Book Review: Two College Friends
May. 22nd, 2021 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerIn Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality, Jonathan Ned Katz mentions Frederic W. Loring’s 1871 opus Two College Friends, which of course I had to track down. This book is an absolute delight, although it must be understood that delight is not an assessment of its literary quality (middling) but simply a reaction to the fact that this appears to be Loring’s published self-insert fic.
Specifically, Loring casts himself as Ned, an orphaned Harvard student with no one in the world to love except his friend Tom - who seems to be based on Loring’s friend William Chamberlin, to whom the book is dedicated.
Tom is gorgeous. The book kicks off with an interplay about a photo, which Ned thinks is some beautiful girl whom Tom has fallen in love with, BUT IN FACT is a photo of Tom in his recent theatrical role as shepherd girl. Tom has been carrying it around because he means to give it to Ned as a present. (“What a mistake nature made about your sex, Tom!” a professor friend comments, when he sees what a “dear little peasant girl” Tom makes. It should be noted that it’s not uncommon for nineteenth-century commentators to say that so-and-so is as pretty as a girl, or would make a pretty girl, and it doesn’t seem to have the negative connotations that it would have in the twentieth century.) In fact, he’s so good-looking that Stonewall Jackson himself comments on it when the two boys are captured.
(I have seen a picture of William Chamberlin and I must say I don’t see it, but maybe the photo just didn’t do him any favors.)
Almost as soon as the photo interplay is finished, the Civil War kicks off and the boys join up. (Loring and Chamberlin were too young to fight, but of course you want to give your self-insert expies the most dramatic possible milieu.) Next occurs possibly my favorite part of the book, when they quarrel just a few days before a battle, and stop speaking to each other, until Tom shoots a man who is just about to shoot Ned:
Then Ned gets sick, and Tom gives up his leave to nurse Ned back to health. “It makes me want to die for him,” Ned muses fervently. “Nothing else that I can do seems sufficient. When this war is over, I suppose Tom will marry and forget me. I never will go near his wife—I shall hate her. Now, that is a very silly thing for a lieutenant-colonel to write. I don’t care, it is true.”
Fortunately for Ned, he soon gets his chance! Right after Ned recovers, he and Tom are taken captive by Stonewall Jackson… just as Tom begins to show symptoms of the self-same disease from which he nursed Ned! Obviously Tom will not survive captivity, so although Ned has given Stonewall Jackson his parole that he won’t escape (this book is also REALLY into Stonewall Jackson), he manages to sneak the ailing Tom back to Union lines.
By this time Tom is delirious with fever and unconscious. “O my darling, my darling, my darling! please hear me,” Ned begs him. “If you knew how I love you, how I have loved you in all my jealous, morbid moods, in all my exacting selfishness,—O Tom! my darling, my darling! can’t you say one word, one little word before we part…?”
But Tom, lost in his fevered sleep, can’t speak. Ned “once more kissed the flushed face of his friend,” and then goes back to Stonewall Jackson’s camp to pay the penalty for breaking his parole, which is of course death by firing squad, because of COURSE if you are a nineteenth-century man writing a self-insert fic, your own self-insert has to die the most dramatic possible death - a death that he could have avoided had he not such punctilious notions of HONOR.
Stonewall Jackson is deeply impressed by Ned’s return, just in case you were wondering, and really sorry that he has to have him shot. But, as Ned says, “having sinned, I accepted the penalty.”
Ostensibly, Ned’s sin is breaking parole. Katz suggests that there may also be an unconscious atonement here for the sin of loving Tom maybe a little too much. This is definitely a subtext that jumps out to the modern reader, but it’s hard to say if that’s not an anachronistic reading. Certainly we are meant to think, with Stonewall Jackson, that Ned’s death is the tragic waste of a noble young life, and to consider it a just and fitting tribute when, post-war, Tom and his wife Nettie name their firstborn after Ned.
Specifically, Loring casts himself as Ned, an orphaned Harvard student with no one in the world to love except his friend Tom - who seems to be based on Loring’s friend William Chamberlin, to whom the book is dedicated.
Tom is gorgeous. The book kicks off with an interplay about a photo, which Ned thinks is some beautiful girl whom Tom has fallen in love with, BUT IN FACT is a photo of Tom in his recent theatrical role as shepherd girl. Tom has been carrying it around because he means to give it to Ned as a present. (“What a mistake nature made about your sex, Tom!” a professor friend comments, when he sees what a “dear little peasant girl” Tom makes. It should be noted that it’s not uncommon for nineteenth-century commentators to say that so-and-so is as pretty as a girl, or would make a pretty girl, and it doesn’t seem to have the negative connotations that it would have in the twentieth century.) In fact, he’s so good-looking that Stonewall Jackson himself comments on it when the two boys are captured.
(I have seen a picture of William Chamberlin and I must say I don’t see it, but maybe the photo just didn’t do him any favors.)
