Michael Murphy's A Night at the Ariston Baths

[Ulysses]

A Night at the Ariston Baths
Michael Murphy
Four stars

What I loved about this book, and what earned it the four stars, is the history it tells. Based on one of the more dramatically homophobic incidents of the early 20th century in America, Michael Murphy’s saga of Theodore McCall, Martin Fuller and Jasper Webb is a sincere, thoughtful foray into historical fiction. By starting the book with the main protagonists celebrating the Stonewall Riots in 1969, we are assured that in the midst of all the despair, there will be joy. This is a story of gay men who survived and indeed thrived in the last 100 years of anti-gay reality in America. It reminds us that the rights we have fought for and the freedom we have won were hard-fought and only recently gained. Our lives are built on a long history of men and women who, all too often, did not fare well.

What I liked least about the book was that Murphy missed the mark in his attempt to recreate the language of the early 20th century. In trying to sound authentic, he often sounds simply stilted, and anachronisms that could have easily been avoided riddle the prose.

But such criticisms are for fusspots such as I. Let yourself get wrapped up in the story of these three men. They may be fictional, but they represent many lives long past to whom we should pay homage. Remember who they were and what we owe to them.