Bertram Cope's Year

Rating:
Summary: Both fascinating and chilly
Review: An exploration of manners, mannerisms and the unstated. I found this book both fascinating and chilly, yet compeltely compelling. The author exposes his characters and intent slowly with considerable skill. When we finally see the true Cope and the true motives of those around him, it's deeply unsettling. What seems slight and breezy at first carries real weight and sobriety by the end. The treatment of homosexuality is a revelation. It is at once normative and completely shallow. The book as a historical document is an affirmation, but its characters ultimately leave you cold and disquieted.

Rating:
Summary: A cool tour de force
Review: Fuller's neglected, glistening novel poses the question, "Who of any of us is worth the bother other people make of us?" This novel's characters--all of them--are hungry for companionship, for mirrors to reflect back images of themselves, for romanatic alternatives to prosaic lives. They might have wandered out of a T.S. Eliot poem, but instead they are the flesh and blood of 20th century Evanston/Churchton, Illinois, moving spectral-like through their lives, essentially impenetrable to each other. It is a gay novel--and one of the best I've encountered--but it offers an extremely perceptive account of the straight world, too, as that world intersects--or blindly collides with--with the gay. To Fuller's credit, both worlds are fully developed here.

Fuller's wit is amazingly sharp; his writing is concise and unornamented, yet there are also beautiful moments--lyrical descriptions of the changing seasons, the Indiana dunes, and the Churchton landscape. In his afterword to the novel, Andrew Solomon rightly calls the book "a gentle tragedy," but I emerged from it recognizing that life for all of these characters does go on, repetitively and unfulfillingly at times, wildly romantic and full of possibilities at others. Although Bertram Cope's circle of friends ages throughout the pages of this book, the characters are even fresher and sharper at the end of the novel than they were at the beginning. A wise, intelligent book, full of insights and memorable characters.

Rating:
Summary: A cool tour de force
Review: Fuller's neglected, glistening novel poses the question, "Who of any of us is worth the bother other people make of us?" This novel's characters--all of them--are hungry for companionship, for mirrors to reflect back images of themselves, for romanatic alternatives to prosaic lives. They might have wandered out of a T.S. Eliot poem, but instead they are the flesh and blood of 20th century Evanston/Churchton, Illinois, moving spectral-like through their lives, essentially impenetrable to each other. It is a gay novel--and one of the best I've encountered--but it offers an extremely perceptive account of the straight world, too, as that world intersects--or blindly collides with--with the gay. To Fuller's credit, both worlds are fully developed here.

Fuller's wit is amazingly sharp; his writing is concise and unornamented, yet there are also beautiful moments--lyrical descriptions of the changing seasons, the Indiana dunes, and the Churchton landscape. In his afterword to the novel, Andrew Solomon rightly calls the book "a gentle tragedy," but I emerged from it recognizing that life for all of these characters does go on, repetitively and unfulfillingly at times, wildly romantic and full of possibilities at others. Although Bertram Cope's circle of friends ages throughout the pages of this book, the characters are even fresher and sharper at the end of the novel than they were at the beginning. A wise, intelligent book, full of insights and memorable characters.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing "Chilly" About Being Gay
Review: I can't imagine why anyone would find this charming novel's depiction of of gay men to be "chilly." If there's a "chill" to be felt in this subtle comedy of manners it would stem from its depiction of women who persist in imagining that men with no sexual or romantic interest in them still "want" them in some way. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, as Arianna Huffington has so spectacularly demonstrated. In any event Fuller's book testifies to the fact that we all still have an enormous lot to learn about gay life before Stonewall. It wasn't always lived in "the closet" -- as "Betram Cope's Year" shows with style, taste and enormous wit.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing "Chilly" About Being Gay
Review: I can't imagine why anyone would find this charming novel's depiction of of gay men to be "chilly." If there's a "chill" to be felt in this subtle comedy of manners it would stem from its depiction of women who persist in imagining that men with no sexual or romantic interest in them still "want" them in some way. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, as Arianna Huffington has so spectacularly demonstrated. In any event Fuller's book testifies to the fact that we all still have an enormous lot to learn about gay life before Stonewall. It wasn't always lived in "the closet" -- as "Betram Cope's Year" shows with style, taste and enormous wit.

Rating:
Summary: Deserves to be rediscovered
Review: If you are a fan of Wharton and Forster, then you will apprciate this wonderful novel. The misadventures represented in "Bertram Cope's Year" are truly inspired, especially as this volume was written in 1919. This is a comedy of manners. The author has taken great pains to expose his character's never-to-be-discussed nature. Clues are plentiful. However, the ladies keep falling in love and in line. Even his benefactress is smitten. A refined bit of drollery. An early gay classic.

Rating:
Summary: Deserves to be rediscovered
Review: If you are a fan of Wharton and Forster, then you will apprciate this wonderful novel. The misadventures represented in "Bertram Cope's Year" are truly inspired, especially as this volume was written in 1919. This is a comedy of manners. The author has taken great pains to expose his character's never-to-be-discussed nature. Clues are plentiful. However, the ladies keep falling in love and in line. Even his benefactress is smitten. A refined bit of drollery. An early gay classic.