Unbroken
So, if you read this blog regularly, or you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, or even if you just ran into me randomly on the street, you know I’ve spent the last ten months writing my third book. And if you do any of those things, you know it was called “His Name Was Jose.” (see my earlier blog post for the reason why: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...).
About halfway through writing the book, I changed the title because as I wrote the story it became clear to me the story was larger than Jose. In fact, it had three other titles before I landed on the final one. The story as it unfolded, as my characters told it to me, became more than just a romance between two young gay men. It became a tale of survival, of what it takes to hold on to love and each other in an often hostile, unwelcoming world. It examines the damage we, as a society, as parents, inflict when we pin our expectations and preconceived notions of what a boy (or girl) should be/do, on our youth. It looks at how that can break us, how we can be made to feel we are broken and, most importantly, how we have the power to unbreak ourselves. Thus, the new title is “Unbroken.”
"Unbroken," which spans 40 years, opens in 1964, when protagonist, five year old Lincoln de Chabert, a gentle effeminate boy, comes home from kindergarten and announces he will marry his best friend, Orlando, when he grows up. He is told he can’t marry another boy; the news baffles him: “Why not?” he asks “You said I could do anything. You said I could grow up to be President.”
His parents spring into action determined to unbend him― his father takes him to baseball games and the movie, “Patton;” it’s a battle of wills as Lincoln is determined to be himself at all costs.
When at twelve Lincoln falls in love with the new kid, Jose, he is confused:
“I had believed their lies, had ignored my own truth. I would change they told me, just wait and see. I would want to marry a girl, have children, and a dog, and a split-level house in the suburbs just like on The Brady Bunch because that’s what all boys wanted when they grew up and left childish things behind. Time, they said, would fix me, and I’d feel as other boys felt…Time had passed and I was still…broken.”
As I got ready to send the manuscript to my publisher, I realized I needed to describe the book’s genre. I ended up describing it as, “Part romance, part coming-of-age novel, part elegy.” But I think it is nothing so much as a love letter from my 12 year old self to the 12 year old boy I fell in love with in seventh grade. A boy, I suspect, who was barely aware of my existence let alone the fact that I was in love with him. A boy who smiled at me in innocence, and changed my life. It is a love letter lost for years and-finally delivered, by the post office, to that boy, 40 years late.
About halfway through writing the book, I changed the title because as I wrote the story it became clear to me the story was larger than Jose. In fact, it had three other titles before I landed on the final one. The story as it unfolded, as my characters told it to me, became more than just a romance between two young gay men. It became a tale of survival, of what it takes to hold on to love and each other in an often hostile, unwelcoming world. It examines the damage we, as a society, as parents, inflict when we pin our expectations and preconceived notions of what a boy (or girl) should be/do, on our youth. It looks at how that can break us, how we can be made to feel we are broken and, most importantly, how we have the power to unbreak ourselves. Thus, the new title is “Unbroken.”
"Unbroken," which spans 40 years, opens in 1964, when protagonist, five year old Lincoln de Chabert, a gentle effeminate boy, comes home from kindergarten and announces he will marry his best friend, Orlando, when he grows up. He is told he can’t marry another boy; the news baffles him: “Why not?” he asks “You said I could do anything. You said I could grow up to be President.”
His parents spring into action determined to unbend him― his father takes him to baseball games and the movie, “Patton;” it’s a battle of wills as Lincoln is determined to be himself at all costs.
When at twelve Lincoln falls in love with the new kid, Jose, he is confused:
“I had believed their lies, had ignored my own truth. I would change they told me, just wait and see. I would want to marry a girl, have children, and a dog, and a split-level house in the suburbs just like on The Brady Bunch because that’s what all boys wanted when they grew up and left childish things behind. Time, they said, would fix me, and I’d feel as other boys felt…Time had passed and I was still…broken.”
As I got ready to send the manuscript to my publisher, I realized I needed to describe the book’s genre. I ended up describing it as, “Part romance, part coming-of-age novel, part elegy.” But I think it is nothing so much as a love letter from my 12 year old self to the 12 year old boy I fell in love with in seventh grade. A boy, I suspect, who was barely aware of my existence let alone the fact that I was in love with him. A boy who smiled at me in innocence, and changed my life. It is a love letter lost for years and-finally delivered, by the post office, to that boy, 40 years late.
No comments have been added yet.
Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life
The writer's life is as individual and strange as each writer. I'll document my journey as a writer here.
...more
- Larry Benjamin's profile
- 126 followers
