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Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story

by Paul Monette, Kathryn Harrison (Foreword)

4.14 of 5 stars 4.14 · rating details · 1,298 ratings · 67 reviews

A child of the 1950s from a small New England town, "perfect Paul" earns straight A's and shines in social and literary pursuits, all the while keeping a secret -- from himself and the rest of the world. Struggling to be, or at least to imitate, a straight man, through Ivy League halls of privilege and bohemian travels abroad, loveless intimacy and unrequited passion, Paul...more

Paperback, 304 pages

Published May 25th 2004 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics (first published 1992)

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Jun 23, 2011 Whitaker rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gay, memoir-biography, 2011-read

I came out at 17. I came out when I fell for a man 11 years my senior. I fell for a man who, in relation to me, was in a position of authority. It was one of the luckiest things to have ever happened to me in my entire life.

There are many who will read this and self-righteously pronounce it to have been damaging. How very wrong they would be. Damaging is what my life would have been like if I had not met this man. That life is the life that Paul Monette has written about in this book: A life of...more

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Sep 21, 2011 Darkm rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, autobiography-memoir

This book was very hard to read, and still, it was worth every feeling it summoned.

It's the autobiography of a man who had to hide his true self, it's a journey through the pain of hiding, through the pain of pretending.
His closet and his fears are the same of each person who has to hide, no matter the reason behind it, and it's so very true.

Together with the pain this book summoned in me an incredible amount of anger. No one should go through all of this for his sexual orientation, it's horribl...more

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May 12, 2013 Ilya rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'd like to give it three and a half stars. This book is powerful stuff, and well written. And not dated, despite quickly changing attitudes.

The force coursing through every page is embarrassment, and anger - rage that the author spent so many years loathing himself, or unconscious of his true nature.

BUT this book is not really much of a journey. Between the scene where his mother discovers him messing with another little boy on page 28, and the very final pages of the book, Monette himself doe...more

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Feb 23, 2009 Sara rated it 1 of 5 stars

This is one of those books that I went in wanting to like. Resurrecting texts from former classes, hellbent on actually reading the books that I was introduced to during my 4 years at college, I picked this one off the shelf, remembering some of the discussions we had about it in my Gay and Lesbian Lit Class.

Monette's story started out a bit dry, but I figured that he had to "set the stage" before he could really get into "it"--his feelings, his experiences. Unfortunately that passionate jolt n...more

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May 16, 2009 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book in my early 20s and it was transcendental for me, a newly out gay man. I went back, recently, and it didn't quite have the same impact.

If you're newly out, or still feel "raw," as only a gay man can feel, in terms of self-image and the worry one can feel about others' image of him, I strongly recommend this book.

If you're sensitive, a reflector, a thinker and a ponderer; if you have so much baggage that it's weighing you down to drowning and you simply need to know that someone...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Nazri Awang rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is likely to give different impressions to people from different backgrounds, whether if you're a closeted gay, a newly came out man, or just someone who wants to understand more about homosexuals. Monette was very frank and honest in expressing his feelings and confusion over the many years as he sublimated his nature over pressure to appear normal to other people. The first part of the book, mainly about his childhood and teenage years; it was indeed very sad to see anyone has to go...more

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Mar 09, 2009 Jeremy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book when I first came out. brought me to tears at the end. Although the majority of the story is depressing and sad (filled with self-loathing, death, AIDS, etc). The struggle Paul Monette vividly expresses is one almost anyone can relate to (gay, straight, etc) of accepting oneself and one's journey in life. It is the final pages of the book, his body ravaged by AIDS when Paul is realizing he will soon die, that he expresses his profound realization that he is a normal human being...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Christopher rated it 4 of 5 stars

A very honest and open account of a man's struggle with the torments of a life in the closet. A reflection on the oppression of feeling unable able to be one's true self, and the feeling of blissful freedom once the shackles are shucked and one finds the courage to defeat one's own fears, society's bigotry, family expectations, or a friend's pressure and letting the caged beauty inside free. This book encourages anyone who feels trapped to be someone they are not, especially those who are strugg...more

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May 13, 2013 Ed Hartnett rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the first work of non-fiction I have read since I began writing my novel just over five months ago. Since my novel is about a gay man in his late teens I have focused most of my recreational reading on other works of fiction where the protagonist is gay and/or coming of age. I chose to read Paul Monette’s 1992 agonizing, painful yet beautiful memoir which won the National Book Award for non-fiction because it is not only an important piece of 20th century literature but also one of the m...more This is the first work of non-fiction I have read since I began writing my novel just over five months ago. Since my novel is about a gay man in his late teens I have focused most of my recreational reading on other works of fiction where the protagonist is gay and/or coming of age. I chose to read Paul Monette’s 1992 agonizing, painful yet beautiful memoir which won the National Book Award for non-fiction because it is not only an important piece of 20th century literature but also one of the most significant books of all time by a gay author.

