See Here, Private Hargrove: To Be Young Was Very Heaven

 When I was an undergraduate at Augustana College (1978-1982), there was a metal book rack in the foyer of the library marked "Take a book, leave a book."  There wasn't usually much of a selection: well-thumbed copies of The Godfather and Love Story,  romance novels, five-year old freshman composition textbooks.  But I found a small red textbook of Medieval Latin and Tarzan the Invincible (one of the later Burroughs novels).  One damp, cloudy Saturday afternoon during my senior year, there was nothing but an ancient, yellow-paged paperback, See Here, Private Hargrove.  

Army life during World War II?  Dreary!  But I was heading for a 5-hour shift at the Student Union Snack Bar, which was always deserted on Saturday nights, and I needed something to read.  So I exchanged it for The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin. 

I had a slight sore throat, a sort of lump that made swallowing difficult -- in the COVID era it would be inconceivable to go to work while sick, but back in the 1980s, unless you were dying, you went.  The Snack Bar was a desolate square space with about ten round white tables and a gleaming counter up front. I was the only one working.  We sold hamburgers, french fries, sandwiches, chips, sodas, and some desserts.

 From the cash register I could see the glass wall with doors leading outside, now dark and stormy with rain; the banks of mailboxes to the left, and Adam's Bookstore to the right.   From 5 to 10 pm, I had maybe ten customers.  I had dinner at my post -- a hamburger, french fries, and a carton of milk. 

 But mostly I read See Here, Private Hargrove.  It was a collection of humorous anecdotes, originally published in the Charlotte, North Carolina News, about Marion Hargrove's life as a private at Fort Bragg in 1940 and 1941: "The Boy Across the Table...",  "A Soldier Stuck His Hand....", "I Grinned Weakly...": chores, drills, bellowing sergeants, trips into town to go to movies.  The sort of thing that was popular during the Vietnam War: No Time for Sergeants, Gomer Pyle, Hogan's Heroes (not quite the same, but close enough).

I've done some research since.  The novel was made into a movie in 1944, starring Robert Walker (1918-1951). best known for the gay-subtext Hitchcock thriller Strangers on a Train (1951). He was married twice and had four children, so I doubt that he was gay in real life.

I haven't seen the movie, but according to IMDB, Private Hargrove gets a girlfriend (played by Donna Reed, future 1950s housewife on The Donna Reed Show) and a best buddy (played by gay actor Keenan Wynn).  So there may be some buddy-bonding.

Robert Walker's son, Robert Walker, Jr (1940-2019)., played the boy raised by aliens, Charlie X, on a 1966 episode of Star Trek.  He had three wives and seven children.  Probably not gay.

Marion Hargrove (1919-2003) went on to write two more novels, plus magazine articles and television scripts.  His credits include I Spy, The Name of the Game, and The Waltons.  His humorous account of trying to get a couch for the studio office was published in The Playboy Book of Humor and Satire (1965).  He had two wives and six children, so probably not gay.

Today, I have replaced the small paperback with a hardbound copy -- just to have, not to read -- I don't want any new memories to develop.  I want to see the book on its shelf and flash back to that night -- the sore throat,  the hamburger and carton of milk, gazing out through the glass windows into a rainstorm, all of it.  Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.

What's Gay About "The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle"?

Who wouldn't want to read a novel called The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle?  (Only 7 in the British edition; in America we rate a half more).

Especially when reviews call it Agatha Christie combined with (insert science fiction great here).

I've been binge-reading it on airplanes for the past few days.  I usually read faster, but in this case I often  have to read the same passage over several times, consult my list of characters, and cross-reference the various plot twists. But here's the basics:

In a bucolic Britain between the Wars, Lord and Lady Hardcastle hold a weekend party and their country estate, Blackheath.  Their young-teen daughter Evelyn is supposed to be watching her younger brother.  But she lets him go off by himself,  and groundskeeper Charlie Carver (who is the boy's biological father) and another person lure him to the lake and murder him. (That's not at all what happened).

Lord and Lady Hardcastle can't forgive Evelyn for "causing" her brother's murder, so they ship her off to Paris (That's not at all what happened, either).

19 years later, it's still a bucolic Britain between the Wars.  Blackheath has fallen into disrepair. The Hardcastles, nearly broke after years of being blackmailed for various misdeeds, invite everyone who was at the original party to return for a masquerade.  To find out who the second person was?  To celebrate Evelyn's forced engagement to an odious banker, which will solve their financial woes? To confront their blackmailers? (Actually Lord and Lady Hardcastle and Evelyn all have different motives).

