Background Image
Previous Page  43 / 52 Next Page
Information
Show Menu
Previous Page 43 / 52 Next Page
Page Background

A

NTHONY

G

UY

P

ATRICIA

If Aschenbach Returned...

Death in Venice, California

by Vinton Rafe McCabe

The Permanent Press. 192 pages, $28.

N

OVELIST AND POET Vinton Rafe McCabe presents

a compact story that’s as compelling as it is discon-

certing. Though darkly comic and at times quite erotic,

this is not a light read. It is, however, an elegantly written and

artfully plotted gay novel that will make you think seriously

about art, relationships, obsessions, ageism, philosophy, pornog-

raphy, and sex.

At the center of

Death in Venice, California

is a character

named Jameson Frame, a fifty-year-old writer of some renown,

who has published exactly three works during his career: a pair

of novels titled

Pennyweight

and

The Antecedents

and a very

slim collection of poems called

On Scrimshaw and Others

. Be-

yond that, he’s a professor of creative writing at an unnamed

university in New York City. For all his modest success, Frame

suddenly finds himself dissatisfied with his life and disturbed by

the endless gray, cold days in Manhattan from November till

spring. So he heads west by commercial airplane and takes up

an extended residence at the posh Hotel des Bains in Venice

Beach, California.

Poised as he is on the liminal edge, it is difficult not to sus-

pect that something momentous is about to happen to Frame as

Death in Venice, California

unfolds in its leisurely but insistent

J

EAN

R

OBERTA

If Dorian Had Lived...

The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray

by Mitzi Szereto

Cleis Press. 288 pages, $15.95

A

UTHOR Mitzi Szereto, who recently wrote a funny,

sexually explicit riff on Jane Austen’s

Pride and Prej-

udice

subtitled

Hidden Lusts

(2011), has now written

an erotic sequel to Oscar Wilde’s

The Picture of Dorian Gray

,

that gothic tale of a young man who magically trades places

with his portrait, which ages for him in the attic.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

, first serialized in a magazine in

1891, is a kind of literary experiment by a playwright who was

attempting a novel. Approximately one third of it follows the

moral degeneration of the attractive Dorian after his friend, the

painter Basil Hallward (who believes that everyone’s character

can be read in their face) asks him to pose for a painting. Basil’s

friend Lord Henry Wotton insists on meeting the young Adonis,

and then apparently corrupts the innocent Dorian by constantly

making witty comments that overturn conventional Victorian

morality. Another third of the book could be titled “The World

According to Lord Henry.” A final third is devoted to references

to historical figures and descriptions of the beautiful objects that

Dorian obsessively collects, including ecclesiastical garments

worn by Roman Catholic clergymen during Mass. Dorian en-

joys the perversity of owning these things as a nonbeliever.

Oscar Wilde’s real-life disgrace in the 1890s due to his reck-

less lawsuit against the Marquess of Queensbury (father of

Oscar’s younger friend and lover, “Bosie”)—followed by

Wilde’s conviction for sodomy, his prison term, and his early

death in exile in Paris—has made his story of the beautiful, dan-

gerous boy, Dorian Gray, seem like a prophesy. The book itself,

however, which lacks the coherence of most celebrated 19th-

century novels, can only hint at the nature of Gray’s degeneracy,

still an unspeakable topic in literature.

Mitzi Szereto has wisely avoided following the structure of

the original work. Instead, she has resurrected Dorian (who dies

upon destroying his hideous portrait) as a kind of immortal

predator. After a brief chapter in London in the 1890s in which

the original exchange of Dorian with his own image is summed

up, we next encounter Dorian in Paris in the 1920s playing sex

games with thinly disguised avatars of the writers F. Scott and

Zelda Fitzgerald and the painter Salvador Dali. Dorian is shown

to be a sensation seeker for whom nothing is off-limits, fully

pansexual with a special appetite for playing the dominant part-

ner who sometimes “tops from below.”

Dorian moves to Marrakesh in the 1940s in order to prevent

aging London acquaintances from recognizing him in Paris. The

influence of Lord Henry in some sense accompanies Dorian

wherever he goes, taking the form of aphorisms directly quoted

at the beginning of each chapter. Dorian eventually takes refuge

in a Peruvian monastery in the 1960s, where he finds a way to

cause trouble.

Despite Dorian’s usual preference for young men as bedfel-

lows, he is haunted by a recurring dream of a beautiful young

woman whose aura of innocent love shows his life in perspec-

tive. Perhaps he is haunted by his own hopes for salvation,

which confront him in New Orleans in the “present day” (post-

Hurricane Katrina). There he is recognized as a kindred soul by

a group of apparent goths who are actual vampires (shades of

Anne Rice). This close-knit group is led by a modern-day dandy

who reminds Dorian of his old mentor, Lord Henry, in the Lon-

don of over a century before. Unfortunately, the vampire-leader

is a man of few words who lacks the breezy wit of the original

Lord Henry.

The climax of Dorian’s long search for something he is only

dimly aware of wanting is as satisfying in Mitzi Szereto’s ver-

sion as it is in Oscar Wilde’s—possibly more so. Szereto’s use

of language is faithful to the original, even in the frequent sex

scenes. She’s a novelist who knows how to construct a coher-

ent plot, and she treats Oscar Wilde’s book with respect. So by

all means check out

The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray

, espe-

cially if you’ve already read the original novel, or use it as an

excuse to read

The Picture of Dorian Gray

if you haven’t.

________________________________________________________

Jean Roberta is a widely published writer based in Regina, Saskatchewan.

March–April 2014

43