A separate peace gay
John Knowles:Freud said any strong partnership between two men contains a homoerotic element. If so in this case, both characters are totally unaware of it. It would have changed everything, it wouldn't hold been the identical story. In that time and place, my characters would have behaved totally differently. [...] If there had been homoeroticism between Phineas and Gene, I would have position it in the book, I ensure you. It simply wasn't there.
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It fascinates me how some novels can pose the test of time. Even after sixty years – and to me, primarily a YA reader – the narrative remains engaging, momentous, and touching. Knowles had me caught up in the story instantly, gifting such sharp insight into Gene’s soul that I wanted to retain up with his strange, youthful logic. And even though he was never fully fleshed out as a character (he barely existed beyond the confines of Devon), I found him an incredibly thrilling character to be inside.
Knowles didn’t let us prevent to enjoy the scenery unless Gene was, and that’s something I admire in a journalist. There’s a cinematic flow to it that made the mundane seem more interesting to Gene – or at least more familiar. It also made Gene a more believable character, as it made sense for Gene to be one of those boys who refused to reflect on what he felt. Any moment he stopped to think too long was a moment he had to discover something about himself he didn’t like. And I think one of his attractions to Finny was that he never had to own those moments while Finny was around.
Speaking of being ‘inside’ characters
I had an English assignment in which we were supposed to read a book and record a paper on said book, comparing our thoughts with a scholarly source’s thoughts. I wrote my paper on the homosexual subtext between Gene and Finny in A Separate Peace (great book, would recommend), and I mind some of you might be interested in a closer look at their relationship.
This was an analytical English manuscript, so my apologies that it isn’t very personal, and more formal than most of my writings. The first half is my opinions, and the second half is Yale’s James Holt McGavren’s opinions.
His folio can be initiate here: http://www.westga.edu/~mmcfar/mcgavran.htm
Warning: MAJOR spoilers below. Do not read if you don’t want to know how the book ends.
The novel A Separate Calm by John Knowles is a coming of age story narrated by Gene Forrester, who visits his old institution and recounts his best friend’s death 15 years later in an aim to make tranquility with the event. This was my second time reading it, and I discovered that there is more than meets the eye with this manual. Knowing the termination, any examples of foreshadowing became painfully obvious, and I f
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John William Knowles (September 16, 1926 – November 29, 2001) was an American novelist finest known for A Separate Peace (1959).
While not blatantly a gay novel, any young gay male who read A Separate Peace by John Knowles in school knows its power. Knowles was a gay man and infused his writing with the pathos and desire that only gay people can know. This was the first gay romantic partnership I had ever scan about, and the evidence that teachers don´t comment on the underlying like affair when teaching is a true careless disservice to the book and gay youth. --Eric Arvin
Back in the day, everyone else might have been reading “A Separate Peace” in school, and finding that they had questions about relationships that seemed to blur the lines between friendship and something more between two men or two women. --Z.A. Maxfield
John William Knowles was born on September 17, 1926,[1] in New York,[2] the son of James M. Knowles, a purchasing agent from Lowell, Massachusetts, and Mary Beatrice Shea