Articles
Jim Gladstone: author of The Big Book of Misunderstanding
originally appeared in QSF magazine, May 2002
by David Ortmann
Jim Gladstone, a Philadelphia native currently living in Paris, France, has launched his debut novel, THE BIG BOOK OF MISUNDERSTANDING to critical and commercial acclaim. Gladstone's views on the nature of family and sexuality challenge our pre-conceived views of the coming out process, family dynamics, and the nature of male relationships.
Gladstone has written for The New York Times Book Review, Billboard,
the Lambda Book Report and many other publications. He has much to say
about the ghettoized state of gay literature in America today and the recent generational shifts concerning gay identity development and how we comprise our identities and form relationships.
In THE BIG BOOK OF MISUNDERSTANDING, Gladstone weaves his hilarious, tender, and challenging examination into the nature of sexuality, love, and family with black comedy, refreshing candor, crow-phobia, satanic night-lights, turtles in makeup, Carly Simon, and Buddhist snacks.
QSF
Tell us about your coming out process, both as a gay man and as a writer.
JG
Wow. The second part of your question is actually quite fascinating, something I've never quite considered in this framework before. I do think that "coming out" as a writer is a very real process. When you come out as gay, which I did at age 19, I think the most difficult part of it is really accepting yourself, your own inner feelings, and coming to be at peace with the workings of your mind and heart. Sure the social stigmas and fear of rejection by others are there to a certain extent, but the most critical thing is being intimately comfortable with oneself. To be a good writer, you need to go through a very similar process; you have to get intensely in touch with your own thoughts and feelings and not be afraid to put them down on paper, and put them out in public.
The best fiction has the ring of truth, and writers have got to be rather fearless in mining their own experiences and observations of the world to tell that truth. Even when you're writing fiction, readers can tell if you're being honest and true to yourself.that's not to say you're just tweaking the events of your own life into stories, but it means that the emotions and feelings you express through your work have a palpable reality in your mind, and hopefully in the reader's. At the end of the day, for every writer, every gay person, and every person in general, you've got to be able to sit down, all alone, and feel that you are telling the truth to the world.
QSF
What drives or inspires you to tell these stories?
JG
I crave stories. I love to hear them, and I love to tell them. It's how I make sense of life. Within weeks of my book's publication, I had a new baby nephew, and my very closest aunt died, at a very young age. Now, in reality, life is chaotic and random and there's no relationship between the joyous event and the agonizing one, but in my head, and in the rest of my family's minds, I'm sure we connected these things, that we told ourselves a story about balance. I think the ability to make a story, to set grief and happiness against each other, is really valuable. Symbolism and the very notion of "meaning" are fictional constructs, and storytelling lets us give a shape to our days. I think I probably have a more acute awareness of my own storytelling process than most of my friends and family, which is why I write. I hang onto details I see and feelings I experience for years and years and, eventually, I find ways in which they rhyme with each other, or contradict each other, or form patterns. When I write, I'm more focused on enhancing the rhymes and patterns than in actually putting down anything that really happened. To me, the perceived patterns are the most real element of life.
QSF
Do you feel coming out stories have run their course? What is their place in today's gay culture?
JG
Gay kids today are in a very different cultural environment than those of Edmund White's and Andrew Tobias' adolescence, and while the classic coming out stories are terrific for giving today's youth a historical context, they're probably not the first place to turn for stories that are relevant to their lives now. There's a generational rift in gay culture and in gay literature. I think today's gay kids need to be pointed toward works that are more contemporary when first coming out.
I love Francesca Lia Block's "Weetzie Bat" series, which is collected in an omnibus volume called Dangerous Angels. Its got a wonderful duo of gay kids called Duck and Dirk who deal with their burgeoning sexuality amidst a whole lot of other teen characters and teen issues. It's vibrant, upbeat, and well written literature, and I love that its never been particularly marketed as a gay book. It's out there for all kids, and adults!
