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    61 views21 pages

    Dream Boy Jim Grimsleys Gothic Gospel

    Uploaded by

    Gabriel Reis

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    NORTH CAROLINA LITERARY REVIEW Other Voices & Genres The 100th Birthday of Thomas Wolfe NORTH CAROLINA LITERARY REVIEW Number 9 Published annually by the English Department, East Carolina University, and the North Carolina Literary and Historical Assocation OTHER VOICES & GENRES Dream Boy: jim GRIMSLEY’S GotTHic GOSPEL © wsiniuin DR eRe nS CLT See eee ee Pr ese en ened See a ton The Christ-Haunted Landscape (xvi) “We write about queer people in the South, because it is an itch inside us, and a fearful subject to others, and we want to understand the why of this. What we will find, one day, is that one thing we have written will touch the right place inside people, and the whole human flower will open up, free for anybody to appreciate, throwing up its scent into the air.” Tims Grimsley, “Myth and Reality ‘The Story of Gay People in the South,” part 3.(14) ISECOND NOVEL, Drevin Boy, opens in a Southern Bap- a North. Carolina, where a pastoris discussing, with some confusion, the scriptural image of the apostle John leaning on Jesus's breast. Grimsley writes, “The preacher says we do not know why the Scriptures point to the disciple, we do not know why it is mentioned particularly that Jesus loved John at this moment in the Gospels” (1). Although found in Christian scripture, this image of Jesus and John is, according to the preacher, somehow unintelligible. As if to foreground problems of intelligibility and interpretation, Grimsley describes three further reactions to the image in the quite different responses of Nathan, the novel’s adolescent protagonist; of Nathan’s fanatically religious and alcoholic father; and of his devout but emotionally numbed mother. At the preacher's evocation of this image, Nathan's abusive father imagines ‘a vision of God” and thinks of “salvation and hellfire and the taste of whisky” (1), Nathan’s mother, for whom the church offers a refuge from the quiet horrors of her life at home, thinks of “the body of Christ and ‘the wings of angels,” and she relaxes in the “safety” and “sanctity” of the church (1). Nathan, however, thinks of neither God nor Christ but Instead “about the body of the son of the farmer” from whom his family has rented their new house. “Jesus has a face like that boy,” Nathan NUMBER 92000 NORTH CAROLINA LITERARY REVIEW By transrorminc tHE SouTHERM inl THE WORDS OF THE Hymn, THAT m2 DREAM BOY: thinks to himself, “a serene smile with dimples, a nose that’s little too big, and Jesus has the same strong smooth arms” (1-2). The image that the preacher finds confusing, the image that represents judgment for Nathan's father \d comfort for his mother, Nathan himself reinterprets| quite literally in the body of the boy who lives next door. GotHi tic inT© A HOMOER® GOSPEL, GRIMSLEY SUGGESTS, THERE is A PLACE FOR GAY MET “TEAR TO THE HEART OF Gop.” ‘The image of John leaning on the breast of Jesus thus opens the novel on a question of not only religious but sexual ambiguity, and it pro- vides a central motif for Dream Boy. The image is connected to the hymn threading the novel, “Near to the Heart of God,” and itis echoed in the novel's closing pages, where one man (who hhas just risen from the dead) leans against the breast of another. An image of two men in emo- tional and physical proximity is simultaneously. an image of theological comfort (Jesus as dear friend) and of homoerotic possibilty, as Nathan's response to the sermon suggests. Ifthe preacher's Aiscussion reflects the silence and confusion about homosexuality in Southern culture, Nathan's response to this image suggests a strangely resonant connec- tion between gospel promise and homoeroticism, a connection Grimsley explores throughout the novel. In fact, this novel about a gay Southern boy is saturated with gospel language to such an extent that Dream Boy becomes a kind of generic hybrid: a gay and a gothic gospel Viewing Dream Boy as a gospel suggests that there will be a sacrifice, and, indeed, this novel includes at its emotional and narrative center a brutal act of violence against a gay adolescent: the horrific rape and mur- der of a homosexual boy that seems to literalize the acts of silence and oppression that pervade