Almost as soon as the photo interplay is finished, the Civil War kicks off and the boys join up. (Loring and Chamberlin were too young to fight, but of course you want to give your self-insert expies the most dramatic possible milieu.) Next occurs possibly my favorite part of the book, when they quarrel just a few days before a battle, and stop speaking to each other, until Tom shoots a man who is just about to shoot Ned:
“Tom,” said I, with some feeling, “you have saved my life.”
“There!” said he, triumphantly, “you spoke first.”
Then Ned gets sick, and Tom gives up his leave to nurse Ned back to health. “It makes me want to die for him,” Ned muses fervently. “Nothing else that I can do seems sufficient. When this war is over, I suppose Tom will marry and forget me. I never will go near his wife—I shall hate her. Now, that is a very silly thing for a lieutenant-colonel to write. I don’t care, it is true.”
Fortunately for Ned, he soon gets his chance! Right after Ned recovers, he and Tom are taken captive by Stonewall Jackson… just as Tom begins to show symptoms of the self-same disease from which he nursed Ned! Obviously Tom will not survive captivity, so although Ned has given Stonewall Jackson his parole that he won’t escape (this book is also REALLY into Stonewall Jackson), he manages to sneak the ailing Tom back to Union lines.
By this time Tom is delirious with fever and unconscious. “O my darling, my darling, my darling! please hear me,” Ned begs him. “If you knew how I love you, how I have loved you in all my jealous, morbid moods, in all my exacting selfishness,—O Tom! my darling, my darling! can’t you say one word, one little word before we part…?”
But Tom, lost in his fevered sleep, can’t speak. Ned “once more kissed the flushed face of his friend,” and then goes back to Stonewall Jackson’s camp to pay the penalty for breaking his parole, which is of course death by firing squad, because of COURSE if you are a nineteenth-century man writing a self-insert fic, your own self-insert has to die the most dramatic possible death - a death that he could have avoided had he not such punctilious notions of HONOR.
Stonewall Jackson is deeply impressed by Ned’s return, just in case you were wondering, and really sorry that he has to have him shot. But, as Ned says, “having sinned, I accepted the penalty.”
Ostensibly, Ned’s sin is breaking parole. Katz suggests that there may also be an unconscious atonement here for the sin of loving Tom maybe a little too much. This is definitely a subtext that jumps out to the modern reader, but it’s hard to say if that’s not an anachronistic reading. Certainly we are meant to think, with Stonewall Jackson, that Ned’s death is the tragic waste of a noble young life, and to consider it a just and fitting tribute when, post-war, Tom and his wife Nettie name their firstborn after Ned.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-22 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-22 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-22 05:04 pm (UTC)(I love your posts like these, because chances are I would never get around to reading the originals but I now [a] know they exist and [b] get to vicariously delight in your delight over them.)
no subject
Date: 2021-05-22 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-22 08:29 pm (UTC)I will now have "Andrew in Drag" in my head for the rest of the day.
In fact, he’s so good-looking that Stonewall Jackson himself comments on it when the two boys are captured.
That's beautiful.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-22 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-22 09:32 pm (UTC)(Scott wasn't actually in the show, it was a PR photo, but he was exceedingly pleased with the clipping and carefully saved it in his scrapbooks.)
no subject
Date: 2021-05-22 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 01:46 am (UTC)How did William Chamberlin feel about all this?
no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 12:35 pm (UTC)In the book, Ned (Loring's self-insert) is certain his feelings are stronger than Tom's (Chamberlin's), and it's tempting to read that into their real-life relationship. But Chamberlin could have loved him a LOT and still not felt quite as strongly as Loring, given that Loring's feelings were so intense he wrote a whole entire book about it.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-24 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 07:45 pm (UTC)On a semi-related note, I came across an article or blog post or something (wish I could remember it so I could provide a link) that posited our modern (AKA: 20th century) concept of masculinity was actually just the result of two generations' worth of men suffering from mass, untreated PTSD due to the two World Wars. It strikes me as at least a little bit plausible, considering how Not Concerned 19th century dudes (and Western society in general) seemed to be with telling your same-sex friends you loved them or thought they were attractive--WHICH WAS MAYBE IN A GAY WAY, BUT CERTAINLY WASN'T ALWAYS.
So yeah, loving these posts, even if I'm mostly just lurking. <3
no subject
Date: 2021-05-24 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-24 02:14 pm (UTC)I do wish I could remember/find that link, if only because I can't quite remember if the author was like, "IT WAS DEFINITELY THE WARS' FAULT," or, yeah, if it was a more reasonable, "This probably fed into and exacerbated things that were already not great."
no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 11:37 pm (UTC)... I am sore tempted to make an Untamed icon just to use for this reply, but--no.
Here, have a Faint Smile, from the emotionally bottled up of the two MCs
no subject
Date: 2021-05-24 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-24 11:14 am (UTC)Me: It's all right. We will do other things besides watch THE UNTAMED. I PROMISE.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-24 11:22 am (UTC)There's not going to be a magical V-V day (Victory over the Virus) that marks an ending point for the pandemic, so at some point I'm just going to need to bite the bullet and schedule the trip. It just feels a little daunting to go on a trip after staying in one place for so long.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-24 11:36 am (UTC)