The Line of Beauty

A few nights ago, I finished The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, the 2004 winner of the Booker Prize. I'm still thinking about it. The book is beautifully written, and I admired that, just as I admired the construction of the narrative. Throughout, we see the protagonist, Nick, growing slightly older, and drifting further and further into a world of deception and inevitable disaster - and the narrative takes us along in the same tone, where Nick sees and yet doesn't see: somehow, suspended in a dreamworld he never imagined inhabiting, nothing bad is really going to happen to him. And yet, of course, it does.

I admired the writing, but I found precious little to like in the portraits the author paints, or the situations the characters inhabit. One tries to like Nick, and there is a lot about him that is good, especially his love and depth of understanding for art and beauty -- which he recognizes, to his sorrow, are not shared by the people around him who have the power to acquire whatever they want, and for whom art is a symbol of wealth, power, and a means of exchange.

An interview with Peter Rose of The Australian Book Review talks about the intersections between the world of this book and the author's own life, something any reader of this novel will be curious about. Hollinghurst did go to Oxford; he is gay; and says as a young man he was indeed something like Nick, the young protagonist of the book. But the author says he's never even been inside one of the Kensington mansions he describes so vividly in his book. His goal was to write a book about the times - the 1980s - both in terms of the political atmosphere of Thatcher's Britain, and what was happening in the lives of homosexuals as AIDS first became known as a threat, and then as gay men first began dying of it.

"It's a book about decadence. It's about the lure of the aesthetic life, but also its dangers. Nick lives in a world of his own sexual preoccupations. I hope the reader is aware of the terrible things happening outside the scope of the novel."

Another interview, in the Guardian, took place the day after Hollinghurst won the Booker, and has more details about his career and the uncomfortable label of "gay writer" that has been attached to his name.

As I read the book, and now, reading these interviews, I'm disturbed by some stereotyping. For one thing, Hollinghurst is labeled and pigeon-holed, as is the book itself, into some category of "gay fiction" which demeans it just as much as books that are labeled as "women's fiction" or "black fiction". The book is an important portrait of at least three major aspects of the 1980s: the AIDS crisis, the political world during Thatcher's time as PM, and the rise of extreme wealth, decadence, and self-centeredness which marked the 1980s and are still with us today. But because I have been writing so much myself about the issues of gay rights and have seen so clearly what opponents use as their weapons, I know that the book's portrayals of insensitive, irresponsible promiscuity and drug use, while perhaps accurate for their time, add fuel to the arguments of those who want to condemn homosexuality and homosexuals in general. Furthermore, Nick's lover Wani - perhaps the most decadent character in the book - is the son of a Lebanese father who fled Beirut and moved to London, became fabulously wealthy, and received an honorary title of "Lord" - yet the son (another Oxford graduate) spends incredible sums of money, indulges in the riskiest kinds of sex, keeps a "pretend" girlfriend, and consumes enormous quantities of cocaine. It may reflect a significant aspects of British culture in the 1980s, but if that isn't a stereotype - and an unhelpful one for these times - I don't know what is. In order to win such a prestigious prize, shouldn't the author be able to deal with these subjects with more nuance? Or is that, perhaps, his point - that in 1980s London (or even now?) there was no nuance: this is how these particular "types" of people were perceived, and that is what he wants to show us?

Although the critics seem to have focused on the themes of gay sex and the decadence and corruption of the wealthy, what I found most interesting and moving about the book was, in fact, the subtext alluded to in the title: a sensitive person's response to art, and the question of whether art can, in fact, save us. The very best passage in the book, for me, takes place during a concert in the Kensington house where Nick lives - the home of a wealthy MP and his family; Nick was secretly in love with the straight son of this family when he was at Oxford. The concert is being put on by the MP as a way to impress guests, and the musician is a young female Russian pianist who he "discovered". We hear everyone's reaction - their boredom, their ignorance of the music, their false reasons for promoting it and attending it, and it is a painfully accurate description - as I learned during my own days on the board of a fine arts organization - of how many wealthy people use art to further their own ends. But at the same time, we also hear Nick's running commentary on the woman's playing of the particular pieces - and it shows us his knowledge, his love, his compassion for the challenges faced by the musician, and his own emotional response and understanding of that, too. In this music, Nick finds what he seems to have been looking for in sex and in drugs and in rubbing up against wealth.

So I had high hopes, for a few more pages. But Nick can't hold onto it, and his world slowly unravels -- and that, perhaps, is an accurate portrait of our times too, and not a stereotype at all.

Comments

[Jean]

Beth, I love your review of a novel that I too found very fine, and share your particular concern with all the issues you pinpoint here.

All Alan Hollinghurst's novels (if I'm remembering correctly) are deeply and unflinchingly anchored in themes of gay sexuality and sensibility, whilst dealing with gut-level human experience so sensitively and shockingly that their relevance and appeal goes far beyond any one community.

His portrayals of the Thatcherite 80s and of British politicians ring very true to me, and I have long experience of both, although the 80s is a long time ago now, and my politician friends were Labour not Tory (less difference than one would hope!).

"Or is that, perhaps, his point - that in 1980s London (or even now?) there was no nuance": yes, I think this is spot on.

