American Studies

I just finished reading a great book called American Studies by Mark Merlis and I felt I needed to do a blog post about it since my Goodreads review didn't really do it justice. American Studies begins with the narrator, Reeve, a gay man in his 60s, who looks back on his life while he's hospitalized after a trick assaults and robs him. In reviewing his own life, Reeve also looks back on the life of his former professor and mentor Tom. The book discusses the paranoia in the 1950s over homosexuality, Communism, manhood, class. It's a compelling look at the lives of two gay men during a time when they really couldn't be themselves openly and how each man dealt with his sexuality. It's a fascinating book and I commend Merlis for putting his characters through such an emotional wringer. You get the good, the bad, and the ugly with Reeve and Tom and the people around them. This is not a book that is filled with loving relationships, sunshine, and rainbows. It's often sad and sometimes depressing, but it's always real and very interesting. Merlis's character Tom reminded me a lot of the writer John Horne Burns, the subject of David Margolick's excellent biography Dreadful. Both Tom and Burns, gay men of the same era, suffered internally and externally because of their sexuality.

I read a lot of romance books because I write romance books and I enjoy reading them. But, from time to time, I'll take a break from that genre and read something like American Studies that gives me a realistic shot in the arm and opens my eyes to lives I might not have seen otherwise.