road Media (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$1.99 sale price! Go get one!

Rating: 3.875* of five

The Publisher Says (flap copy of my mother's 1961 Viking Press edition): In this intricately plotted novel of a Cornish country house and the five generations who have peopled it, the story of American-reared Tracy Quin's homecoming is intertwined with the stories of her ancestors. Tracy comes home to visit her grandmother on the day after old Mrs. Quin dies, and becomes involved in the question of what will happen to China Court, the house she loves, which is hopelessly outdated and requires a great deal of repair—repair for which there is no money.

The old stories rise one by one as Tracy's unfolds—the story of lonely, brilliant Eliza; of Jared and Lady Patrick's fragile, bitter marriage; of Borowis and John Henry and old Mrs. Quin herself, when she was beautiful young Ripsie and an outsider to the family. As the lives of those who loved China Court are unfolded, the question of what will happen to the house becomes even more pressing, and soon only Tracy and Mrs. Quin's young tenant Peter St. Omer stand in the way of its destruction.

Serialized in the Ladies' Home Journal in 1960.

My Review: When I was a youngster, my mother had a lot of books from the 1930s to the 1960s on her shelves. I was allowed to roam freely among them, because she said that if I was old enough to want to read something, I should be able to do so.

As one can imagine, the large majority of a mother's bookshelf wasn't all that appealing to a young boy...Taylor Caldwell, Mary Lasswell, Anya Seton, Kathleen Winsor, and Rumer Godden were all well-represented. I called them, collectively, "snoozer biddies." Lots of long-face about loves lost, and noble sacrifices in the name of love, and mothers Doing Their All for Their Children, and blah blah blah blah.

Forty years later, I picked up China Court at the prompting of memory and the LT connection cloud bringing Rumer Godden's name back up to me. I half-remember some plot points, I do remember thinking that the rest of the snoozer biddies shoulda talked to this lady, she knew her onions comes to writin', and this was a good story.

It's a really good story! I think family sagas always appealed to me, and that's why this book snuck past the general opprobrium of youthful disdain heaped on the other books.

Not everyone in this book is likable, in fact most of them are pretty skeevy...motivated by greed, lust, vengeful meanness, thence to do some extraordinarily good things, and some cruel ones too. It reminded me then, and does also now, of my own family.

China Court is a house. It's not some Stately Manor, it's a big, old-fashioned family house. In the early 1960s, big places like this were in a serious period of desuetude in England. This book chronicles the house and the family's intertwined fates at this now-very-distant moment of crisis. It's structured in echo of the Book of Hours that Mrs. Quin, the last nineteenth-century native to live in the house, treasured and apparently read often. A Book of Hours, for the non-Catholic, divides the day into periods of prayer. Most of us have heard the terms "Lauds" and "Prime" (in the non-Amazon sense) and so forth, but these are just words...the idea of them, their purpose, is to give a reverential and spiritual cast to a person's every day and every act.

Speaking as a practicing anti-Christian, I think this is one of the best, most missed, ideas that modernity has rendered obsolete. I think, if this system of spiritual organization were to be reintroduced, the number of people who *actually* understood the religion they profess would rise exponentially, and I am just optimist enough to hope that there would be a corresponding reduction in the amount of loathsome hate-speech emanating from them.

As a narrative force in this novel, I think it's excellent and inspired. I think Rumer Godden deserves the attention of today's readers for her technical talent, her spiritual message, and her ahead-of-the-curve ideas. I recommend this to you.

BAKING WITH KAFKA, cartoons for the intelligent and the bookish

BAKING WITH KAFKA
TOM GAULD
Drawn & Quarterly
$19.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A best-of collection of literary humour cartoons from the critically-acclaimed Guardian cartoonist

In his inimitable style, British cartoonist Tom Gauld has opened comics to a crossover audience and challenged perceptions of what the medium can be. Noted as a "book-lover's cartoonist," Gauld's weekly strips in The Guardian, Britain's most well-regarded newspaper, stitch together the worlds of literary criticism and pop culture to create brilliantly executed, concise comics. Simultaneously silly and serious, Gauld adds an undeniable lightness to traditionally highbrow themes. From sarcastic panels about the health hazards of being a best-selling writer to a list of magical items for fantasy writers (such as the Amulet of Attraction, which summons mainstream acceptance, Hollywood money, and fresh coffee), Gauld's cartoons are timely and droll—his trademark British humour, impeccable timing, and distinctive visual style sets him apart from the rest.

Lauded both for his frequent contributions to New Scientist, The Guardian and The New York Times, and his Eisner-nominated graphic novels, Tom Gauld is one of the most celebrated cartoonists working today. In Baking with Kafka, he proves this with one witty, sly, ridiculous comic after another.

My Review: You already know who Tom Gauld is, since I reviewed his earlier works this past Booksgiving. I expect you knew beforehand, since you're reading my blog. I love Tom Gauld's work largely because it's so witty and so sly. I am his fanboy for life because he's got no truck with dumbing down his humor. That's so rare in this life, and it always was. Why do you think Hollywood versions of novels were always excoriated for grafting happy endings onto stories? Mass entertainment is always bland. So let's revel in the counterculture's High Priest of Snark!







You're welcome. Now go buy one.

THE WARDEN (Chronicles of Barsetshire #1)
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Oxford University Press
$9.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The Warden centers on Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to the purposes of the foundation. On discovering this, young John Bold turns his reforming zeal to exposing what he regards as an abuse of privilege, despite the fact that he is in love with Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor. It was a highly topical novel (a case regarding the misapplication of church funds was the scandalous subject of contemporary debate), but like other great Victorian novelists, Trollope uses the specific case to explore and illuminate the universal complexities of human motivation and social morality.

My Review: First read in the 1980s, during the first Reagan Administration, I was struck at how little things had changed in the past 130 years. Mr. Bold's lawsuit and its unintended consequences, the fuss and kerfuffle over the uses of “public” (really now, could the specific bequest of a trust to support a charitable activity and administered by the church be considered public today?) funds in a manner the onlooker simply didn't like...think Chrysler bailout, but not International Harvester or US Steel...all of this resonated with me.

Eleanor Harding was no one's fool, hooking up with that pill of the first water John Bold! And I have to say that the portrait of Dickens as Mr. Popular Sentiment made me chortle.

But on re-reading the book in 2012...well...the magic eluded me. I think this was a book that needed the element of not knowing the ending to make the events fun. Since I knew already who was going to do what, I had no huge amount of interest in following the path laid out for me. It was still amusing. It wasn't ever gripping, but it was involving. Now, after 30 years, much of what took place had fled from my head until the words hit my eyes. But as they returned, it was as blocks and lumps and boulders, not flowing back into the river of my thoughts like cool springs and bright brooks.

Good Victorian stodge. But once was enough.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.