>
> i was surfing the web looking for chandler sites and
i came on this
one
> that had literary analysis and criticism and this
lady had written an
essay
> and quoted a bunch of stuff from _farewell my
lovely_ which
essentially
> pegged marlowe as a closet homosexual.
>
> i believe i have seen threads here discussing this
type of thing. if
it
> wasn't about marlowe, then maybe parker's spenser or
someone else.
> its not really an unusual literary accusation... man
hiding his
sexual
> pref-
> erences by being overly masculine and possibly even
expressing anti-
> gay sentiments. its not always aimed at an author's
characters, but
the
> author himself. somebody wrote a hemingway biography
using the
> theme.
>
> although i doubt that anybody here is fooled by that
sorta ploy, i'll
see
> if i can find the link to the article.
>
> miker
>
It seems to me that any "man's man" type character has had
this kind of claim made about him by somebody or other.
Although I don't necessarily dismiss these claims off-hand I
really think it's often drawing a long bow. Because a
character (or author) doesn't have a lot to do with women, or
he is not comfortable around women or there just aren't many
female characters of note in a story or any of the other
rather tenuous reasons cited by "critics" of this bent, it
doesn't mean that the author (or character) is homosexual.
Personally, I feel that the author of the article you're
referring to is reading his/her own obsessions into the text.
I've never been a macho, jock type of guy myself, always been
pretty comfortable with women personally, but I don't believe
that the more traditionally masculine guys out there are
really closet queens - undoubtedly a small proportion are but
I feel it's a non-sequitur to say that because a man is not
comfortable with women, for example, that he is obviously
homosexual even if he doesn't know it. I seem to recall
someone on this list talking about someone saying that
Hemingway's THE OLD MAN & THE SEA was "obviously" about a
pederastic relationship - if you "read between the lines". To
which I can only say, once again, "huh?". Or, as Dr Freud
(allegedly) said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".
Rene
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