The guests spend the day hunting, getting drunk, growling at each other, mistreating the servants, exchanging secret notes, going on clandestine meetings, tearing pages out of diaries, eavesdropping on secret plans, taking things from secret hiding places, being assaulted by mysterious assailants, and having dinner. It's like Agatha Christie on speed.   At 11:00 pm sharp, during the masquerade, Evelyn is murdered.  Or commits suicide.  Or both.  Aiden's job is to find out whodunnit.  

To make things more interesting, he must sleuth while reliving the day over and over, bouncing from body to body:

First he is the doctor who has a mysterious locked trunk and a Bible full of cryptic underlining.

Then he's the butler who has been mysteriously assaulted by the estate artist, and is under heavy sedation, but sees various people coming into his room and making cryptic remarks.

Then he's the odious banker who is engaged to Evelyn, and whose servant happens to be the illegitimate son of Lord Hardcastle, and has a hidden agenda of his own.

Next a shy socialite

And the police constable who is dating the shy socialite's sister.

Eight in all.

When Aiden is in a body, he is privy to few of his host's memories, so he has no special knowledge that will help him unravel clues.  But the host keeps trying to regain control.  The worst of all possible possessions.  

Did I mention that he's in all of these bodies at the same time?  So he can consult with his selves in other hosts, who are also working to solve the mystery.

If he is murdered or falls asleep, he returns to the butler.  If he goes through all eight hosts without finding out who is planning to murder Evelyn, everything resets, and he starts over.  Apparently he's done this thousands of times already.  

Other than the various hosts, Aiden's main ally is Anna, who is also reliving the day over and over (and who has a hidden agenda of her own).  

A mysterious man in a Plague Doctor costume occasionally pops in with a cryptic remark.

A mysterious man in a Footman uniform keeps hunting down the hosts and killing them

  (None of these people are what they seem).

This is all very complex, requiring a lot from the reader.  Eventually one wonders why.  The mystery is complicated enough as it is, with two illegitimate sons and a daughter, two dead boys, endless red herrings. and secrets that are never revealed.  Why have Aiden bouncing from body to body in what feels like a giant video game?

Gay characters:   The odious banker is gay.  We learn this through rumor and innuendo (but this is Britain between the Wars, so one can't expect Out and Proud).  Many of the male characters don't express any heterosexual interest.

Evelyn states that someone has abducted a "dear friend" name Felicity, and will harm her unless she commits suicide.  She's lying, but for a good portion of the book, we believe the Evelyn has a lesbian lover. And maybe she does, just not a kidnapped one.

Gay subtexts:  Aiden describes some of the male characters as "handsome." But his same-sex friendships almost always end in betrayal.

Heterosexism: Men are generally odious thugs, while women are generally good, kind, and nurturing.  Aiden bonds with Evelyn, and then with Anna.   A man and a woman walk off into the sunset together.

Beefcake: The odious banker is so bloated that he can barely move. Aiden mentions the physiques of some of his hosts, and the penis of one.

Bottom line: The book is not nearly gay enough.

By the way, the top photo is not what it seems.  It's another Stuart Turton.  Here's the one who wrote the book. He's heterosexual. 

Gay Subtexts in "Lovecraft Country"

Although I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in literature, I don't read much literature any more.  The few times that I've picked up novels, swayed by rave reviews, I'm inevitably disappointed; homophobic slurs and a boy-meets-girl lo-ooo-ove plotline that wasn't mentioned in the plot synopsis.  So I agonized over whether to buy Lovecraft Country.  But I was intrigued by the combination of Jim Crow racism and Lovecraftian monsters.

So I started:

Atticus, a 22-year old Korean War Veteran, comes home to discover that his estranged father has vanished, leaving only the command "Go to Ardham" (that's Ardham, not Arkham). So he and his Uncle George set out on a harrowing road trip from Chicago to Ardham, Massachusetts.

Letiticia, a childhood friend, insists on coming along.  "Uh-oh," I thought, "Lo.ooo..ove approaching!"  But she and Atticus never spark; in fact, on the way home Atticus takes the back seat, away from Letiticia.

En route to Ardham, the trio faces the horrors of Jim Crow America.  For instance, they go into a "safe" restaurant, only to find that the safe one burned down, and entering the white-only replacement results in a lot of white people with guns chasing them. 

Finally they reach Ardham, and discover that Atticus is the chosen one of an ancient secret society,  the Order of the Ancient Dawn, which disapproves of his blackness but really has no choice.  Wealthy Samuel Braithwaite and his son Caleb have orchestrated the disappearance to get Atticus there to perform a ritual. 