In the last generation of "coming out stories" homosexuality was seen as a primary issue, above all others, for the protagonists. Now that the historical context has changed, I think young people - and older people who want to learn about young people's feelings - need literature in which gayness is not taken for granted, but not treated as the only, or the paramount, issue in gay kids' lives. Alex Sanchez's Rainbow Boys has been a gay best seller for months, and it's not only being bought by youth. It's finding an audience in folks who have been waiting an awfully long time to see the reality of their gay youth reflected in literature. In THE BIG BOOK OF MISUNDERSTANDING, I wanted to present a gay kid whose problems in life don't primarily stem from his being gay, but from family relationships and other psychological issues. There's been a terrible tendency, in literature, and in life, to associate all the struggles in gay peoples' lives with their being gay.
QSF
Why are there so few positive portrayals of the relationships between gay men and their fathers or brothers in our literature?
JG
Stereotypical attitudes in American culture trickle down into gay culture, and so straight men and gay men are perceived, and presented, as inherently antagonistic. The results are books in which obnoxious fathers kick their gay sons out of the house, where gay brothers and straight brothers are estranged. But I don't think this reflects today's reality all the time, if it ever did. We have a lot of trouble letting go of stereotypes. In THE BIG BOOK OF MISUNDERSTANDING, I wanted to show that a family's sense of connectedness can often overcome everything else. By the end of the book, I think readers will see that, for better and for worse, the gay brother, the straight brother, and their father are very much the same at their moral and emotional cores.
QSF
What is the difference in the notion of "gay books" in the United States versus Western Europe?
JG
While there are some gay-specific bookstores in large European cities, I really like the fact that most general bookstores don't have special "Gay and Lesbian Literature" sections where they ghettoize books with GLBT characters. Books with gay and lesbian characters are treated the same as all other literature and given a chance to succeed or fail based on literary merit. Also, it's not assumed that straight people are uninterested in reading about gay people.
QSF
You've followed in some very fine footsteps as a writer living in Paris. What draws you to Paris and what is it like for you, leading a creative life there?
JG
Well, actually, I'm the love child of Ernest Hemingway and David Sedaris.
No, seriously, I moved to Paris last year because my partner was offered a job transfer and we decided to go for it. The thing I like best about being a writer over there is that when I tell people what I do, they're genuinely interested in writing and literature. I refer here to people in general, not just other artists and writers. In the United States, folks tend to ask what you do for a "real" job, or to probe as to whether you're "famous" so that they can tell people they met you. In Paris, partly because of the socialist support for the arts, being a writer despite the fact that it doesn't pay much is treated as an entirely reasonable choice for a person; whereas in the America I hear, "You know, you could make a ton of money if you applied your talents to some other kind of work."
QSF
What writers are your creative inspirations and/or heroes?
JG
I'm a real fan of William Wharton, a pseudonymous author who wrote Birdy and Dad. He finds rich and marvelous moments in mundane life; in fact, his writing suggests that daily life isn't mundane, that it's a complex and emotionally stirring world to be explored, you just have to tune in, and know where to look for the magic. I've read all of Michael Chabon, but The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is leagues beyond his earlier work. I adore it. I love that one of the main characters in this Pulitzer Prize-winning book is gay, but what makes the book such a bellwether for me is that there is a very clear feeling that the author truly loves all his characters, that they are real people to him, that nobody has been created to serve as a mechanical plot device.
Lately, I've been revisiting the work of Jonathan Carroll, an American expatriate who lives in Vienna, who has a wonderful way of combining very realistic people with oddly fantastic circumstances. My favorite piece of his is After Silence and currently I'm reading his new one, The Wooden Sea.
QSF
Tell us about your future plans.
JG
I'm in the midst of a new novel called Imaginary Friends, which I'm hoping to have done by the end of this year, and a short story collection as well. I've got two more very specific novels on my mental stack after that!
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For additional information of Jim Gladstone and THE BIG BOOK OF MISUNDERSTANDING, which has been chosen as the "Editor's Featured Selection" for February at InsightOutBooks (www.insightoutbooks.com), visit his website at www.gogladstone.com