I had wanted to read this for a while. Forgot about it. Then saw a library copy at my daughter's house. I picked it up and she said that she didn't like people starting books she was in the middle of reading.
Forgot again. Then I came upon a copy during the closing days of the wonderful Friends of Library building a short walk away. The building has since been torn down. The land had become very valuable and a little book sale was a relic from another time.
As it happened, I was not very engaged by the book, which is set in the early 80s in London. The main character is a young gay man, supposedly working on a thesis on Henry James (several of whose books I reread this summer). He is living in the home of a very wealthy power couple, the parents of a college chum.
Percolating through the book is the advent of AIDS--and I remember those days well, though from a distance. Since the book was not engaging, I did what I have started to do: jumped to the end.
The main character has been kicked out of the house and is preparing to get another test for AIDS. He imagines that the results will be positive.
The time had come, and they learned the news in the room they were in, at a certain moment in their planned and continuing day. They woke the next morning, and after a while it came back to them. Nick searched their faces as they explored their feelings. He seemed to fade pretty quickly.He found himself yearning to know of their affairs, their successes, the novels and the new ideas that the few who remembered him might say he never knew, he never lived to find out.
This passage got me back to read the whole book that I was about to abandon. I thought of the Alumni Bulletin (one) sent by my college, perhaps in the late 90s or early 00s. As I read through the names, I saw many Ls and Ds. L was for LOST. D was for DEAD.
Nearly all the Ds of the years around my graduation were the gay guys. I remembered a few: Marty B, with his pony tail and smile. He went into advertising in San Francisco. Steve J, who had a crush on me for a while and then confessed that he hitchhiked and had sex for money with the men who picked him up, Bob C, who was so smart and confident. He became a dancer in Boston. He wrote his thesis on Richard Crashaw.
I could not find any mention of them via the internet. I thought of all they had missed.
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4 comments:
I spent the 80s and early 90s living in London and my place of work was staffed by many young and older gay men. As the decade progressed many of my young colleagues became ill with AIDS and mostly died. It was an horrific time for the gay community. I read Line of Beauty at the time and felt it captured that moment of recklessness. It also captures the vibe of Kensington in the 80s, the mixture of Britain living shoulder to shoulder.
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Great blog. Thanks
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