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osprey_archer) wrote2022-05-03 09:23 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2022-05-03 09:23 pm
Book Review: The Mourning After
John Ibson’s The Mourning After: Loss and Longing among Midcentury American Men is not the book that I expected it to be and also not great at being the book that it actually is.
I expected it to be a book about the abrupt shift in the understanding of masculinity and male intimacy in America following World War II. During the war, servicemen were encouraged to form powerful bonds with their fellow soldiers. The armed forces actually distributed a pamphlet called “My Buddy Book,” in which you were encouraged to record your buddy’s name, home address, height, weight, hair and eye color, favorite sports, hobbies, etc. (I am absolutely using this in a novel if I get a chance.) After the war, society basically decided that this whole “buddy” thing was very gay, which left a lot of soldiers unable to share or even internally acknowledge their profound grief over the loss of their buddies, because having such deep emotions about another man was suddenly suspect.
And it is about that… kind of… around the edges. But of his five chapters, Ibson devotes two to John Horne Burns (gay novelist, mostly forgotten today, perhaps because his treatment of homosexuality in his books ranges from ambivalent to hostile) and one to Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar. (I really ought to read Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar at some point, but in the one thing I read by him, a book introduction, he came across as completely insufferable, like a gay Clifton Fadiman.)
Then Ibson focuses his coda on John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, ending his discussion of that novel (and his book!) with the comment, “He places his characters in the closet, joined them in there, and shut the door.”
Wow! Wow! Look, I enjoy the queer reading of A Separate Peace as much as the next person, but it’s eminently possible to read it as a story of an intense and troubled friendship. Sometimes people write about friendship because friendship is what they want to write about! Sometimes an intense friendship is, in fact, a friendship, and the participants aren’t banging and don’t want to bang!
I felt that in his heart Ibson was only interested in buddies who were actually lovers, and the book would have been stronger if he had admitted that and tightened his focus ever so slightly. (Most of his material is about that anyway, so it wouldn’t require THAT much work.) Or, perhaps, if he had admitted outright, “I think American culture was wrong to judge these men harshly for it, but you know what, I agree with the postwar cultural assumption all intense emotional attachments between men MUST be sexual! The US Army in World War II was the Theban Band! How do you like them apples?”
He never does say this outright, but the implicit belief animates many of his analyses - like his reading of A Separate Peace. The book only makes sense to him if you read Gene and Phineas’s relationship as a romance.
And to add insult to injury, he has this horrible tendency to write pages and pages of minutia. For instance, he quotes from every single contemporary review of almost every book that he discusses. It would probably be possible to do this in a way that is both interesting and instructive, but here it's just an endless list with a light sprinkling of shallow analysis.
There is some interesting stuff in here: I enjoyed the chapter about photos of men, which notes the persistence of affectionate buddy photos through World War II, and their total disappearance just a few years later during the Korean War. But I came here for the buddies and it turns out that Ibson is not, in fact, interested in buddies at all.
I expected it to be a book about the abrupt shift in the understanding of masculinity and male intimacy in America following World War II. During the war, servicemen were encouraged to form powerful bonds with their fellow soldiers. The armed forces actually distributed a pamphlet called “My Buddy Book,” in which you were encouraged to record your buddy’s name, home address, height, weight, hair and eye color, favorite sports, hobbies, etc. (I am absolutely using this in a novel if I get a chance.) After the war, society basically decided that this whole “buddy” thing was very gay, which left a lot of soldiers unable to share or even internally acknowledge their profound grief over the loss of their buddies, because having such deep emotions about another man was suddenly suspect.
And it is about that… kind of… around the edges. But of his five chapters, Ibson devotes two to John Horne Burns (gay novelist, mostly forgotten today, perhaps because his treatment of homosexuality in his books ranges from ambivalent to hostile) and one to Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar. (I really ought to read Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar at some point, but in the one thing I read by him, a book introduction, he came across as completely insufferable, like a gay Clifton Fadiman.)
Then Ibson focuses his coda on John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, ending his discussion of that novel (and his book!) with the comment, “He places his characters in the closet, joined them in there, and shut the door.”
Wow! Wow! Look, I enjoy the queer reading of A Separate Peace as much as the next person, but it’s eminently possible to read it as a story of an intense and troubled friendship. Sometimes people write about friendship because friendship is what they want to write about! Sometimes an intense friendship is, in fact, a friendship, and the participants aren’t banging and don’t want to bang!
I felt that in his heart Ibson was only interested in buddies who were actually lovers, and the book would have been stronger if he had admitted that and tightened his focus ever so slightly. (Most of his material is about that anyway, so it wouldn’t require THAT much work.) Or, perhaps, if he had admitted outright, “I think American culture was wrong to judge these men harshly for it, but you know what, I agree with the postwar cultural assumption all intense emotional attachments between men MUST be sexual! The US Army in World War II was the Theban Band! How do you like them apples?”
He never does say this outright, but the implicit belief animates many of his analyses - like his reading of A Separate Peace. The book only makes sense to him if you read Gene and Phineas’s relationship as a romance.
And to add insult to injury, he has this horrible tendency to write pages and pages of minutia. For instance, he quotes from every single contemporary review of almost every book that he discusses. It would probably be possible to do this in a way that is both interesting and instructive, but here it's just an endless list with a light sprinkling of shallow analysis.
There is some interesting stuff in here: I enjoyed the chapter about photos of men, which notes the persistence of affectionate buddy photos through World War II, and their total disappearance just a few years later during the Korean War. But I came here for the buddies and it turns out that Ibson is not, in fact, interested in buddies at all.
no subject
I agree. Society right now is not great about the depth and validity of non-sexual friendships! It is a thing that bugs me very much.
Is the disappearance of buddy photos from the Korean War as closely tied in time to the mid-century lavender scare as it sounds to me?
no subject
Ibson actually has one buddy photo from the Korean War, and it basically encapsulates the tragedy of male relationships of the whole era. The World War II photos are full of easy affection, while the Korean War photo features two guys awkwardly shaking hands like they a couple of rival magnates who just sealed a business deal. But they liked each other a lot to get the photo in the first place, given that by that time it was no longer common or encouraged.
no subject
Good for them! No matter how awkward. Maybe there are some decent civilian candids at barbecues or whatever.
no subject
no subject
This book's ratio of intriguing data to decent analysis really sounds obnoxious.
no subject