Everything you like is gay

The one scene in Herman Wouk's Don't stop the Carnival that has always stuck in my brain is when the main character is forced to spend his anniversary dinner listening to his daughter's new boyfriend's theory about the homosexuality of Balzac. Considering the kind of books Balzac wrote, he is astonished that anyone would write something like this about him.

"Klug shrugged and smiled, his good humor restored. 'The Satyriasis was a familiar pattern. Overcompensation, plus a flight from self-knowledge.'
'It's an interesting idea, anyhow,' Norman said. 'Balzac must be the only one left.'
Klug's smile faded into a tolerant, pitying look. He said to Norman smoothing his hair, 'There's always resistance to these discoveries. Read A passion in the Desert again. And Louis Lambert.'"

The essence of literary criticism from most people's perspective is to prove that what you think of an author is wrong. That it is obvious looking through his work that he/she is homosexual, fascist, had a domineering mother, etc. I don't know if I disagree with this idea. Since Derrida's expulsion from the philosophy departments, he has been happily adopted as a caulking agent to patch up any and all theoretical holes between feminist/queer theory and 'straight' literary criticism.



It's not that I don't think this kind of research can't create interesting results, but why should I care about an author's homosexuality? A friend of mine once told me a particularly awful author he had introduced me to was gay, I think in an attempt to make him a little more salonfähig. (You might guess his name if I told you that his pseudonym is the name of the protagonist of For Whom the Bell Tolls.)



Not coincidentally, I hate Hemingway and because of this purely subjective point of view, I can authoritatively state that the idea of him as a great writer is bullshit. I can't stand the choppy torrent of declarative sentences, especially when you realise it's not even trying to pare down to a kind of sparse simple beauty. He took his direction from the Toronto star style guide, i.e. a business writing book that discourages one from using long words and passive sentences.

The only good thing to come out of his fame are all the people trying to write like him and failing, ending up with short, punchy novels that were mostly written by people who could write about their character's inner life. Hemingway's imitators are only great to the extent that they aren't like him.

Zelda Fitzgerald didn't like him, called him "bogus" and "phoney as a rubber cheque", and that happens to be exactly what I think. The supposed homosexuality is just a foil for those people that believe that what he wrote down is just the tip of the iceberg. Who really wants to read a bunch of childish stories about "tough guys", how much they hate homosexuals and their mothers? It comes as no surprise to me that his best book, is filled with writers like Joyce, Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, the one with biggest balls of them all.



Does it make Bambi any less of a saccharine saga that it's author probably also wrote Josephine Mutzenbacher, erotic classic and the inspiration for dozens of 1970's German sex comedies? Why does writing always have to be about the author's sexuality? If you've read any of the post preceding this one, you will know that it's mostly wank. You're forgiven for thinking I type this with one hand, I probably should.