To be gay is also to be human. The majority of the books reviewed to date, I would even say all the books reviewed to date, have minimized our essential humanity, or maybe ignored it. These, from Scott O’Hara’s Autopornography to Patricia Nell Warren’s The Front Runner, and Paul Monette’s Becoming A Man, each have placed emphasis on gayness. This has a place in our literature and in our lives as gay men. As a steady literary diet though, it is spiritually limiting, emotionally draining, and ultimately boring.
What a break to read A Well-Ordered Life by Lawrence Kinsman! This book of four novellas places humanity before gayness and it results in some of the most readable material this reviewer has come upon in recent years. Each of the pieces differs markedly in plot line and mood. What is consistent is the depth of character development and the clarity of plot line. We all can remember a book from our past which we dreaded completing. We had wanted the story to keep going, the characters to move on to new adventures or experiences. This, I was delighted to find, was the feeling that I had when I finished each of the novellas. Each work is inhabited by characters so real that they seem your friends or acquaintances.
Each story has an element of homosexuality to a greater or lesser degree. The first is a brooding piece about a young man taking possession of his older mentor’s personal papers and reading through a journal of World War II experiences. Another deals with a contemporary woman learning about herself by interacting with her gay stepson. There is also a short detective piece set in contemporary Boston and finally an interesting work about a college student fleeing a dysfunctional home life to spend a college year abroad in France and England.
I was not able to choose a favorite story. I actually hesitated to start the next for fear it could not be as enjoyable as the one completed.
A final word of praise for the editing… I found no place in the four stories where cuts needed to be made or where rewriting was called for. I had asked the author about his editor and learned to my surprise that the whole thing was self-edited! Wow!
There is no question that A Well-Ordered Life belongs in a gay man’s collection. Not because it deals with gay themes well but because it deals with the human condition well. Read it!