As for the pigeonholing and/or stereotyping as a gay writer: yes, of course you're right. I think he's particularly threatening to the literary establishment because he combines a no-holds-barred depiction of behaviour and lifestyles some find shocking with a talent and sensitivity that are impossible to ignore or diminish.

Alan Hollinghurst is a wonderful writer and anyone who hasn't will, I think, find it worthwhile to explore his work.

[blork]

I agree with Jean. Mordecai Richler used to say that his goal as a novelist was to be "an honest witness" to his times, and it sounds like Hollinghurst has similar aims. Although in his case that could help fuel homophobia in our current times, I don't think that should change anything. If he wants to be an honest witness, he needs to be an honest witness. Full stop.

I suspect Hollinghurst was taking a long and wide view, hoping that the book would have a life beyond the decade of its publication. Could you imagine if Orwell or Dostoyevsky had tempered their writing so as not to inflame the bigots of their time -- what would we be left with?

On another note, it must be frustrating for him (and others like him) to be pigeonholed like that. I see this all the time in bookstores and libraries.

The one that strikes home for me is the pigeonholing of Canadian writers. "Why does this store have nothing by Anne-Marie Macdonald?" Because it's stuck in the back, under "Canadian Literature," next to Margaret Atwood and the others. The assumption seems to be that if I want to read "literature" I must only want to read foreigners. But if I want to be provincial/parochial/patriotic, I'll read "Canadian" literature. Grrrr!

[beth]

Thanks, Jean - I was hoping, actually, that you'd read the book and would comment on it from a British perspective. Your take on it is really helpful. I'm sure part of my reaction was just sheer - well, I wouldn't call it shock - but a sense of being overwhelmed by the graphic depictions of this rough, risky kind of gay sexuality. It's really intense in the book, and you're right, he doesn't hold back, and clearly has made a decision to me that kind of writer. I feel like I learned a lot, and for that I'm indebted to him. Earlier this year I read another book called "Dancer," a much less-well-written, more gratuitously salacious account of gay sexuality in the life of Nureyev. The aim there was quite different, and it makes Hollinghurst's achievement even clearer.

Yeah, Ed, I hear you! Although you should know that in a lot of American bookstores, literature is literature, and you'll find all the Canadians mixed in with all the writers from the rest of the world. I think it's really weird to go into a store like, say, Archambault here in Montreal and find the Canadian writers in their own section. What gives with that?? It's as if the insecurity everyone had over the language issues has resulted in a need to say "Here we are, the Francophone writers!" and "here's your Canadian lit section!" when really what this does is to point up the insecurity itself rather than saying, hey, our stuff is good, and it can hold its own alongside any world literature - which is the truth, there's great writing coming out of Canada. I hope eventually Canada, and especially the French/English communities of Quebec, can get beyond this. Good points, thanks.

[Teju]

Beth, I haven't read Colum McCann's "Dancer," but I enjoyed his "Everything in the Country Must."

http://www.colummccann.com/books.htm

McCann's a subtle writer, and so I'm a bit surprised by what you report of the sexuality in "Dancer." I would never have dreamed that the word salacious could be applied to McCann. In fact I find him, on rare occasions, reticent to the point of tedium. But when he's good, he's very calming, very enjoyable.

Along these lines, the New York Times review of Colm Toibin's new short story collection "Mothers and Sons" makes it sound absolutely terrific: all restraint and half-shadow. A sympathetic review by Pico Iyer.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E2DA1031F932A05751C1A9609C8B63

[Jean]

I'd be astonished if anything by Colm Toibin was less than exceptional and very much to my taste. Ditto anything recommended by Pico Iyer. Must get this short story collection.

I don't know McCann at all.

Straight readers, perhaps especially women (or maybe not?), reacting to writing about gay male sex - really difficult territory, I think. I've just read Edmund White's memoir - another writer I really rate; I'm difficult to shock, but just didn't relate to it - I mean, why would I, I suppose. I think that book is motivated by his wanting to show the unvarnished truth about his sexual and emotional history (which I get the impression he looks back on as pretty neurotically motivated, until his most recent longstanding relationship) in the context of people really respecting him as a well established writer, to make the point that these coexist and are both who he is. But I relate to the motivation more than I did to the book.

[beth]

Probably salacious is the wrong word for what McCann was doing. I didn't think it was a very good book. It felt like something a decent writer had written, but that his motivation was to write something that would be popular, and he knew how to do that, and had used Nureyev's story for that purpose. It was by no stretch of the imagination what I'd call literature. Enjoyable, certainly. I think Hollinghurst is aiming a lot higher.

[Bitterroot]

I found A Line of Beauty very haunting. I was struck by the progressive degradation of the characters' mutual exploitation. This book is so well-written that I found myself thinking about the characters for weeks after I'd finished it.

[Jean]

I found out only last night that stories from Toibin's Mothers and Sons were being read daily this week on BBC Radio 4 by the wonderful Irish actor Cillian Murphy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/book_bedtime.shtml
(The links will be there for seven days from each week day, until replaced by next week's reading). I listened to the last one, last night. Thought, is this a bit simplistic, disappointing? Then became involved and moved. Not disappointing.