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any prospect of happiness is bequeathed to two young,
sturdy and heterosexual youths glimpsed raising the
sails of a boat by the ailing lovers.
Stating that his priority as a writer is to “hold the mirror
up to nature”, Tóibín has compared himself with the
artist Vermeer. But far from being a faithful chronicler,
Tóibín is a gloom-monger. Belying the novel’s message,
most gay men do not die of AIDS and these days the
claim of a critic like Joseph Epstein, made as recently
as 1970, that gay lives are “part of the pain of the earth”
is absurd. The distinguished Cambridge novelist E.M.
Forster was determined that his novel Maurice should
end on a note of affirmation.
In a recent review, Tóibín wrote: “There is something
heroic about Forster´s refusal in Maurice to insist that
BUY Colm Tóibín books online from and
Scudder does not get arrested, or hang himself, or go to
Buenos Aires”; but adds that he finds the ending unsatisfactory,
admitting that he feels compelled to represent
gay lives as tragic. Here Tóibín has bedfellows as
distinguished as Gore Vidal and James Baldwin who in
The City And The Pillar (1948) and Giovanni’s Room
(1956) produced novels of gay self-loathing which
end in murder and self-destruction; but both writers
produced these works pre-Stonewall. Tóibín – who has
erupted onto the literary scene at a more enlightened
moment – has fewer excuses to peddle such misery.
So any chance of this latter-day Jeremiah trading in his
gloom? Not if an interview he gave to LIT is anything
to go by: “You want loss and longing? You’ll get loss
and longing. I’ve only just started”. �
524
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