A Little Life and the trouble with the Postman

In 2015, Yanagihara released her 720-page novel, A Little Life, following the lives of four best friends in New York. It was immediately met with commercial success and critical acclaim; being shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It has described as everything from “a benchmark for the American novel” to “the Great Gay Novel”. Personally, I loved the book. Each page is more devastating than the last, there is NO happy ending to assuage the emotional damage inflicted by the novel and that is precisely what I look for in my fiction. A Little Life is pure literary self-flagellation which, for a masochist like me, is wonderful.

The only thing that did make me feel uncomfortable was the book’s handling of queer identity. For the most part, I had no idea that the characters were meant to be gay and even when this was made explicit, I kept forgetting. I thought that was strange for a novel in which almost 50% of the characters are LGBTQ. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way suggesting that every queer character ever has to have a big “coming out” storyline or that authors need to exaggerate their queer aspect for them to be valid. In fact, as a community we have been fighting for characters with interesting storylines that just so happen to be gay. However, it did seem strange to me that in a book being hailed as “the Great Gay Novel”, there was hardly anything gay about it – except for the bum sex, of course!

Let me explain this a bit more, using the four protagonists as examples. Malcolm is not gay; he thinks that he might be for about one page in the first section of the book and then realises that he is not. JB is the only self-identifying gay man and this is as inconsequential as the colour of his hair. Willem has a string of girlfriends and then around two thirds in the novel he has a “gay-for-you” storyline with Jude. As for Jude, he doesn’t enjoy sex with anyone but does pursue two same-sex relationships during the novel. These queer aspects of the protagonists’ lives bear no impact on the course of their lives, which is far removed from my experience and the experience of my queer friends. I have three explanation for why this might be.

1. The characters of A Little Life live in an egalitarian utopia where there is complete equality of desire and no stigma, prejudice or discrimination against LGBTQ people.

Nothing about A Little Life can be described as utopian and so I am ruling out this option.

2. The author has not effectively recreated the queer experience on paper.

This is straight-up not true. Yanagihara’s writing ability is undeniable and it is clear that she can write about many complex issues -including addiction, self-harm and sexual abuse- in realistic detail. So, I will have to cross off this explanation as well.

3. I am a jealous poof because all the characters have passing privilege and I do not.

*Bing bing bing* we have a winner!

What I mean by “passing” is the ability to be perceived by others as straight and therefore avoid prejudice and discrimination from the dominant hetero class. The protagonists of A Little Life all enjoy this privilege and that is why their sexuality has such little impact on the rest of their lives. Again, I need to clarify: I am not saying that the characters have easy lives, that would be very inappropriate given Jude’s experiences, but their misfortune does not come as a result of their sexual identity. For example, this is a quote from JB about Jude:

We never see him with anyone, we don’t know what race he is, we don’t know anything about him. Post-sexual, post-racial, post-identity, post-past … The post-man. Jude the Postman.

On reading this, I couldn’t help but feel my heart sink. As somebody who doesn’t pass, I have never been afford the same freedom in my sexual identity. People meet me and within about 5-10 minutes they make an assumption on my sexual orientation based on, say; the inflection of my voice, my mannerisms or the way I hold myself. I cannot hide any of these traits, they are simply who I am. In my case, being gay has nothing to do with “who I am seen with” or bum sex (unfortunately) but it is instead a socially constructed identity that is projected onto me by others. This comes with all kinds of stereotypes ranging from harmless ones (such as “he doesn’t like football” or “he’s artistic”) to dangerous ones (like “he’s a fag” or “pervert”).

There is nothing I would change about my sexuality but the reason I was jealous of Jude, Willem and JB was because no assumptions are made about them. They are free to define themselves without having others define them. They can walk down the street and not have to worry about people shouting “faggot” at them from a car window. They have the pleasure of getting to know people as the person they are rather than being pigeon-holed into a category before having a conversation.

So, yes. I am jealous of the Postman.

References

2016. “A Little Life’s” Queer Dilemma. https://thingsevanreads.tumblr.com/post/136834683913/a-little-lifes-queer-dilemma

2016. A Little Life Isn’t the Great Gay Novel. It’s a Fetishistic Portrait of the Perfect Victim. https://advers.io/2016/08/03/a-little-life-isnt-the-great-gay-novel-its-a-fetishistic-portrait-of-the-perfect-victim/

2016. Why A Little Life is not a gay novel. https://bradvanceauthor.com/2016/03/30/why-a-little-life-is-not-a-gay-novel/

Alex Jung, E. 2018. Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski Goes Deep on A Little Life. https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/queer-eye-antoni-porowski-a-little-life.html

Colucci, E. 2017. In Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life,” It Doesn’t Get Better. https://filthydreams.org/2017/04/23/in-hanya-yanagiharas-a-little-life-it-doesnt-get-better/

Delaney, B. 2016. A Little Life: why everyone should read this modern-day classic. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/20/a-little-life-why-everyone-should-read-this-modern-day-classic

Evan Chimsky, M. 2017. The Power And Privilege Of ‘Passing’ As Straight. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-envy-that-dare-not-speak-its-name

Greenwell, G. 2015. A Little Life: The Great Gay Novel Might Be Here. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/05/a-little-life-definitive-gay-novel/394436/

Hart, M. 2017. TO SUFFER OR TO DISAPPEAR: THE STATE OF QUEER LITERARY FICTION. https://bookriot.com/2017/06/08/to-suffer-or-to-disappear-the-state-of-queer-literary-fiction/

Lingel, J. 2009. Adjusting The Borders: Bisexual Passing And Queer Theory. https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1723&context=asc_papers

Taylor, B. 2017. How Ares What Straight People Think? https://lithub.com/who-cares-what-straight-people-think/