Monette who died from AIDS in 1995 struggled for the first 30 years of his life accepting his homosexuality much as I did for the same period of time. The parallels do not end there. Since Monette, born in the fall of 1945, was exactly 6 months older than me, I could so well relate to the cultural biases of that time as well as the self-loathing and denial he experienced through his teens and twenties. Like Monette I lived in constant fear in that early part of my life that someone would find out I was sexually drawn to men rather than women. Like him I submerged myself in my studies throughout my college years to avoid coming to terms with who I was. I too lived a lie for nearly thirty years, ashamed of my desires and fearing rejection or worse if those whom I knew discovered my darkest fantasies.

Like Monette I sought professional help to “cure” me of my “illness”. In the last two chapters of his memoir the author recounts his absurd attempts to heterosex himself, having a series of intimate relations with women over several years while occasionally falling off the wagon and getting down and dirty with another man. Some of these women he cared for deeply. Later he came to realize his adventures were feeble efforts to convince everyone, most importantly himself, that he was straight. While I did not bed down with the number of women Monette did, in one respect I actually did take the deception one step further by actually getting married in 1969 and staying in the marriage more than six years. There were other similarities in our lives’ experiences but I think you get the point that this was a story to which sadly I could so well relate.

Reading Monette’s memoir was a painful remembrance of my own life experience. It also was a reminder of how far I have come since that time. Just as I have, Monette thankfully found self-acceptance, happiness and love before his death at the age of 49. Yes at times the memoir is very hard to read because of the self-loathing, shame, sadness, anger, and loneliness that Monette had to endure for more than half his life. Ironically though it is a joy to read because it is so beautifully written and brutally honest. The author taught writing and literature and his mastery of the written word is apparent throughout the book. If I had to find one flaw in the work it would simply be that his descriptions of his attempts to heterosex himself got to be a bit confusing at times. Because of his sleeping with multiple women at that time in his life I would find myself thinking “Now who was she again?” But that is a minor criticism in what I regard as an otherwise stellar work. The book ends just after he has met Roger Horwitz, the man who would be his life partner for the next ten years, sadly ending with the AIDS-related death of Horwitz in 1985. Though I have not yet read it, Monette’s 1988 Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, chronicles his years with Horwitz and how that time turned him into one of the nation’s leading AIDS activist. I fully intend to read this book as well as some of Monette’s fiction.

I am sure that for anyone growing up in or after the Will & Grace era it is difficult to fully appreciate just how oppressive life was for gay people a generation or more earlier. Let’s be honest: even with the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage there is still a strong undercurrent of homophobia rampant in this country.

This was truly a wonderful book and one I am so glad I took the time to read.(less)

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Dec 04, 2012 Steve Woods rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography

This book was painful to read, not because it was poorly written but because of its intensity. The story of a young gay man trapped in the smothering closet imposed by the societal mores of the 50's and 60's when he grew up. The pain and loneliness of separation and of being different were so palpable they literally tore at my sense of stability. Not least because I am so familiar with that condition from my own childhood and adolescence. The performance this poor boy put himself through to hide...more

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May 26, 2012 Nicole rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: emotional deconstructionists

Shelves: biography-ish, lgbt-etc, nonfiction

I could only take so much Paul Monette in a single sitting and only under very specific circumstances, i.e. on lazy weekend mornings over a cup of coffee. And only while not fighting on my own emotional battlefront. He is just so...raw. It's brilliant. Remarkable. Inspiring. Frustrating. Painstaking. And best read in small doses.

At times, I found myself underlining every other sentence, marking up entire chapters. Right, and then I would skim, skip and generally pass over whole pages while menta...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Adam Dunn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: glbt