Atticus performs it, all right, but not the way the old rich white men would like.

Later segments show Letiticia moving into a haunted house, haunted by both ghosts and the white people who don't want her in the neighborhood; 

Hippolyta (George's wife) stumbling upon a doorway to another world full of unknown horrors and a very possessive woman.

Atticus, Uncle George, and Montrose (his father) investigating the mystery of a missing lodge member.

Henry (George's son) is pursued by an evil doll.

The characters are more proactive than most horror novel protagonists, actively taking part in their situation...and...

None of them.  Not one of them falls in lo...ooo.ooove.

Plus there's substantial buddy bonding between Atticus and Uncle George. 

I also suspect that Caleb has an erotic attraction to Atticus hidden behind his manipulations.

The lack of heterosexual plotlines made me think that author Matt Ruff must be gay, but he's married to a woman, and his other novels have hetero-romances.

I understand that a new HBO tv series has been ordered from the book, with Jonathan Majors  (top photo) as Atticus, Michael Kenneth Williams (second photo) as Montrose, and Courtney Vance as Uncle George.

Caleb has been turned into a girl: Christine Braithwaite (Elizabeth Debicki).  How much do you want to bet that she and Atticus fall in...well, you know.

The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale (1997) is difficult to watch now, when there are so many parallels between its near-future dystopia and the real society that the U.S. is becoming.  Our own Orange Fuhrer and his cronies might start ordering the round-up of "gender traitors" at any moment.

The Republic of Gilead, in what used to be the Northeastern United States, is run on strictly Protestant fundamentalist principles.  If the Bible says to stone adulterers to death, that's what we're going to do.  Adulterers, fornicators, sodomites, Catholics, and Jews are all executed, unless they are fertile women who can become handmaidens, given the job of getting pregnant in the place of their owner's wife.

June (Elisabeth Moss) was a book editor before, but women are no longer permitted to have jobs, or even to read -- if they are caught reading, their hand gets chopped off.  Because she was married to a divorced man, she is an adulterer, sentenced to become the handmaiden to Commander Fred Waterhouse and his wife, Serena Joy.  Her name was changed to Offred (Of-Fred) to designate that she was his property.

Serena Joy is not altogether happy with the world she helped to create.  She was once a conservative Christian activist who wrote books and held rallies on why women should stay home, and now she is cut off from all decision making ("we have men working on it").

Male infertility doesn't exist.  If Offred doesn't get pregnant, she will be sent to the Colonies for a quick, painful death handling radioactive waste.

Although these are fundamentalists, they don't follow any of the rules I knew as a Nazarene.  They smoke and drink.  There is no religious music.  There don't seem to be any church services.  One gets the impression that they're Protestant fundamentalists without religion.


There are no gay male characters -- they've all been killed.  There are several lesbian characters, including June's best friend from before, Moira (Samira Wiley), and Emily (Alexis Bleidel), married with a child before, now forced to become a handmaiden, first Ofglen, then Ofwarren. When she is found in a relationship with a Martha (a household servant), the Martha is executed, and she is "fixed" through genital mutilation.

Although there are parallels with today's facist society, there are significant differences.  Racism doesn't exist in Gilead.  There are black and Asian Commanders and wives.  Nor is anyone screaming about illegal aliens.  One assumes that the society is anti-Muslim as well as anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic, but this is never mentioned.  The main injustice is that of women, "restored to their rightful place" in the household, with men in charge.

You don't watch The Handmaid's Tale for beefcake.  It's about women's thoughts, women's lives, women's bodies.  There are very few men around, except for soldiers with guns, and only three men in the main cast:

1. O.T. Fagbenle, who is gay in real life and a star of Looking, as Luke, Ofred's husband, who managed to escape and helps runs a resistance force called Mayday.  He appears mostly in flashbacks.

2. Joseph Fiennes, who played a gay character in Running with Scissors, as the singularly unattractive Fred, who has a fetishistic interest in watching Offred do forbidden things like play Scrabble and read fashion magazines.  He's always fully clothed, even in the scenes where he has to have sex with Offred.

3. Max Minghella, who played a gay character in The Mindy Project, as Nick, the Commander's chauffeur, also an Eye of God (informer) and possibly a member of the resistance.  He begins an illicit romance with Offred.   He's the only one to appear shirtless, and we even get a shot of his butt.

See also: The Handmaid's Tale, Season 2