The Beautiful Questions

Vincent Slatt, who recommended the non-LGBTQ book we'll be discussing this coming Wednesday--Dinaw Mengistu's The Beautiful Things Heaven Bears--was kind enough to suggest some questions we might ponder as we read the novel:

"The P Street stroll has heavy allusions to James Joyce's Ulysses and Bloomsday. Is this a stretch? Is it well done? Has the stroll become a literary trope?"

"For gay men who have strolled these Washington, D.C., streets for years and remember what they were like in the 1980s (or before): Do Mengistu's observations have a distinctly straight perspective? If we walked this strip now, how would we describe it? Are there other parts of the city about which we'd like to read similar accounts?"

"Gender, race and class represent the crux of the heterocentric patriarchy that works to oppress LGBTQ people and workers generally. Are there aspects of gay liberation, or even liberation theology, that are echoed in the community relations Mengistu describes in his novel?"

"Is the author tone-deaf on class warfare? Or does he contribute a unique perspective on the subject? Do the capitalists among BookMen lament of celebrate how the protagonist operates his store?"

The Vuong-Veansa So connection

Lee Levine was kind enough to draw my attention to this 2022 Guardian interview with Ocean Vuong, two of whose books we've discussed in the past few years: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Night Sky with Exit Wounds. As Lee notes, there are some obvious parallels between Vuong and Anthony Veansa So, whose Afterparties short story collection we began reading last week. The two writers are both gay Asians who knew each other, were just four years apart in age, and hailed from adjacent countries with overpowering historical legacies. Both men used drugs, but Vuong survived his addiction; So, alas, did not.

And during our discussion of Afterparties, conducted via Zoom, Mike Mazza shared a link to this previously unreleased interview with Anthony Veansa So. Unlike the author, we know that he would die just a few months later from a drug overdose, which gives his words an elegiac quality. I found this quote particularly telling: "I'm very drawn to thinking about how people can be saved from the logical extension of trauma: death, essentially. The idea that because of trauma, because of the past, life could become unbearable for someone, and the future could seem like a non-option. So how do you actually strive forward into the future? How do you help people do that? That's what I mean by saving, to be blunt. I think writing can be part of this, insofar as it's a reimagining of what different paths people could follow and be shaped by and saved by. In some sense, I guess I want reading to save people."

Fresh air from Thomas Mallon

My thanks to Ernie Raskauskas for alerting me to novelist Thomas Mallon's March 11 interview on "Fresh Air." I didn't get to tune into the program on WAMU, but here is the transcript. As I noted in my Feb. 15 posting (see below), Mallon's latest novel, Up With the Sun, tells the story of Dick Kallman, a closeted ex-actor who, along with his partner, was killed during a robbery in their New York City home in 1980. 

Before "Afterparties"

I am grateful to Lee Levine for alerting me to this 2021 New York Magazine cover story on Anthony Veansa So, whose short story collection Afterparties we will begin discussing on March 15. In addition, Vulture included So in this roundup of 2021 National Book Critics Circle award-winners. What a shame an author with so much promise died at the age of 28.