I finished this book tonight and I cried. I cried because I had never before read such powerful, proud words on what it means to be gay.
Monette contracted the HIV virus and with it a clarity I have never seen before. He knew at that time that it would be the cause of his death and that combined with all the events of his life up until that point, it made all the pieces fit together in a way that staggers me.
Monette with his verse is able to still maintain the smarts from his earlier work, and y...more I finished this book tonight and I cried. I cried because I had never before read such powerful, proud words on what it means to be gay.
Monette contracted the HIV virus and with it a clarity I have never seen before. He knew at that time that it would be the cause of his death and that combined with all the events of his life up until that point, it made all the pieces fit together in a way that staggers me.
Monette with his verse is able to still maintain the smarts from his earlier work, and yet now approaches it with a passion and a directness that few people will ever possess. His post HIV work is a revelation.
It's hard to discuss this book as it brings up so many issues. What I really feel is that Monette realized truly that every step he made up until this point brought him to this moment, and although some of those moments are difficult, he shares them all in this book. It seems like an addition problem, my life and HIV and losing my husband equals this man I am today. The only way I can accept it, the only way I can get through it, the only way I'm still here on earth is to accept.
Monette talks about finding out someone from his childhood had always thought he was gay and at 45 feels a flash of disappointment that he didn't act straight enough, a part of him wishing he could go back, do it again, try harder, be straighter. I think all gay men can relate to this. I wonder if it ends, if the damage done can ever be undone.
Monette taps in to the anger, calling the AIDS epidemic a holocaust, calling the straight white ruling class murderers. By refusing to act, by ignoring the disease, by being homophobic and making the disease a gay problem, these men directly cost millions of people their lives. There's a sense of that anger in this book but it doesn't override. I see it as more of a warning to our gay brothers and sisters that we must not let this happen again. We are valued, we are strong, we are good, and we must never let this power be taken from us.
I cried at the end of this book as learning this cost Monette his life. I am so greatful he was able to share this message before he left.
I found it difficult in the last 10 percent of the book as he kept sleeping with women. I suppose this is my own issue but it felt like a betrayal of the side, like he was cheating on the gays. Monette ties it up nicely at the end though saying that every moment of his life brought him to meet Roger, his husband, and so he wouldn't change any of it.
The book ends with the realization that yes he is dying and his partner has died and his friends have died, but they die as gay men, strong and proud. They have learned how to become a man.(less)

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Dec 17, 2012 Gavin Stephenson-Jackman rated it 3 of 5 stars

The most I can say at this point is 'thought provoking'.

OK, I have a little bit of time to write something more detailed on this, so here it goes.

Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story by Paul Monette recounts the author’s life growing up in 1950s America, growing up gay, the closet, and learning to come to terms with his true self. There are many times where he describes things in his life that resonate with my own. I too had a thing for paper dolls and I too have to thank my parents for not forcing...more The most I can say at this point is 'thought provoking'.

OK, I have a little bit of time to write something more detailed on this, so here it goes.

Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story by Paul Monette recounts the author’s life growing up in 1950s America, growing up gay, the closet, and learning to come to terms with his true self. There are many times where he describes things in his life that resonate with my own. I too had a thing for paper dolls and I too have to thank my parents for not forcing the issue that I should be more ‘male’. His view of team sports I too share. I’ve never been able to really figure them out and I’ve long ago given up trying.

Paul has no great love of either the Roman Catholic or Evangelical churches and their narrow views of the world and human nature. He recognizes that the problem is the political influence they exert on the policy of the state in trying to legislate morality. All Biblical scholarship to the contrary these two faiths will not see beyond their narrow interpretations.

His life as a teacher in hiding gave great insights into the closet and I like Paul knew that without coming out my life would be less that it could be. The effort to maintain the fiction of a straight life can strangle one beyond belief. Keeping things hidden from others and in so many cases from oneself is exhausting, the threat of exposure, driving you further with fear taking you to the edge, contemplating the end.

I regret that Paul did not continue the writing to give greater contrast to his life after coming out. The life he lived with his Roger Horwitz only appears at the end of the book and though described as a long and loving relationship is only seen briefly. A more thorough examination of this latter part of his life story would have helped to round out all the angst of his early life, and I believe would have better illustrated his point that all gay and lesbian people need to come out to live their lives authentically.

I do believe that this is critical reading for gay men and lesbians and anyone trying to understand the pressures that the closet brings to life. I liked many sections of Paul's life story but also found parts of it very disturbing and frightening. I know why I burst open the closet doors, and I had no where near the internal fight that Paul describes. What a difference ten years can make in my understanding of who I was and how much more information was available to help me through the process.
(less)

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Jul 06, 2008 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked up this book about 5 years ago because one of my favorite authors, Kathryn Harrison (The Kiss) wrote an introduction to it. It is the biography of a man growing up gay in the suburbs, prep schools, and universities of 60s and 70s-era New England and it perfectly describes what it's like to live in the closet and try and fit in or pretend you're something you're not. I'm re-reading it, out loud this time, to my boyfriend - and every 10 pages or so I get choked up and can't go on because...more

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May 02, 2012 Marten rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: drama

This book was so interesting to read. As a student of the same private school, I could relate in so many ways. The language is brutal, yet beautiful. It is written so thoughtfully and honestly that it is hard not to connect to the author. It has been a while since I actually read this novel, several years, so I am not prepared to make more specific comments. Yet I remember clearly how moving it was to read this book.

