[ilds] Mention of the Alexandria Quartet in an Interesting and Controversial New Book

[James Gifford]

Hello all

On 2014-05-31, 3:36 PM, William Apt wrote:
> I don't recall there being a great number of homosexuals in LD's
> inner circle. In fact most were quite straight and anything but asexual.

Rather than his personal network, what about his characters?  The 
percentage jumps...  He was close with George Barker, Elizabeth Smart, 
and a number of other non-writers of the 30s and 40s who had bisexual lives.

> Contrast this with the highly closeted Jack Kerouac, almost all of whose
> inner circle were gay, despite his life long cultivation of a solid
> heterosexual public image.

But was Kerouac a repressed homosexual?  I'm suspicious of elements of 
the notion itself.  He seemed to be sexual, period, and not strictly 
limited.  Then again, I'm not a Kerouac scholar and may be quite wrong 
on this -- Kerouac was certainly in an "out" milieu.

> Finally, LD got involved with some beautiful, sexy women, and had as
> friends others. If he was gay, he certainly had a great heterosexual
> picker!

I don't want to sound glib, but many gay men were married, even to very 
attractive women.  It's too easy to speculate.

Bruce adds

> the big objection is what literary critics are fond of making —
> namely, don't confuse the author with his or her writings!  There's
> some validity to this, but I don't always buy the objection and
> attribute it to the prejudices of New Criticism, whose ideas still
> linger and influence.

The racial issues with the New Critics, who wanted to set aside social 
context, is certainly open to critique.  But I also don't think we can 
conflate the text and the author.

I would, however, very much in this vein point to the importance of 
sexuality for content in Durrell's books as well as their formal traits 
and textuality.

And now to run!

Best,
James