300
STEPHEN DONADIO
convinced that his surprising switch to homosexuality is the likely
begiD–
ning of a humanizing process, much less a plausible although forbiddea
cure for larger social ills. In "The Queen Is Dead" (full of
JOOa
Rechy, down to the coy "he( she)" play with pronouns), the premises
lie
inescapable: Georgette, the only sympathetic character, is maimed
and
brutalized by vicious stud society.
In this nightmarish world of fatal gang-bangs and stomp-kiIlin8ft
heterosexual relations seem synonymous with violence, frustration,
and
deceit, while holding hands and listening to "the Bird blowing love" are
pleasures reserved for a sky-high aristocracy, the carriers of "class"
and
aspiring affection. Mr. Selby's moral insight into Brooklyn. extends
110
further than his veiled insistence on the certainly debatable suggesti(JI
that to be human is to be homosexual.
Last Exit to Brooklyn
reads
Iike
the dark side of
True Confessions:
"I love
him
Mother. I love
him
and
want him." In our recent second-rate fiction, The Good Fairy has become
quite as much a commonplace as The Good Prostitute once was.
A good deal of James Purdy's
Cabot Wright Begins
is also set
in
Brooklyn, though from Columbia Heights the view is slightly different
Unlike Mr. Selby, Mr. Purdy, in the past, has shown himself to
be
a
writer of some competence, and for that reason his performance here
seems somewhat inappropriate, unless his only purpose is to try one's
patience. The story is the story of a story, that of Cabot Wright, a wealthy
but confused Yale graduate who, employed vaguely in WaIl.Street, found
he "raped easily and well." In Chicago, a "semi-retired miniature-painter"
rapidly approaching menopause is transfixed by the newspaper accounts
of Cabot's exploits; convincing herself that her husband, Bernie Glad1!art
(used car salesman), has " 'a great book inside of him,'" Carrie
Moore
packs him off to Brooklyn to "do" Cabot Wright. This gives the authar
room to flex his exercised urbanity and sport a stylish contempt for
the
current literary scene and the United States in general. In Bernie's
absence, Carrie, panicked at the thought of drying up, takes up with
Joel Ullay, a Negro, "rather light-skinned in strong light," who
"s0me–
how looked beautifully dark and interestingly menacing in subdued
il·
lumination." "A mole near his satin mouth," the author shamelessly con·
tinues, "increased his appeal. ..."
The plot is an elaborate receptacle for what occasionally seems a
near-maniacal inanity; the self-indulgence thickens. Bernie's manuscript,
now out of his hands and rewritten,
is
finally rejected by "the Goethe
of publishers,"
AI
Gugglehaupt, who fires the editor who has accepted
it and tips him off that the book is unmarketable because "It's the
age
of the black faggot and fellatio, that's what." Like everything the author
touches,
this is
supposed to
be
uproariously funny;
in
fact, its effect
it
