GLR May-June 2024

tion, a revenge plot, a job loss, electroshock conversion ther apy, the end of a budding relationship, and more than a couple of disturbing revelations along the way. Throughout, Cahill keeps us eager to know what’s coming next: what indignities and setbacks his characters are going to endure, what shards of their lives they will be able to hold onto. He does an excellent job of creating distinct, easily identifiable, lifelike dialog, and characters whose different responses to their plight are completely believable given the times. For readers who are unfamiliar with what it was like to be gay in this era, Julian Prince, the college professor, sums up the zeitgeist as he rumi nates about his detention after the raid: “It occurred to him that gay people, even clever ones, were always closer to the criminal world than they realized. Who you slept with, how you social ized, even what you said and how you said it might suddenly bring the law into your life just as fast and as hard as if you were

a thief or a murderer. You might forget about it most of the time, but the reality never changed. If you were gay, you were illegal.” In one of the book’s most touching passages, as Danny shows his new, more experienced friend Roy Lee the damage that he suffered at the hands of the police, he admits to the shame he felt in the police station, as if it were his own fault he was there. “See,” Roy Lee tells him, “it’s their best weapon. Shame.” He advises Danny to turn the shame back on the cops, to make them face the shame of what they’ve done. Asked how he can do that, Roy Lee responds: “By making your enemies face their crimes. That’s justice. ... Resist, little brother, if you’ve got the nerve. If you believe in your own humanity, you won’t ever feel ashamed again. ... Get real justice once and you’ll never settle for anything less.” Thus, in Roy Lee’s advice to Danny, Cahill hints at the embers of resistance that would ex plode into a five-alarm fire at the Stonewall Inn.

Horrigan Leaves Matthiessen Behind ARTIST’S PROFILE

P ATRICK E. HORRIGAN is a writer exploring the effect of art on individ uals, beginning with his memoir Widescreen Dreams: Growing up Gay at the Movies (1999), and continuing with the nov els Portraits at an Exhibition (2015) and Pennsylvania Station (2018). He has also written a play and essays, and is co-host of the recurring variety show Actors with Ac cents . He previously taught literature at LIU Brooklyn. The title of Horrigan’s new novel, Ameri can Scholar , refers to the Harvard professor and founder of American Studies, F. O. Matthiessen, about whom the central char acter, James, has written a successful novel. Matthiessen was secretly gay, in a loving re lationship, and ended his life in suicide. The novel connects James to an unsent letter written in the 1980s, sending him back to that decade and a passionate love affair, re membered in what’s described as a “halluci natory” dark night of the soul. This interview was conducted in written exchanges online. Charles Green: American Scholar talks much about F.O. Matthiessen, the 20th-cen tury academic who inspired American Stud ies. What drew you to him? Patrick E. Horrigan: I first encountered Matthiessen in a graduate school American literature seminar. The professor recom mendedhis American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whit man (1941) as a foundational text in Ameri can Studies and necessary background for understanding 19th-century American litera ture. The book’s seductive fusing of Amer ica and Europe captivated me. Its thesis was equally captivating: that the very best of American literature was produced in the

mid-19th century, including Melville’s Moby-Dick , Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter , Thoreau’s Walden , and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass . I became even more fascinated by Matthiessen himself, discovering that he killed himself in 1950 at 48 years old, that he was a socialist when the Cold War demo nized the Left, that he was gay when gay life was heavily persecuted, that he was in a long-term relationship with a visual artist twenty years his senior, and that he suffered from mental illness. Piecing together his life story, I found it moving. I was particularly riveted by a collection of letters to his part ner, Russell Cheney, which was published several years earlier. At the time, I had re cently come out and was just building a life in New York as an openly gay man. I had just entered graduate school and was begin ning an academic career. Matthiessen

seemed a kind of role model, and yet his life ended in tragedy. I wanted to understand what happened to him. I was also dating a man much like Matthiessen—a budding scholar of gay life and popular culture, a so cialist suffering from suicidal depression. I was struck by this coincidence in my per sonal and intellectual life and wanted to un derstand why I seemed drawn to a certain type of self-destructive gay intellectual. This was the seed for American Scholar . CG: Indeed, intellectuals and intellectual life permeate many of your novels. How do you bring excitement to academia? PEH: My books draw upon my academic training and sometimes feature intellectuals, but they’re not “academic books.” I’ve al ways been passionate about art—painting, music, film, architecture. But I’m fascinated by the encounter between the individual and the work of art and what the individual brings to this encounter. All my books fea ture this encounter between the perceiving subject and the art object. It’s here where I find stories about people and their encoun ters with art and explore how those encoun ters shape their lives, for better and worse. In American Scholar , Jimmy, an English PhD student, pursues his interest in American lit erature and Matthiessen to the detriment of his relationship with his boyfriend. In Por traits at an Exhibition , Robin attends an ex hibition of Renaissance portraits to distract himself from anxiety over a recent, risky sexual encounter. He filters his perception of the paintings through his fears and hopes. In Pennsylvania Station , Frederick becomes in volved in the effort to save New York’s Penn Station from demolition, but his commitment to preserving the past has dire consequences in his personal life, where changing is more

Patrick E. Horrigan. Jacket photo for American Scholar.

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