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From: Gay City News, 16-22 Sept., 2004
His Father's Son
Stanley Ely explores coming-of-age conflicts with a stubborn
protagonist
BY SETH J. BOOKEY
Remember what it's like to be a mixed-up 18-year-old
with questions about sexuality? Stanley Ely does. The confusion and the need
to just grow up already and deal with it make up the drama of his third book,
the novel In the Steps of Mister Proust. A cornerstone of the
novel is the father-son conflict, a long- standing topic in literature and
also a personal one for Ely, a native Texan who's made New York his home
since graduating from Northwestern University. Ely presents us with Josh,
a Jewish kid from a Maryland suburb, who discovers that it's time to face
issues, some anticipated, others sprung on him, as he begins studies at Columbia
University.
Told in the first person, the novel covers everything
from the mundane to the deeply personal. The book opens with Josh being
castigated by Andrea, a girl who wants to get fucked when all he wants is
a blowjob. "That's so high school," he is told by his best friend, Richard,
also from Maryland. Soon, Josh finds himself satisfied after rolling around
with Dean, a sophomore from Spokane with a deformed foot, in the upperclassman's
single dorm room.
Back home, Josh's father lives with a male lover; Josh
has never gotten over his parents' divorce a few years before when his father
came out, though everyone else has. When Dad arrives for an impromptu dinner
in New York and tells Josh his tuition may be imperilled since the father
faces a sexual harassment lawsuit, his son's resentment intensifies. One
of Josh's classes is devoted to reading Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past,"
and like the narrator of that book, Josh is self-centered, cherishing memories
of an idealized family life now lost, for which he blames his father. Much
of the novel is centered on Josh's efforts to overcome his solypsistic
angst.
As Ely explained to Gay City News, that was his aim with
the novel. In Josh, we see the ambivalence of a bisexual young man, told
in such a way that it's not the typical coming out story "of the beautiful
boy," Ely said. Compared to many coming out stories, the central character
here is not sympathetic. Everyone reminding him to "be a grown up" stands
in sharp contrast to the usual self-propulsion of many coming out stories.
Josh is attracted to his one male love interest, Dean, but he cannot bear
to look at his deformed leg.
Ely explained that his third book has proven the most
fun for him. The book's ideal audience is either young adult, or those who
want to recapture that time in their lives. Despite the modern elements in
the story—cell phones, HIV, sexual harassment, even its coming out
theme—the core of the book echoes a more sheltered, naive tradition
in novels of youth being challenged to take on increasingly adult roles,
in Josh's case, being there for a younger brother and for a friend in trouble.
For Ely, writing comes after two other careers—the first in advertising
and marketing, the second as a French and Spanish teacher at New Rochelle
High School, from which he retired 12 years ago. With this novel, like his
other, "Perfect Mondays," and his memoir, "In Jewish Texas," Ely learned
about finding a publisher without an agent, and promoting a book singlehandedly.
Along with the do-it-yourself approach to publishing, Ely has also written
for the gay press, including Gay City News, published interviews for "Poets
& Writers" and volunteered for the New York-based Publishing Triangle,
made up of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered professionals in writing
fields. It is Josh's gradual acceptance that his father is a human being
that makes In the Steps of Mister Proust a satisfying read. Ely has explored
the father-son problem dynamic in his other works. In his memoir, "In Jewish
Texas," Ely gives us an honest look at his own fractured relationship with
his father. And a two-act play of Ely's, "A Pebble on Your Stone," which
has had readings in New York, also delves into intergenerational conflict.
Ely rejected the easy categorization of "In the-Steps…"
as autobiographical, but the struggle Josh goes through, not only with his
father but within himself as well, represents a major milestone most of us
face in our personal development as young adults. The transition to full
adulthood, in which we can one day offer ourself as role model or mentor
or caregiver to some one younger, doesn't occur for everyone, but it happens
for Josh, and Ely shows us these moments as they happen. This sort of epiphany,
however, is only possible if we are able to let go of something from our
youth—a point Ely understands and brings vividly to the printed page.
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If I had dime for every time that I've read a book about
some young guy coming out of the closet, I'd be pretty darn wealthy. Let's
face it, the story is always the same: boy is confused about his sexuality,
boy meets attractive other boy and falls in love, love interest convinces
him to come out to his parents, parents scream and faint but eventually say
"we've always known, and we love you because you're our son" and then everyone
marches off to a PFLAG rally.