Southern culture, and a murder that explicitly ‘connects homosexual panic to Southern masculinity. Grimsley’s novel suggests both the necessity a J the impossibility of disentangling the homoeroticism and homophobia that simultaneously permeate and haunt Southern culture, One man rapes another and then kills him to erase the evidence of his desires, but the dead man rises from the grave because Of the power of his own love for another man, Although Dream Boy com: bines a number of literary subgentes and styles ~ gay coming-of-age novel Southern gothic tale, maj realism narrative, reconfigured gospel - as 3 gospel, it isa story in which a character rises from the dead after being sacrificed for the good of the social order. But that resurrection suggests the promise of an alternative vision of the world, In the novel's world + sexual hostility and violence wrt large as social or spiritual order. G ley offers an image of homosexual love as spiritual transformation. ‘Although the novel exemplifies the fear and panic endemic to much =* Southern culture when it comes to homosexuality, the novel offers rw ‘movements that - though they do not obviate the horror of homoph:: violence in the novel or in reality ~ radically transform traditional sentations of the homoerotic in Southern and religious contexts. Fis: the novel reworks the Southern gothic as a reconfigured gospel. thy ‘moving from the return of the repressed to the return of a resurrecs In so doing, the novel attempts to reinscribe a positive homoerotic:s= within Southern homophobia and, within the language and sym of Chistian traditions. By rei through the tropes of the gospel, Grimsley suggests that the lang scripture, more often than not used to condemn same-sex sexuality be reclalmed for Its counterdiscursive possibilities. Second, then NORTH CAROLINA LITERARY REVIEW jining the story of homophobic +: = JIM GRIMSLEY'S GOTHIC GosPeL she: revises and eroticizes gospel themes and images, it seems to offer 3 cen way of telling the stories of loss, silence, violence, and trauma that &: ‘wer have characterized the lives and representations of gay men in. Scuth.! Grimsley ties the gospel language of resurrection to homo- + love, thus casting the love of one young boy for another as a ‘ive power in a hostile world that would disavow and silence (even rr. destroy) love's non-normative manifestations. Some readers may object to Grimsley's use of Christian language On the experiences of gay men nthe ‘pomever modified and ambiguous) to re-validate and re-value gay lives, Sau eames. es and on cor necatse they see homosexuality and Christianity as fundamen fee epee re “+ mreconelable or because they imagine that such language offer an“ Iwo wring ns i, Ys «al stance more symbolic than viable. Yet, as Grimsley noted in a we daeofakciton shyent ny nt interview, such symbolism is important in a culture constructed inchel, ond expeily Bay fock ‘ough and constrained by Christian discourse, Growing tp in tural ‘ithe, 0 young gay man from a ‘Ninth Carolina, he says, the church is “almost everything «i's your Sauthern Bop fomiyin Alabama. ‘cal context, it's your cultural life” “Conversation” 14). Within that {aha hd the immediate context of ural and social context, Grimsley opens up a place ~ or pethaps sim- veg in South Carona, ostte known forthe buring of sever Atrcan- FW articulates a space already ambiguously present ~ for the young gay ay of smn dn an By tansforing the Southern gothi into a homoerote gospel, msley suggests, nthe words ofthe Hymn, that heres 4 place fot wich ie tre greece ‘ps men “near tothe Heat of God.” sete etn ae vol hv ced ote Derothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina, has called for a Southern literature of the working classes that portrays thelr human omplesity; she insists on the need for authors to portray “other” South 2 see, for eample, Alison’ essay “A em experiences, specifically those of the working class and queer. Jim ‘Question of Class” inher collection of Grimsley’s work clearly fulfills that call. Grimsley is the playwright-in- essoys, Sk. Home for the Holidays «a review by Gary Richards Grimsley, jim. Comfort & Joy. answers and yet suggesting that no public displays of affection, the Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 1999. cone response can ever fully satisfy. finances, the parents, the cats, the 521.95 Inthe