Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style, by Paul Rudnick

[Ulysses]

Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style
By Paul Rudnick (Audio book narrated by Daniel Henning)
Published by Simon and Schuster, 2023
Five stars

I know I met Paul Rudnick when we were both undergrads at Yale in the 1970s. We had mutual friends, and he wrote a really funny piece in the 1977 yearbook (Yale Banner) called “An introduction to theater a Yale.” For that reason alone, I’ve always felt a kinship with him, and have followed his career; and thus had to read this book.

As expected, Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style is laugh-out-loud hilarious. Less expected was how much it made me cry, as it tracked the fifty-year relationship between Nate Remminger, a nice Jewish boy from Piscataway, New Jersey (Rudnick’s own hometown), and Farrell Covington, youngest son of a rich and powerful industrial family from Kansas.

Although Rudnick is two years my junior, both Nate and Farrell are exactly my age, and thus their five decades as a couple parallels my own history with my husband Gary, a nice Jewish boy from New Jersey whom I met at Yale. The eeriest thing of all is that Farrell Covington reminds me strongly of my best friend and roommate my junior year at Yale. As much of a caricature as Covington might seem to be, he represents something that Rudnick experienced at Yale. Indeed, the whole book was this way for me, resonating again and again with the life I have lived as a gay man coming out in America over the past half century.

The fact that Rudnick’s book is fiction has allowed him to weave a wild and improbable tale of an undying love that triumphs over virulent homophobia (from Farrell’s family); survives AIDS (in the most upsetting and dark part of the book); and navigates two divergent careers that keep these men, whose love for each other is unwavering, apart for years at a time.

At the end of the book, Farrell and Nate are exactly the age I turned this summer. As my husband and I face his 70th birthday this fall, and forty-nine years together, a story like Rudnick’s epic pean to gay romance and the absurdities of the world was bound to hit close to home.

The realities and social tropes of gay life are catalogued in Farrell and Nate’s story. Not just any realities, but in particular the life of urban New Yorkers. Although Farrell is from Wichita, and he and Nate do spend some time in Los Angeles (because Hollywood has to play role in this journey); this narrative reflects Rudnick’s own reality as a writer.
Most importantly—for me, anyway—is that the unchanging leitmotif of the book is the very concept of being gay. The importance of it. The central role it plays in the consciousness and life experience of both of these men, as different as they are. That idea is brought right up to the present, when Nate is interviewed by a young non-binary person named Sten, who challenges the “old gay” notions, from pronouns to white male privilege. Rudnick, bless his heart, makes his point that today’s LGBTQ+ world wouldn’t exist at all without the L,G, and B who built the foundation upon which it all rests.

In the end, Rudnick reminds us, we don’t get an actual Happily Ever After, which is exactly how I ended my own memoir (Growing Up Grant, 2021). The payoff for a long and happy life as a couple is someone being left alone to cope. This is one of the parts of the book that made me weep. Because it’s the truth. For all its zany and improbable plot, this book speaks with the voice of my generation.

I listened to the Audible edition of this book, wonderfully narrated by Daniel Henning.

[Bob]

Love Paul Rudnik.

[Ulysses]

Bob wrote: "Love Paul Rudnik." That would make sense, given your longtime life in theater....I should transcribe his essay in my 1977 yearbook....

[Bob]

That would be swell.