Sound like anything you've read?
How about the coming-of-age story? It's always a delightful
little tale where Johnny heads off to the big city for the first time and
learns Some Very Important Life Lessons before discovering that he's grown
into a new person. Yawn.
Needless to say, when I read the blurb for GLB Publishers
latest release In The Steps of Mister Proust by Stanley E.
Ely and saw that it was a coming-of-age story with a gay theme...well...let's
just say that I started thinking about dimes again. The likelihood of Ely
creating something new and original that hadn't been done before was pretty
unlikely.
Boy, do I like it sometimes when an author proves me
wrong. Guess what? "Proust" is brilliant. Simply. Fricking. Brilliant.
First, the obligatory plot recap. "Proust" centers
around the life of a young man named Josh, attending Columbia University
as a freshman and ready to discover what the world has to offer outside of
his hometown of Baltimore. Josh is definitely ready to do some discovering,
as things back in Baltimore aren't that great. Dad's recently come out of
the closet and run off with a man, his brother is still recovering from a
horrible accident, his youngest brother is getting ignored. Needless to say,
life isn't exactly running smooth back home.
Columbia isn't much easier. Josh is continually conflicted
over his sexual feelings for both girls and guys, he desperately wants to
fit in and discover who he's about but just doesn't know how to go about
it. Richard, his best friend from home, is also his roommate at college and
is spending most of his time running around to gay bars around New York City.
He's also having to cope with being a freshman in an advanced English class.
The class may be the best thing to happen to him, however.
In reading Proust, Josh starts seeing many parallels between the lives of
Proust's characters and his own. When Josh's college life is jeopardized
by a legal case against his father and Richard tests positive for HIV, Josh
realizes that there is much solace to be gained from Proust's writing...and
maybe Some Very Important Life Lessons as well.
This short summary really can't do justice to the true
depth of writing that Ely has achieved with "Proust." The ability
to take Proust's writing and fine-tune it in such a fashion that parallels
to modern life can be so intertwined with a work of such age is simply genius.
Even Josh's thought patterns of run-on sentences are at once both authentic
of a teenager, and an exact duplicate of Proust's own writing style. Are
we hearing the voice of Josh? Or, are we hearing the voice of Proust through
Josh?
The characters seem so real, because each character has
an important role to play within the work. Every person that Josh comes in
contact with either changes his way of thinking in some way, or directly
affects the outcome of a situation in which he finds himself. Likewise, every
character in Josh's modern world finds a distinctly parallel character within
Proust's work.
The typical coming-of-age story becomes sincerely atypical
here. Sure there are valuable Life Lessons To Be Learned, but there are no
pat answers. None of Josh's problems are resolved 100% by the end of the
book. In its conclusion, he has learned new things about his place in the
world, but hasn't necessarily learned any better in how to deal with them.
He still has issues, but what's important here, and what I feel so many other
authors completely miss when they attempt to write this kind of story, is
that he and his problems remain flawed by the end but with a clarity and
realization of the situation that leaves you thinking "You know what? the
kid's going to be ok" No crystal clear happy endings here, but a true, realistic
ending. Not since Salinger's Catcher In The Rye has a character so
grown by the end of the book, yet not solved every issue in their lives.
Even the question of Josh's sexuality remains a muddle for him; something
else to eventually have to deal with.
The book becomes impossible to put down once you begin
reading it. Josh's flowing thought pattern that Ely records in a
stream-of-consciousness manner is lyrical, honest, real and believable. If
you don't find yourself drawn into Josh's world and all the amazing people
he comes in contact with who change his life in such subtle ways, you're
somehow missing the incredible quality of Ely's writing.
The sexual situations in the book will probably keep
this title from being taught in high school classrooms, which is a crying
shame. In this day and age, "Proust" is infinitely more relevant to
a 21st century high school reading audience than Catcher In The Rye
could be. At the very least, this novel should be taught for freshman English
classes at universities everywhere as both an introduction to literature
and as a comparison when teaching Proust. Don't let the plot fool you; there's
plenty here for adults to love as well.
As sure as chicken blood is hard to get out of the carpet,
if this book doesn't get some literary awards at the next handout, then perhaps
one of the most brilliant books in years will have been horribly overlooked.
In the Steps of Mister Proust charts new territory into the
worlds of coming-out stories and coming-of-age tales. An absolute must-read.
--Jay A. Hartman, www.knowbetter.com
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