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Aug 31, 2009 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autobiography, gay

Coming of age in the fifties, Paul Monette lived a life that, in a sense, paralleled my own as I too am a child of the fifties. And I also share with him the theme of discovery, the inward thoughtfulness that, if it does not lead every boy to write his own autobiography, it leads them to a life of the imagination and a love of literature and the arts. Paul Monette shares more than his coming of age in the fifties, for his is a story of the outsider, the gay man in the boy whose life leads to the...more

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Sep 14, 2012 Gav rated it 2 of 5 stars

Grade C.
Would have appreciated more of the historical context of why it was so difficult to be gay in those days. First half of book was v readable, but the rest was v repetitive, the lifestyle was pretentious / faux-Bohemian - so was hard to sympathise. Perhaps If I had actually heard of Paul Monette it would have been more interesting..Although now I have read the book and had an insight to his pretentious life, I don't think I would have read it in the first place..

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Aug 14, 2012 Nicholas Dicarlo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Gave me courage and gumption to pursue my own writing. Full of rage against the hate and indifference. Balanced with a tenderness and appreciation for love. Paul careful examines his past, the succession of closets through which he hid until claiming his ability to love. In owning his sexuality, he finds a deeper capacity to love and subsequently his authentic voice as an author.

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Jun 03, 2009 Charlie rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is an incredibly well written memoir. I picked it up on a whim based on the advice of the bookseller. Just calling this a coming out story wouldn't do it justice. It far more complex than that. I like it for its depiction of the New England upper crust in the 50s and 60s (Philips Academy, Yale etc) and his fine-tuned description of the people in his lives. It's the perspective of an outsider looking in.

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Sep 20, 2007 Emanuel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

Page 133 - Desperation:
"Self pity becomes your oxygen. But you learned to breathe it without a gasp. So, nobody even notices you're hurting"

First of all,
I picked up the lines above, as the catchiest statement from the book by the author. I have finished the book last night...

Last few chapters's written in deep words which i should carefully digest (that's slowing me down), but I can feel that Monette is a wounded soul, the oxygen has suffocated him. Some people might seen it as "over reacting" a...more

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Apr 27, 2009 Sull rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Sull by: charity shop

Very affecting autobiography. Really opened my eyes to how difficult growing up gay is. An angry book--furious in parts--but the struggle to be honest (to move toward becoming a "whole person") is so hopeful and made the story so gripping I couldn't put it down. Everyone has secrets--some people have acres of secrets--that shame us yet help make us strong as well.

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Dec 07, 2012 Karen rated it 2 of 5 stars

I liked the first half of this book better than the second because at some point Monette became very self-absorbed and it was hard to like him. I was impressed at how open and honest he was about his life and experience, but his prose was overly fancified for me and overall this was only so-so for me.

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Jun 22, 2012 Vicki rated it 5 of 5 stars

Absolutely my favorite writer after Shakespeare. After SHAKESPEARE, she said?? Yep. Sorry, but we love who we love. I also admire him as a man - his indefatigable zest for life in the midst of AIDS and the loss of several lovers is astounding. This is one of the great memoirs of all time.

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Aug 04, 2008 Hannah rated it 1 of 5 stars

I honor Paul Monette for what he struggled through, I respect the strides he made and the demons he fought, but I didn't want to read about it. I found the book in a "free stuff" box on the street, thought it looked interesting (gay coming-of-age and all that) and read it when I was short of other books. I should have known it'd not be enjoyable; any book that sets out with a stated purpose as a prequel to prove that the author's life was actually filled with pain and repression is going to be a...more

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Mar 11, 2013 Fariza rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Fariza by: Nicol

A gift from a friend. Sometimes you've tried to understand peoples but its just made you more confused. What they need is not an agree from you but a belief that human were created to be different with each other. The conclusion is "I don't know".

# My favorite quote from Paul Monette
"What love gives you is the courage to face the secrets you've kept from yourself, a reason to open the rest of the doors. "

http://farizahrin.blogspot.com/2013/0...

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Mar 18, 2010 Robert Vaughan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Instrumental, and what an inspirational book from a man who happens to be gay. Just how life ought to be in terms of sexuality and the multi-facted persons we all are, attempting to understand our own complexities.

