The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (18 page)

Ask the Dust
JOHN FANTE

Neverwhere
NEIL GAIMAN

Oblomov
IVAN GONCHAROV

Blood Meridian
CORMAC MCCARTHY

Charming Billy
ALICE MCDERMOTT

Nausea
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Last Exit to Brooklyn
HUBERT SELBY, JR.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

JEANETTE WINTERSON

•   •   •

Like People in History

FELICE PICANO

I
f you’re lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, coming out—first to yourself and then to other people—can take years, and sometimes a lifetime. Indeed, it may never happen at all. But however hard it is, it can’t be harder than for Jeanette in Jeanette Winterson’s heavily drawn-from-life novel
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
. Jeanette’s fundamentalist Christian mother adopted her for the express purpose of raising her as a “servant of God.” When Jeanette’s preference for girls is discovered, she is forced to undergo an exorcism by the church to which she and her mother belong.

Jeanette does not want to shock her mother, or push her away. And when she tries to tell her mother what it is she feels for Melanie, her difficulty in getting the words out will ring bells for many readers: her mother, “very quiet, nodding her head from time to time,” clearly just does not want to know. She has erected an impenetrable wall between herself and her daughter, and as soon as Jeanette stops speaking, her mother says, “Go to bed now.” Then she picks up her Bible, as if it were a literal manifestation of this wall. In a way it is, for when she eventually turns her daughter out of the house, leaving her with no home, no money, and no friends (if this is familiar, see: Abandonment), it is the church that she evokes as her justification. Jeanette’s mother’s response is so clearly absurd, so clearly lacking in empathy, that it will strengthen your resolve to assert who you are to the world. If other people can’t handle it, that’s their problem, not yours.

Thankfully, there are more inspiring coming out tales to latch on to in literature. One of our favorites is the delightful, rich gay epic
Like People in History
by Felice Picano, a tale that spans the fifties to the eighties. The coming out experiences of its two male protagonists are almost entirely celebratory, occurring in the context of the newly emerging gay rights scene in sixties America and being part and parcel of the hedonistic, drug-drenched party culture.

Cousins Roger and Alastair first meet at the age of nine, when Alastair is precociously cool and camp—already at ease with his burgeoning sexuality—while the baseball-playing Roger has yet to recognize his own. Alastair comes out to his family when caught rather marvelously
in flagrante
with the Italian gardener. For both men, stepping into their homosexuality is associated with joy, compassion, and tenderness—wishful thinking for some, maybe, but certainly an inspiration. If you take as an example the confident Alastair, who does not care what others think of him, leading the way by being blasé and untroubled by his homosexuality, you can even see how you might plant the idea of a nonchalant acceptance into the minds of those you are telling.

Though Roger lives for a while in Alastair’s shadow, he eventually falls for an “Adonis,” a macho navy veteran with a damaged leg who writes poetry (does it get any better?)
and
who loves him back (yes, it does!). Even with its inevitable complications, their deep love lasts a lifetime and must be one of the best examples of enduring love in literature, gay or straight. Every would-be out and proud gay man or woman fearful of announcing himself or herself to the world—and of finding true, lasting love—should commit this vital, exultant novel to heart.

See also:
Homophobia

Blindness

JOSÉ SARAMAGO

W
hen you begin a sentence by the Portuguese writer José Saramago, you are making a commitment to follow it wherever it goes, because this ingenious writer does not follow the normal rules of grammar, but uses commas in unexpected ways, ways that will have your inner grammarian’s jaw dropping open as your arm reaches for a red pen, surely that was a clause and this is another, shouldn’t there be a period in between or at the very least a semicolon, and your inner grammarian is right, of course, but Saramago is right as well, he knows exactly what he’s doing, and by the end of the first two paragraphs he will have you hopelessly ensnared by these sentences which flow from one to the other with an unstoppability that mimics the silent and terrifying epidemic of blindness which gives this novel its title and the cause of which nobody can explain.

In an unnamed city at an unspecified moment in history, the inhabitants begin to go blind, quite suddenly, one by one. And as the narrative moves
between one unnamed character and the next, from the young prostitute with the dark glasses to the car thief to the ophthalmologist and his wife, we submit to the surreal and powerful accumulation of sentences, and any resistance to Saramago’s unconventional style that we might have felt at the start is soon forgotten.

The rewards of commitment—whether to a sentence, a novel, a relationship, or indeed to anything you believe has value and in which you decide to put your faith—are great, as this story demonstrates. In the mental asylum where the blind are quarantined in an attempt to stem the epidemic, and where armed guards stand at the gates ready to shoot anyone who tries to escape, conditions quickly descend into squalor and disorder as the helpless inmates fight over the limited rations of food. In the midst of all this, a wife looks after her husband, tenderly, carefully, devotedly. In a moment of great foresight shining out from all the horror, the eye doctor’s wife, her vision mysteriously intact, has managed to sneak into the asylum with him, pretending to be blind herself so that she can stay by her husband’s side. When he goes to the bathroom, she washes him. When he needs to move, she guides him. She realizes that if anyone discovers she is sighted, they might use her for their own ends, so she takes great care to continue to act as if blind—not just to protect herself but also so she can continue to look after her husband.

The wife’s selfless actions are those of a woman for whom loyalty, love, and commitment come first, unconditionally. From the moment her husband is struck blind, she is fighting first for him. Then she helps the others who share their ward, and they form a familial bond, one that is maintained and strengthened by acts of kindness and support. If they survive, we know it is because of their commitment to one another. Their commitment is also what enables them to keep their humanity while everyone around them is losing theirs.

Whatever it is you’re struggling to commit to, let this novel guide you. And maybe even get some practice with it: When you begin the first sentence, commit to all the others. When you put the book down, commit to the rest of Saramago’s oeuvre. And from there commit to . . . reading Proust? You never know—reading Saramago might just help you transform from commitment-phobe to one willing—nay,
eager
—to jump into anything with two feet.

See also:
Coward, being a
•
Give up halfway through, tendency to
•
Starting, fear of

Cold Comfort Farm

STELLA GIBBONS

C
ommon sense is the ability to make sound decisions about the everyday matters of life. Such as cleaning the floor with a mop rather than a toothbrush. Or going through the empty field rather than the one with the bull. If you lack common sense, you may find that you lead a rather inconvenient, though not to say frightening, life. To cure this lamentable lack, read Stella Gibbons’s much loved spoof
Cold Comfort Farm
, which will introduce you to an unforgettable character from whom you have a lot to learn.

Nineteen-year-old Flora Poste is full of good, practical common sense, which she is determined to inflict upon her less sensible relatives. Finding herself an orphan, she feels a need to sort out stray members of her family and thus writes to all her living relatives to ask if she can go to live with them. The most intriguing reply comes from family members at Cold Comfort Farm in the village of Howling, Sussex, who claim that “there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort” and that because these Starkadders did some nameless wrong to her father, they would be pleased to give her a home and redress it. Flora had averred that she would not go if she had any cousins at the farm named Seth or Reuben, because “highly sexed young men living on farms are always called Seth or Reuben, and it would be such a nuisance.” But in the end she doesn’t have a chance to find out their names in advance. Off Flora goes, carrying, as she always does, a copy of
The Higher Common Sense
by Abbé Fausse-Maigre under her arm, sending a telegram to her friend on arrival: “Worst fears realized darling Seth and Reuben too send gumboots.”