I just finished reading a biography of Frank O Hara, and Basement of Wolves (2012) by Daniel Cox, a writer who very apparently has a connection to Toronto.
The book wasn’t as much like Steppenwolf as I thought it would be. That’s good, because it’s always pretty disappointing for a book to be what you expect it to be.
It borrows one of my favourite structural feature in old, pulpy, fatalistic gay novels from 1950-70, such as The City and the Pillar, by Gore Vidal … or something even more obscure and trashy, like one I read called Boardwalk Chicken (about an underage bathroom cruiser always searching for a dick he tasted once but can never forget.)
I spent the novel wondering how far ‘downward’ the author wants his character to go. Books like this one have a subplot: the politics of representation.I love keeping track of new characters being added to the fictional populations, a kind of sociology of fictional characters.
Queer authors come up with plots carrying differing degrees of inevitability. It can be driven by different forces, dramatically affecting the tone of the book, and of queer representations in it. Some are driven by morality, like And the Band Played On. Some, like Angels in America are driven by spiritual, political, and ethical logic. Basement of Wolves is driven by a muffled but intense eroticism, constrained by social anxiety. Though maybe this is just how I connected with it.
The kind of logic driving a plot affects the representation, because it changes the character: how willing they are to ‘descend into darkness’, and how accountable they are for their own descent. A queer representation has implications for other representations: the people and cultures which use a rejection or disavowal of queerness in order to define themselves.
In a queer narrative, especially one driven by eroticism, descending fully into darkness might be the goal. This is how the destructive potential of queerness is realized! Queer people can be represented as benign and ordinary, terrifying monsters, or more commonly as potential monsters. And both queer people and the people surrounding them have reasons to be interested in: 1. What kind of monster, 2. What is constraining it, 3. Whether it is best for the monster to be constrained or let out, and for who?
The protagonist in Basement of Wolves is easy to identify with, because he finds a successful balance between the two extemes. He draws energy from his monstrous nature, which gives him spontenaeity, inspiration, and power within his own life. But he never lets himself be overwhemed by temptation, adversity, or his insincts. The protaginist finds a significant amount of inner strength from his monstrous nature, and in learning to use it effectively. He’s a character who can be both admired and feared.
