Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story

Rating:
Summary: Don't miss this one!!!
Review: I echo Morgan's (from Memphis) comments: this book was unequivocally the best I've ever read. I so looked forward to Paul Monette's next work -- such a loss that he is no longer with us!

Rating:
Summary: True, yet harmful...
Review: I enjoyed Monette's book immensely. He speaks the gospel of growing up gay well -- and with practiced eligance. As with many other "coming out" stories, I found many similarities between the author's life story and my own. My only hesitation when reading the book occured, however, when the author presented finding one's true love as a matter of simply going out -- in an almost formal manner -- and looking -- with deadlines attached as to how soon he would meet his love. One doesn't shop for a life partner as one shops for shoes! Nonetheless, I want to suggest this book to anyone who has struggled with the long and painful process of coming out and trying to live as a healthy and positive homosexual in our heterosexist society.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Story
Review: I found this to be a very powerful and moving story about a man struggling to come out of the closet. Very inspiring, yet also very sad that Paul Monette died relatively young. The times and the cultural standards of his youth were in many ways much more challenging and difficult than the world today. A very inspiring story.

Interesting footnote: I think Andover is also where George W. Bush went to school, and I also think these two would have been about the same age. I wonder if they knew each other?


Rating:
Summary: Empathy
Review: I read an older version of Becoming a Man so when I finished I actually thought there was a chance I could meet the author of this wonderful semi-autobiography. Unfortunately, when I read Borrowed Time, I discovered Paul Monette had died of AIDS in 1995. I cried. I had finally found in Becoming a Man someone I felt I could truly empathize with, could truly relate to. While Paul and I come from different stakes, economic backgrounds and generations, his book showed me the similarily of our emotions while making me believe I could lead a fulfilling life as an openly gay man. That was two years ago. I still continue in my struggle today but at least I know I am not alone in my fight. Thank you, Paul.

Rating:
Summary: Easily the most important gay book of our generation
Review: I read this book and it changed my life. He was able to encapsulate so articulately what might have taken me days to explain. The importance of this book could not be underestimated. You have to be in the right place to "get it", but oh, the reward when you do. I've read it 3 times now, and each time, I'm reduced by it to an angry state. It helped me realize that it's okay to be angry about my treatment by society. I don't deserve to be brutalized in a thousand small ways. Thank you Paul for helping us find our voice.

Rating:
Summary: Complex, poignant, and utterly human in the need for love...
Review: I read this book three yers ago when puberty hit and have just finished re-reading it, amazed at the prespective and how much better I understand it. Becoming A Man is a culture in itself, juxstposing changing times with the dormancy of loneliness and isolation. Although Monette sometimes becomes a little distracted, he is so brutally honest that I leave this memoir feeling like I better understand myself and what it means to be a young gay man in a world that is often hostile. But also I reached the destination of my own self-acceptance, a process Monette describes in aching intensity: the ambivalence, the self-bruising, and the lonely nights spent waiting for the one who will make it all worthwhile. And while I haven't joined the gay world yet in all its brilliance, I feel fortunate that Monette's memoir will leave me better prepared in the game of self-worth and love. I'd recommend it to any gay teenager discovering themselves and what it means to be gay, happy, and in love.

Rating:
Summary: A story for gays and straights
Review: I think one of the reasons I liked this book as much as I did was because I see so much of my own life in it; and a lot of those feelings I had long since forgotten. The struggle and turmoil he dealt with are chronicled ably. His style is to jump back and forth between past events and current feelings, like the omniscient narrator in a movie would; it is an effective way to comment upon occurrences and enlighten the reader. He also has a take-no-prisoners style of writing (notably on what gay life is like) that may be a little disconcerting to some readers. And on occasion I was impatient with all those pre-gay details and wanted to know what happened after he came out, but the book is really the story of what happened to him before he came out. Overall, a poignant and satisfying read.

Rating:
Summary: Amazingly Insightful
Review: I was quite moved by Monette's honesty. Whilesome may feel that he was self abusive, I think hedemonstrates how insideous the closet can be. You will either really love or hate this book. For those who struggled with their coming out process, this book is for you. If you are still closeted, this book may be too much. Personally, his honesty and candor about such personal episodes is an ideal to which most of us can only aspire.

Rating:
Summary: poignant enough to alter the course of my life
Review: I'm a straight girl. I read this book when I was fifteen years old. Paul Monette's story was the most moving, heart-wrenching I have ever read, and his honesty, humanity, and incredible gift of writing made it all the more powerful. Being straight and young and female posed no barier to my empathy for him, or his impact on me. Since reading Becoming a Man, I have dedicated myself to gay rights; I have composed two articles on the topic of homophobia, started a gay-straight alliance at my high school, which is dedicated to the memory of Paul Monette, and become close friends with several gay and lesbian students. Monette's words and stories seeped into me so deeply that they're a part of me, a part of what I do, a part of the way I think and act. I consider him the most influential person to me besides my immediate family and best friends. I ache that I can never meet him and tell him how heroic and nobel I think he was. He is my favorite writer, and my personal hero for combatting oppression, ignorance, disease, and the suffocating trap of the closet, and for refusing to go quietly into the night. I recommend this book to anyone, straight, gay, closeted, young, or dying. No one will read it all the way through without being changed.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: In Becoming a Man, activist/writer Paul Monette reflects on his growing-up years prior to the AIDS crisis in the 80s. One of the book's strong points which several critics have noted(and I would have to agree about) is how well it portrays Monette's personal experience yet is still reflective of the lives of the gay men of his generation. The writing in this book is at times both beautifully and disturbingly evocative and filled with powerful images. Some readers may be put-off by Monette's scathing attacks on the straight world in general and the Vatican in particular, but it is the overwhelming emotion he puts into his work that makes Becoming a Man so compelling. This is not to say the book is perfect. Monette's "tortured artist" portrayal gets tiresome at times, as does the self-indulgence(he could have spared us the line " 'Paul is perfect' was slumming.") Nevertheless, the passionate soul-baring and consistenly excellent prose makes this one of Monette's strongest works and an essential read in gay literature.