Reviews

• Becoming a Man Paul Monette

  A riveting and very moving read, I finished it in two days. It still speaks - twenty years after being written - to many who have undergone similar trauma in overcoming the self-hatred into which they have been conditioned by a repressive society. Things are no doubt immeasurably easier in some ways for young gay people born now compared with when Paul Monette was struggling to come to terms with his sexuality. But homophobia still lies just below the surface. Meanwhile, as events in Africa, the Middle East and even eastern parts of Europe (Walesa campaigned in his "free" Poland on a ticket of eradicating gays from Poland) show, countries where gains have been made are surrounded by witch-hunters all too ready to turn the clock back and condemn gays to the dungeon and the execution squad. But the constraints beneath the surface gentility of post-WW2 private school and Ivy League America were in their way as suffocating and productive of deceit as the more blatant prejudice visible elsewhere. It's easy at some points of this memoir to feel that one wants to shake Monette to overcome his evasions and self-deceptions but then it's necessary to put his struggles into context. Apart from the interest of the memoir as an historical and personal narrative, it is the impulse it gives to imaginatively re-construct the status of an outsider that gives this work its continuing resonance. Paul Monette has left a fine testament for others struggling to come to terms with their sexuality.

• Saying the truth, however, didn’t make me face it.

  First, let me say that I absolutely loved this book (at least, up to the end where I got distracted by my own dizzy discretion or prudish mindset perhaps, with such a vast cast of characters fixated on sex, as a means to an end, or the brash start of some anonymous sort in the search for love & all that that entails), together with Paul’s overall ability to write with some certain clarity on exactly how he felt about himself, both emotionally & physically, as well as academically about the peculiar persona of his human equation & also the world-at-large, which was the object of his righteous aka pseudo-religious repression. Secondly, Paul wrote the poignant & truthful subtitle/headline or the first-line with regard to love, or a flight of fancy perhaps, but then again he wasn’t quite sure what he meant by love, at the time & after such a short duration of acquaintance; since we, as in the royal ‘we’ (to include myself) are often attracted to the object of our desire by oddly different aspects of another person’s being or presence, that the infinite word, love doesn’t always mean all-inclusive at the start, as we are never always in control of our unbiased faculties at such a time, in order to comprehend the subsequent consequences of such a substantial statement, in my opinion, based on what feels like a century of my own dumb-founded experience. Yet I don’t mean to sound so saintly! But then I digress from Paul’s main point that he was looking for love when, in fact, as he said, he couldn’t even love himself. ‘...to break the final bonds of self-hatred so I could begin to love.’ ‘...my eagerness to talk all night if it made me learn to love a little better.’ ‘...and get to know myself.’ Thus, another favorite & comparative line I thought, at first, to use as the subtitle/heading for this review, in Paul’s always insightful & very often humorous words - ‘I remember thinking we could make it work if we could always be on vacation.’ If you can judge not the man, nor whatever deed affects your disfavor, but rather the overall attempt by Paul to find an acceptable answer to his decades of dilemma, not that it was his blatant & unmistakable fault in any way, but that the thing he both fought & sought was his default by nature to torment himself to take action, rather than inaction. I think, fear like love, is often indescribable until you tell someone your story, so they can relate on some level & probably still not completely understand the bare necessities of such a naked undertaking. Still, Paul didn’t hide from both the mental & physical altercation. I no sooner started this book & decided I wanted to meet the author, if only to shake his hand in respect for both his intricate work & mammoth effort, or recognition of something noble (like the last scene in the 2016 movie, ‘La La Land’ when the 2 main characters acknowledge their past lives together & divergent mutual growth, but still find it hard to accept the emotional truth of such an adventure) and/or thanks again to Paul for being so brave & bold, in the face of so much personal fear & universal disdain, or so it would seem from my separate & silent perspective. At any rate, I was prepared to figure out where he lived, so I could make a pilgrimage of some sort, or maybe just in my mind at the start of my exuberance for a new favorite author, when I discovered that Paul had died shortly after he wrote this book. I can’t imagine how he kept his mind so focused in the present & still could remember so many details from his past, which ultimately gave him what he was looking for finally, after such a long time. Paul Monette’s Memoir, ‘Becoming A Man’ was published in 1992, just 3-years before he died (at age 49) in 1995. I would like to propose a toast that we never forget this literary intellect & political activist, going forward, each & every year on the anniversary of his birth, October 16th, or whenever the urge should move you to tears, to remember the man who cared so much for others, as he reminds us in his melancholy yet optimistic memoir – ‘We are creatures of the cruelties we witness.’ Esther B. Fein wrote in Paul’s obituary in the New York Times (dated February 12th 1995); ‘He kept writing until the end. When he was found to have full-blown AIDS (in 1993), he wrote his last book ‘Last Watch of the Night’ while hooked up to three intravenous tubes and taking a mound of oral medications daily.’ Rest in Peace, Paul! Book review by Jack Dunsmoor, author of the book, OK2BG.

• At last!! The best written description I’ve read about the coming out experience.

  READ THIS BOOK!! Doesn’t matter if you’re gay, straight, bi or whatever!! READ THIS BOOK!! and buy copies and hand them out to your friends.

• Worth a read

  Good book, well written, an inside look

• Being in denial

  Interesting look at a man the early years of dealing with sexual orientation and its twists and turns.

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