Not Your Father’s Flkner - The Gay & Lbian Review

Contents:

• GAY FLKNER
• GAY FLKNER: A REVIEW
• GAY FLKNER: UNVERG A HOMOSEXUAL PRENCE YOKNAPATAWPHA AND BEYOND BY PHILIP GORDON
• GAY FLKNER
• GAY FLKNER
• GAY FLKNER LECTURE AND BOOK SIGNG
• SCHOLAR PHILLIP GORDON EXPLOR ALL OF FLKNER’S WALKS ON THE WILD SI ‘GAY FLKNER’

GAY FLKNER

Unverg a Homosexual Prence Yoknapatawpha and Beyond.

The bgraphil rerd of William Flkner’s life has yet to e to terms wh the life-long iendships he mataed wh gay men, the extent to which he immersed himself to gay muni Greenwich Village and New Orleans, and how profoundly this part of his life fluenced his “apocryphal” creatn of Yoknapatawpha County.

GAY FLKNER: A REVIEW

Gay Flkner: Unverg a Homosexual Prence Yoknapatawpha and Beyond explor the timate iendships Flkner mataed wh gay men, among them Ben Wasson, William Spratlg, and Hubert Creekmore, and plac his fictn to tablished nons of LGBTQ lerature, cludg World War I lerature and reprentatns of homosexualy om the Cold War. The book offers a full nsiratn of his relatnship to gay history and inty the twentieth century, givg rise to a new unrstandg of this most important of Amerin thors.

Pip Gordon’s new book Gay Flkner is a great approach to unrstandg a wrer’s life and work terms of their relatnship wh queer people and ias.

"Gordon seeks to reveal a gay prence not only Flkner’s work, but also his life as well, tablishg Flkner’s awarens of homosexualy and homosexuals, and his acceptance and participatn gay culture. While Gay Flkner is a solid amic work, the not are as absorbg as the text, and the biblgraphy nstut a summatn of Queer Flkner studi. "Phillip Gordon’s Gay Flkner: Unverg a Homosexual Prcence Yoknapatawpha and Beyond is a well-anized and soundly rearched bgraphil study of William Flkner.

GAY FLKNER: UNVERG A HOMOSEXUAL PRENCE YOKNAPATAWPHA AND BEYOND BY PHILIP GORDON

It not only monstrat a close readg of Flkner’s texts and bgraphy but also plac Flkner’s views of sexualy wh the ntext of the cultural history of changg views of homosexualy (and heterosexualy) om the late neteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. "By settg asi the wronghead and unproductive was he / wasn’t he bate and askg stead, Is there a gay Flkner?, Phillip Gordon has opened up a rich and extensive new doma for Flkner scholarship. Gay Flkner tracks what Gordon lls 'the primal prence of gay sire' across Flkner’s lerary work and self-fashng, not only durg the thor’s first, formative as a published wrer—a Gordon giv a new way to perdize—but also, more surprisgly, durg the fifti as well, when Flkner seems to have learned om an emergg generatn of gay wrers, some of them om his home state of Mississippi, that unalienated gay male sire was not an impossibily the South.

GAY FLKNER

Phillip Gordon's Gay Flkner: Unverg a Homosexual Prence Yoknapatawpha and Beyond is a well-anized and soundly rearched bgraphil study of William Flkner.

Gordon draws on Joseph Blotner's extensive and uned bgraphil not, a range of studi of emergg gay and queer inti the early-to mid-twentieth century, relevant bgraphil tails of the thor, and close readgs of many of Flkner's wrgs to create a portra that is far different om the one that we generally regnize. Gordon lays bare his overall strategy the Introductn to the book: By explorg his teractns wh gay men, his immersn gay subcultur throughout his life but pecially between 1918 and 1929, and his ep and meangful relatnships wh specific gay men, pecially his lifelong iend Ben Wasson, a part of Flkner's life emerg that has heretofore been at bt margalized if not outright nied about his inty, his sense of self, and his public performance. (xiv) Gordon adher to that this and argu succsfully for a meangful and largely unregnized homosexual prence fg Flkner's life and work.

GAY FLKNER

Gordon attends to the plex and changg meangs of the terms "quair" (meang primarily "odd") and "queer" (meang primarily "homosexual") and monstrat how the early Flkner fashned himself var ways after the late neteenth-century athet and nts, cludg Osr Wil and [End Page 427] Charl Algernon Swburne.

Buildg on the prev chapters, Chapter 3 explor the "surprisgly sympathetic and plex pictns of gay characters" Flkner's early poems, short stori, and novels (54) and prents a veloped and provotive readg of Homer Barron "A Rose of Ey" as a reflectn of both the early Flkner and a gay man nfed and yg wh a heterosexual bridal chamber (91-95).

GAY FLKNER LECTURE AND BOOK SIGNG

Watson's examatn of Flkner's self-stylg as a wound war veteran, plete wh feigned limp, and Chapter 5 lot a gay subtext Flkner's World War I narrativ of wound soldiers. Buildg on the prev chapters, as before, the fal chapter this clter offers an extend readg of one character one of Flkner's bt known and most wily tght novels: Darl Bundren As I Lay Dyg (1930), who is simultaneoly nstcted as queer by his muny and who nstcts for himself a gay inty as a wound soldier returng home om France World War I. Chapter 7—and the third and fal clter as a whole—intifi chang Flkner's perspective on male homosexualy followg his 1929 marriage, epomized his overt revulsn at the effemacy and sexual banter of New Yorker cric and rad personaly Alexanr Woolltt.

Chapter 8 further addrs Flkner's plex, even nflicted attus toward male homosexualy and offers a particularly sightful readg of Flkner's dismissal of Tennsee Williams and his boyiend as "queers" (200-01). Ratliff of the "Snop Trilogy" (The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansn) as a "d gay figure" of the Cold War era (254). One of the strengths of Gordon's book li s very succsful tegratn of a range of studi of the nstctns of morn gay and queer inti, cludg Gee Chncey's Gay New York: Genr, Urban Culture, and the Makg of the Gay Male...

This dissertatn is a bgraphil study of William Flkner (1897-1962) as his life cid wh a particular moment LGBT history when the words homosexual and queer were unrgog profound chang and when our ntemporary unrstandg of gay inty was beg a wispread and regnizable epistemology. The nnectns fed this study--based on archival rearch om Joseph Blotner's extensive bgraphil not--reveal a versn of Flkner distctly not anx about homosexualy and, fact, often que fortable wh gay men and livg gay environments (New Orleans, New York). From the nnectns, I reasss Flkner's pre-marriage wrgs (1918-1929) for their prolific reference to homosexual them.

SCHOLAR PHILLIP GORDON EXPLOR ALL OF FLKNER’S WALKS ON THE WILD SI ‘GAY FLKNER’

I culimate the early years wh a new readg of Darl Bundren om As I Lay Dyg (1930)--the first novel Flkner pleted after his marriage--for the way Darl's muny nstcts him as queer and the way he f his own gay inty as a "wound" soldier who was exposed to homosexualy durg his time at the war France.

Ratliff the latter novels of the Snop trilogy as a Cold War homosexual, whose prence throughout Flkner's long reer crystaliz the closg scen The Mansn (1959) as the fal verdict on the great saga of Yoknapatawpha County. This study is a velopmental narrative both of Flkner's queer inty throughout his life and of his mastery of the gay reprentatn through s many emanatns the first half of the twentieth century.