process, however, Grimsley yard, the meals. accomplishes beautifully what is This isnot to say that Grimsley Why do men stay together?... Why dane so rarely in fiction: he captures dismisses the more pressing and do they vein the same house, shore the deta of the day-to-day exis- disruptive traumas. The abuse and ‘meals together, argue about money tence of a contemporary gay couple. implied incest of Dan’ past, which and parents, why do they have pets, Unlike is previous novels, such as was established in Winter Bids, plont begonias, bring home birthday Winter Birds and Dream Boy (1995), haunt him as an adult in Comfort & cakes? Where are the children, where wich centralize familial abuse, Joy, especially upon each return to Is the sense of permanence, what is incest, and homophobic murder, _—his mother’s house. But both he the tie that binds? (Comfort 207) Grimsley's most recent novel shifts and the narrative skirt the particu: toa scenario deliberately shorn of lars ofthis past, suggesting that it {tis not until late in his moving these gothic moments and filled remains to0 painful to be brought fourth novel, Comfort & Joy, that im instead with Dan Crell and Ford to full ight, and instead focus on Grimsley overtly poses these ques- McKinney's smaller-scale tensions _the minutiae of the present relation- tions, but by this point readers are and rewards: the anxieties of ving _ ships that have been formed after ~ already well aware that in this sequel apart, the anxieties of living togeth- and perhaps in spite of ~ this child to Winter Birds (1994), his first novel, er, the routine negotiations of safer hood trauma. Grimsley has been exploring pre- sex in the presence of HIV, the on- To structure his novel, Grimsley cisely these issues, positing partial going processes of coming out, the returns to the effective device he NUMBER 92000, NORTH CAROLINA LITERARY REVIEW 13 DREAM BOY: 3 Ast eported inthe introduction to my lntervew with Grimsley, Winter Bids was completed in 1984 but not pub- lished unt 192 in German tans tion it was then pulsed in French teonsetion in 1994 before ts pubica- tion by Algonquin later that yeor (Grimsley, “Conversation” 6). brical yet wrenching portrat of rarol North Carona famiy, Winter Birds received ‘¢ number of prizes in the US ond ‘broad, including the 1995 Sue Kau ‘man Priefer First Fon from the “American Academy of Ars ard Letters + cig Segmon,wetng fr the New Yorker, i one a he ony reviewer cutie the go press who reeds the book in o oy content though he xis that promotional otra rm the pubisher influences is eng ‘more thon ary sense of Sexuaty the book. “There's nothing expr 907" in te nove heres, “ond ha’ impli wal be obscure? i rot or “a pomp, conisioned by the publisher," which emphosies both te euthor’s and the character’ goy senuatity (99). Selgman reviewed the ‘ove along with Alan Hotinghars’ much mere expt gay nove The Falaing Stor residence at Atlanta’s 7 Stages Theatre, author of four novels and a col- lection of plays, all published by Algonquin Press. His first three novels — Winter Birds (1994), Dream Boy (1995), and My Drowning (1997) ~ have been praised not only for stylistic accomplishment but also for their focus on rural, working-class, and gay experience, a focus grounded in Grimsley’s own experience of growing up in rural North Carolina. Grim- sley’s work falls at the intersection of a number of audiences and cul- tures, and at the thematic intersection of regional, sexual, and class identities. As an Algonquin Press author, he is primarily seen as a South- em writer, but his social focus Is on the dirt-poor, the rural, and the gay. Grimsley’s first novel, Winter Birds, focuses on a young hemophiliac boy whose father Is an abusive alcoholic.? The novel splzals into a hell of domestic violence, which takes place, ironically, on Thanksgiving, Day. Most reviewers read this novel as concerned primarily with class and familial abuse in Southern culture, and many ignored the relative Importance of homosexuality to the narrative.* Grimsley himself has described his eight-year-old protagonist as gay. Just as many queer read- ers of Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina recognize in young Bone a nascent lesbian identity, many queer readers of Grimsley's Winter Birds find in young Danny Krell a nascent gay sensibility, characterized by a sense of difference both epistemological and emotional and by an imagi- nation that found escape in a fantasized male savior, the River Man, a figure simultaneously familial, paternal, and vaguely erotic.’ 