Steven H wrote:From Jonothan Rosenbaum's review of
le Models de Pickpocket
Rosenbaum wrote:Bresson was reticent about his background, and van der Mersch has kept such tight control over his legacy that an official biography seems unlikely. Yet I've heard from usually reliable sources a startling claim about his early life that, if true, would help to explain a few things: that he worked briefly as a gigolo.
Though impossible to prove, it seems plausible, given his good looks and some of the moral preoccupations of his work, above all his first major feature, the 1945 Les dames du Bois de Boulogne.
I'll bow to Rosenbaum's superior knowledge, though it's interesting that he talks about this assertion being "plausible" rather than definite. That's the mark of a good scholar.
Melville is a more obscure figure in many ways, but read what Irving Rosenthal has to say in Sheeper (if you can score a copy).
I haven't read Rosenthal's Sheeper, unfortunately. I'd recommend Laurie Robertson-Lorant's recent biography of Melville (from 1996, I think). In it, she takes a tack I admire. She's open to the possibility that Melville had homosexual desires and even discusses some of the homoerotic elements of his work. At the same time, however, she debunks some of the myths surrounding his relationship with Hawthorne. Melville was obviously obsessed with Hawthorne even before the two men met, but it's uncertain whether this obsession was hero-worship, homosexual desire, a "male crush" (as it's called today), or borderline psychosis. It's entirely possible that the end of their friendship was due to Melville propositioning Hawthorne, but the vast majority of their letters indicate that the friendship was fairly mundane, as Robertson-Lorant points out.
The record on James is quite solid.
Actually, the record on James isn't as solid as you would lead us to believe. No serious scholar is going to claim that we have conclusive proof that James was unquestionably gay. At most, we know he formed very intense relationships with -- and displayed considerable affection for -- other men, especially young men in his later years (including his nephew Wilky, I might add), and there are homoerotic elements in several of his fictional works. Yet there's no evidence that he ever had a sexual experience of any sort, and there are plenty of his works in which consummation is denied the central character (The American, Washington Square, Turn of the Screw (depending on how you read it), etc.). In fact, while I don't hold with the "vestal virgin" theory that Edel is accused of crafting, I personally tend to side with a growing number of critics who think he might have been rendered impotent by that "obscure hurt" he received as a fireman in New York in the early 1860s. Do I have conclusive proof? No, but it offers just as plausible a reason for why he exerting so much energy in creating ambiguity around his own persona.
The Swedish sculptor James was keeping was the inspiration for "Roderick Hudson" -- and no doubt much else.
By the way, this is a good example of how some critics can twist the facts in order to support their own argument. The sculptor you're referring to was the Norwegian-American Hendrik Andersen. James first met him in 1899, which means there's no possible way Andersen could have served as the "inspiration" for "Roderick Hudson" because that novel was published in 1875, nearly 25 years before they met. Furthermore, you mischaracterize their relationship by saying that James "was keeping" Andersen. They met a total of seven times (each totaling only a few days) over the course of 16 years. And while the language they used during their correspondence is sometimes quite passionate, part of James' fascination with Andersen was because he seemed to fit the mold of "Roderick Hudson" so well. So again, there's nothing conclusive there. James may or may not have been in love with Andersen, they may or may not have had an affair, or James may or may not simply have viewed Andersen as a sort of "ideal" artist. My point is that it's an open possibility. And although I realize that the Criterion Forum isn't a scholarly journal like "American Literary History," you display poor scholarship when you make misleading assertions about James. It's the sort of thing that causes people to reduce James to the status of a "Gay Novelist" (whatever that may mean), as if the lens of homosexuality is sufficient to explain everything he wrote. As in his relationship with Andersen, the evidence indicates something much more complicated going on in James' life and work.
Finally, I also recommend James R. Bradley's excellent "Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire," which is the best of all the recent critical explorations of James' sexuality. What I particularly like about Bradley's approach is that, like Robertson-Lorant, he states outright in his Preface that he's merely interested in opening up discussion about what homosexual readings bring to the larger table of James criticism. He is not interested in turning James into a "Gay Novelist" and says so: "Just as in his life James resisted being labelled categorically 'a homosexual' in a way that would have neatly (and falsely) summed him up, nothing now could be more objectionable that an approach to James that had as its goal the crude summing up: 'It's all about his being queer!'" Nowhere does Bradley try to foreclose counter-arguments or, for that matter, promise to "bitch-slap" critics who disagree with him.
Anyway, I realize I broke my promise not to reenter this thread, but I couldn't resist saying a few things about Melville and especially James (about whom I know much more than Bresson). I just hope I'm not so far off-topic that the moderators delete this post. I tried to make it thoughtful, informed, and non-confrontational.
