Alec, by William di Canzio

[Ulysses]

Alec
By William di Canzio
Picador, 2021
Five stars

E.M. Forster’s posthumous “Maurice” was an important book to me, and to many gay men of my generation, as was the 1987 film made from it (which made Hugh Grant famous as the beautiful but cowardly Clive Durham). Forster was afraid to publish it in his lifetime, despite (or in fear for) his celebrity status as a great writer. Thus what was his most honest novel appeared in 1971, just four years before I came out while at university.

William di Canzio’s beautiful “Alec,” inspired by “Maurice,” is really the story I and my generation yearned for, presented through Alec Scudder’s life, including the critical chapters when it intersects with Maurice Hall’s visit to Penge with his Cambridge chum Clive Durham.

What di Canzio does so well is capture the tone of Forster’s writing, and the period in which the original book was set—the early 20th century, through the aftermath of World War I (which Forster didn’t have to deal with at all). He borrows crucial passages from Forster, thereby fusing the two stories together. Di Canzio does something else in his book: he inverts the social perspective of E.M. Forster’s voice, letting it all unfold through the eyes of a young, beautiful, smart working-class man from small-town England. The assumption of the charm of the upper classes in Forster’s book is subverted in favor of the pragmatic honesty of Alec’s social stratum. The Scudders have no love of aristocracy, and Alex himself rebels against being “in service” to anyone—even as he is forced to take a job in order to make money and survive. Social class in England is presented as it was, unromantic and surprisingly ugly in its ramifications.

Conversely, Maurice Hall’s world is presented as frustrating (his unsuccessful efforts to woo the class-bound Clive, for whom the crumbling country house and public status matter more than any kind of real love or happiness). Maurice’s upper-middle-class world of gentility and striving affluence is revealed to be steeped in compassionless class-consciousness and racism. The finale of the book zeroes in on this in a way that left me in tears.

The other inversion of expectations is that, in the end, it is Alex who saves Maurice’s life, initially. I love the way both men have to let go of their prejudices and limitations in order to make their own happiness possible. I love the way we see how both Alex and Maurice arrive at the conclusion that their right to feel love means that the rest of the world is wrong. This is what my generation had to do, and not everyone succeeded. I also love the way di Canzio introduces the characters of Ted and George (the historical figures of Edward Carpenter and George Merrill) as role models during an idyllic moment. I love the way di Canzio resists inserting 21st-century notions into the story. This is two men fighting desperately against a world entirely barricaded against them. Ironically, this is also two men willing to fight in a bloody, pointless, idiotic war for a nation that devalues and demonizes people like them. After all, Black men fought in World War II for a country that gave them almost nothing in return.

“Alec” is a lovely, brilliant book. If you haven’t read “Maurice,” read this first, and then read Forster’s book.