5 See my 1997 interview with Grimsley (under Grimsley, “Conversation” in Works Cited). See ‘bo True Fiction, an esscy published by Algonquin as promatinal material forthe novel in which Grimsley write, “Donny wil grow up tobe queer he | did” (6). Grimsley’ most ‘recent novel Comfort and Joy (6 sider review by Mark Richards) returns to Danny at €m adult and centers on his retura home to rural Nort Carolina witha gay lover. ses in Winter Birds: organizing the narrative around a central holiday with multiple flashbacks to amplify plot and character. But, whereas Winter Birds revolves around one ironically horriying Thanksgiving, Comfort & joy, as the title's allusion to the carol “God Rest Ye, Mery Gentlemen” suggests, focuses on the gay couple's Christmas visits to Dan's family in rural North Carolina and to Ford's in Savannah, Often through a dexterous use of past Christmases that adds continuity to the disrupted chronology, Grimsley intersperses this time-present of the novel with generous and unobtru- sive insets that subtly establish the ‘evolution of Dan and Ford's rela- tionship as well as Ford's vexed fractions with his unaccepting parents. And yet Grimsley does not retum to all the techniques of his she meet some unanticipated fate? first novel, opting to forego the Grimsley not only addresses these second-person narrative voice of {questions in regards to Dan and Winter Birds as well asthe consistent Ford with appreciated suspense but present tense and at times cloying also with results that are not always. lyricism of Dream Boy. While he has comforting; he also adds complex’- been lauded for these earlier inno- ty to these familial relationships bs vative choices, they nevertheless overlaying them with clas issues run the risk of distracting or putting and thus continuing a minor but, off readers, and the return to more persistent concern in gay and les- traditional narrative techniques, in _bian fiction. Since the writing of part, allows the characters of Com- foundational texts of modern sa-= Tort & joy to gain readers! invest- sex desire, such as Walt Whitman s iments far more effortessy Calamus poems, E. M. Forster's Itis no surprise that family looms Maurice, and Radclytfe Hal's T>= so large in Comfort & Joy. Indeed, Well of Loneliness, gay and lesa~ the tension between the transgres- authors have been fascinated o> sive individual and his or her family the additional pressures that cass has long been a staple in gay and _ differences and expectations pace lesbian iterary production. Will the on sexuality. Grimsley, in tur are child be accepted or rejected, these grounds these pressures with == texts repeatedly ask, or will he or juxtaposition of Dan's lower-c.2s5 114 | NORTH CAROLINA LITERARY REVIEW remarkable stylistic device of this first novel was Grimsley’s con- use of second person; the effect was one of horrifying immediacy “st readers - an effect perhaps echoed in the incessant use of pres- or+ “ere in Dream Boy. Grimsley explained this rhetorical choice in pro- ‘nal material as “an older Danny looking back at himself and cng to himself as an eight year old, telling himself his own story” ‘> Ifthe River Man as a surrogate father and hoped-for lover/sav- = for young Danny suggests one kind of male doubling in Grimsley’s ‘Scuin - the good/bad father/lover — then this image of a narrator speak “oma sale temporal distance to a figure of himself as a boy offers, net kind of male doubling, one Grimsley specifically imagines as sitic. Speaking of the voice of the older Danny “hovering” at the tiger of the younger Danny like an angel, Grimsley writes, “The .ce became like a guardian, a promise Danny would survive. Like an ‘coking down at him, from the sky, while he looks up” (Tiue 7) \sace Grimsley acknowledges the autobiographical basis of the novel, sense is not only that an older self would simultaneously narrate nd thus protect a younger self, but that the contemporary writer would us return to, recover, and reclaim his own childhood, a fantasy also Samed out in Allison's writing. If Southern literature is often haunted SY the presence of the past, Grimsley wants to imagine the possibility of

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