When Alan Hollinghurst published his scandalizing début, “The Swimming-Pool Library,” in 1988, the lives of gay men were hardly virgin territory for the English novel. Some years earlier, as a graduate student at Oxford, Hollinghurst had written a master’s thesis on “the creative uses of homosexuality” in three of his more guarded forebears—E. M. Forster, Ronald Firbank, and L. P. Hartley—though there the emphasis, naturally enough, fell on “the stimulating effects of constraint.” “The Swimming-Pool Library,” by contrast, was a work of revolutionary candor that laid bare, in exquisite prose, the cut and thrust of queer existence in early-eighties London. Its attitude toward the euphemistic delicacy of a previous era is nicely encapsulated in a moment from a novel that Hollinghurst came out with three decades later, “The Sparsholt Affair,” when a character spots on an acquaintance’s wall “a red chalk drawing of a naked man, with a body-builder’s chest and ridged stomach, artily cut off at the knee and the neck, and with a highminded blur where the cock and balls should be.” A high-minded blur will never do for Hollinghurst, the great depixelator of carnal truths.
Denne historien er fra September 30, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra September 30, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
FAMILY STYLE
\"La Maison,\" on Apple TV+.
CLOSE QUARTERS
Jen Silverman's \"The Roommate\" and Celine Song's \"Family.\"
IMMATERIAL GIRL
Sophie is gone. Her music lives on.
MERELY PLAYERS
Race, politics, and the theatre collide in Alan Hollinghurst's
MOVE TO TRASH
Is it time for a new Constitution?
RHYTHM COLLECTOR
Eblis Álvarez's Meridian Brothers unites the many strands of Latin music.
Ambrose
Lily wants to live in the old days. Her mom, Debra, says, No, you don’t, because in the old days all women did was cook and sew and die in childbirth, but Lily still wishes she could travel back in time.
THE ESCAPE ARTIST
The Italian priest who helps women in the Mafia flee the criminal underworld.
UNCOMMITTED
Among the Gaza protest voters in Michigan.
SENSORY OVERLOAD
A wild Danish restaurant combines avant-garde dining with immersive theatre.