Peter Cameron's Blog, page 17

The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis

 (Little, Brown, 2006)

 

A smart, quirky book, fun and interesting to read, but ultimately disappointing.

The Thin Place is set  in, and mostly about, the small town of Verennes, which seems to be in northern New York  near the Canadian border.  It describes and follows the lives of many of the inhabitants of this town over perhaps a month-long period in early summer.  In addition to the large cast of human beings, the narrator also inhabits the minds of  many animals, both domestic (dogs and cats) and wild (beavers).   The book does not  seem to have a central character or a plot, and perhaps this is why its parts are greater than the whole. 

Davis is a very smart, odd, and playful writer, and appears to see the world -- flora and fauna -- from both a scientific and spiritual perspective. This duality of vision gives the book an idiosyncratic complexity I found both admirable and rewarding.   She is able to create original and compelling characters (both human and animal), but seems unwilling, or unable, to create any sort of plot.  The Thin Place ends with a robbery and shooting at a church service where many of the characters are assembled, and this seems an inorganic and unlikely conclusion to a novel that is originally conceived and beautifully composed.

I've read and admired Davis's earlier novel, The Walking Tour, and now look forward to reading more of her novels.

In the Purely Pagan Sense by John Lehmann

(Blond and Briggs, 1976)

 

 

A very unusual book.  A memoir in the form of a novel, in which Lehmann exhustively and in great detail describes (just about) all of his sexual experiences with boys and men before, during, and after WWII.  Most of the book is set in Vienna, where Lehmann lived before the War, and London, where he lived during and after.  Lehmann apparently had no qualms or misgivings about his sexuality and pursued, and bedded, younger men with impressive frequency and success.  (Apparently he was a handsome man with a big cock.)  Because he basically had only one type -- younger well-built boys with shapely buttocks -- the encounters he describes don't have much variety or singularity (except for a few boys who have kinks that are memorable), and despite its frank and detailed descriptions of male bodies and sexual acts, the book becomes a little tedious and almost unpleasant.  Lehmann has an entitled, grasping attitude; his supreme confidence -- almost arrogance -- which helped him seduce so many boys, does not help him seduce the reader.

 

In The Hollow of His Hand by James Purdy

(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986)

 

I think I might have liked this best of all the Purdy novels I've read -- it's less gory and violent, and the book deals with archetypes in a very tender and original way.

Chad Coultas was born to a wealthy and distinguished family in Yellow Brook, a small Midwestern city, but his real father is a beautiful and imposing Indian name Decautur, who fathered Chad when he was only 14.  Fourteen years later Decautur returns to Yellow Brook from "across" -- serving heroically in WWI, and sets about reclaiming his son.  Chad is kidnapped twice -- once by Decautur and once by Lewis Coultas, his "legal" father.  Both of these kidnappings are wild and dangerous adventures involving jewel thieves, crazed Pentacostalists, deaf and dumb and sexually voracious twin Indian girls, and a 90-year-old private investigator who sets out to find Chad and return him to Yellow Brook.

This is all related in Purdy's inimitable style, and is set, like all his books, just a bit on the far side of reality, verging on the dream world.  It isn't necessarily homoerotic, but the male body is as much an object of lust and desire -- and beauty -- as the female, and that gives the book an unusual and delicious flavor. 

Decautur and Chad, as they take off across the distinctively American countryside, bring to mind  Huck and Jim lighting out for the territory: a dark man and a pale(r) boy finding comfort and joy -- love -- in one another's company.