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Oct 24, 2012 Shreedhar rated it 4 of 5 stars

A searingly honest memoir of life in the time of the advent of AIDS in the US and one extremely talented homosexual man's coming of age, amidst turbulent times, and winds of change.

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Jun 12, 2012 Patricia Boyle rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of Paul Monette's autobiographical books; very well written; and very interesting. I have read all of this author's books and enjoyed them thoroughly.

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Apr 25, 2012 Jtp added it

SIMPLY PUT...ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS IVE EVER READ...BY ONE OF THE MOST PROMINENT GLBT AUTORS OF TEH 20TH CENTURY...

RIP PAUL...

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Sep 22, 2009 Franny rated it 1 of 5 stars

I am usually a big fan of memoirs, especially of the GLBT variety, but this one I found disappointing.

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About Paul Monette

In novels, poetry, and a memoir, Paul Monette wrote about gay men striving to fashion personal identities and, later, coping with the loss of a lover to AIDS.

Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1945. He was educated at prestigious schools in New England: Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, where he received his B.A. in 1967. He began his prolific writing career soon after gra...more In novels, poetry, and a memoir, Paul Monette wrote about gay men striving to fashion personal identities and, later, coping with the loss of a lover to AIDS.

Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1945. He was educated at prestigious schools in New England: Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, where he received his B.A. in 1967. He began his prolific writing career soon after graduating from Yale. For eight years, he wrote poetry exclusively.

After coming out in his late twenties, he met Roger Horwitz, who was to be his lover for over twenty years. Also during his late twenties, he grew disillusioned with poetry and shifted his interest to the novel, not to return to poetry until the 1980s.

In 1977, Monette and Horwitz moved to Los Angeles. Once in Hollywood, Monette wrote a number of screenplays that, though never produced, provided him the means to be a writer. Monette published four novels between 1978 and 1982. These novels were enormously successful and established his career as a writer of popular fiction. He also wrote several novelizations of films.

Monette's life changed dramatically when Roger Horwitz was diagnosed with AIDS in the early 1980s. After Horwitz's death in 1986, Monette wrote extensively about the years of their battles with AIDS (Borrowed Time, 1988) and how he himself coped with losing a lover to AIDS (Love Alone, 1988). These works are two of the most powerful accounts written about AIDS thus far.

Their publication catapulted Monette into the national arena as a spokesperson for AIDS. Along with fellow writer Larry Kramer, he emerged as one of the most familiar and outspoken AIDS activists of our time. Since very few out gay men have had the opportunity to address national issues in mainstream venues at any previous time in U.S. history, Monette's high-visibility profile was one of his most significant achievements. He went on to write two important novels about AIDS, Afterlife (1990) and Halfway Home (1991). He himself died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.

In his fiction, Monette unabashedly depicts gay men who strive to fashion personal identities that lead them to love, friendship, and self-fulfillment. His early novels generally begin where most coming-out novels end; his protagonists have already come to terms with their sexuality long before the novels' projected time frames. Monette has his characters negotiate family relations, societal expectations, and personal desires in light of their decisions to lead lives as openly gay men.

Two major motifs emerge in these novels: the spark of gay male relations and the dynamic alternative family structures that gay men create for themselves within a homophobic society. These themes are placed in literary forms that rely on the structures of romance, melodrama, and fantasy.

Monette's finest novel, Afterlife, combines the elements of traditional comedy and the resistance novel; it is the first gay novel written about AIDS that fuses personal love interests with political activism.

Monette's harrowing collection of deeply personal poems, Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog, conveys both the horrors of AIDS and the inconsolable pain of love lost. The elegies are an invaluable companion to Borrowed Time.

Before the publication and success of his memoir, Becoming a Man, it seemed inevitable that Monette would be remembered most for his writings on AIDS. Becoming a Man, however, focuses on the dilemmas of growing up gay. It provides at once an unsparing account of the nightmare of the closet and a moving and often humorous depiction of the struggle to come out. Becoming a Man won the 1992 National Book Award for nonfiction, a historical moment in the history of lesbian and gay literature and culture in the United States.

Source: GLBTQ (less)

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“But the fevers are on me now, the virus mad to ravage my last fifty T cells. It's hard to keep the memory at full dazzle, with so much loss to mock it. Roger gone, Craig gone, Cesar gone, Stevie gone. And this feeling that I'm the last one left, in a world where only the ghosts still laugh. But at least they're the ghosts of full-grown men, proof that all of us got that far, free of the traps and the lies. And from that moment on the brink of summer's end, no one would ever tell me again that men like me couldn't love.” — 5 people liked it

“The problem with secret crushes: in the absence of requital the love turns bitter.” — 4 people liked it

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