The Me2 Outrage Continues

Yet another reviewer has fallen for the Me2 deception! From Bill's Book Reviews:

Well, this little horror novel is certainly introspective, certainly plays out a stream of consciousness, and seems more like an epic (even satirical) free-verse prose-poem, divided into long stanzas (like you used to study in literature class in college) than a conventional novel. There are eleven chapters, starting with “Me” and run through “Me11,” each starting with a pre-stanza in italics. There are three epilogues (composer Arnold Bax as always satisfied with just one in almost each of his symphonies), the last of which is a letter from his publisher. This arrangement pretty much washes up "the Me Generation," even with Bill Clinton as part of it.

In fact, the gay content (the publisher is well known for that niche market) in some ways seems almost incidental to the literary form. Or perhaps not. The book is a meditation on the meaning of self, and a metaphor on the fear of self. The protagonist is the “young man next door” who works in the coffee business. I had a good friend in Minneapolis who did just that (he was straight and liked to try the local comedy circuit), and could tell you how cutthroat the business is – particularly on the Skyway. Here, the setting could be Anywhere, but it seems LA-ish.

Of course, “you know the story.” Doubles of himself start showing up, taking his job, thieving his identity. He’s not sure if it’s schizophrenia, bad memory, bipolar, or someone really doing him in. He sometimes seems unclear about which home is his. Along the way there is some real fantasy fulfillment. Is he with an imaginary self or someone real? I might have written the intimate scenes with a different kind of sartorial detail, inasmuch as I have a couple scenes in my own novel draft (in third person) a bit like Christian’s p. 140. Clive Barker could really turn these kinds of scenes out in “Imajica,” even when the partners were aliens or beings with ambiguous and bending gender.

Of course, here is where the “gay” part really matters. I have the impression that the protagonist, as much as he claims he likes himself, is self-indulging in “upward affiliation,” a kind of narcissism that George Gilder used to write about in the 80s in his bashings on “the perils of androgyny” (as in his 1986 these “Men and Marriage”). He would like to be affiliated with, or perhaps possess (I’m not sure which) a man who is as perfect as possible, before having his own family. He wants to become his own “god” before taking the dive. Then, it’s perfectly safe – except that you wind up in a world with “children of Men.” The problem comes if he is asked to stick his neck out, and take responsibility for someone else (perhaps a dependent, perhaps by having children), just “as he is.” In the epilogues, the author makes points about the Internet, which he fears has the potential of forcing more social conformity ....