I won't pretend to have entirely "gotten" this rather high concept novel, but Justin Torres definitely kept me intrigued over its lyrical course. Reading it printed on paper would have enhanced the illustrations, of which there are many, including a fascinating, alphabetized glossary of mostly timeless gay slang.
The title refers to words that have been censored by Torres in Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns, an actual book published in 1941 based on extensive interviews conducted by Jan Gay, a lesbian pushed aside by the credited author, a man with a medical degree but no real understanding of his topic. The pages look very much like a heavily redacted Freedom of Information request and while the text in my digital edition was too small to read, I'm pretty sure Torres intended what remains to be meaningful for those who can, adding another dimension to his hybrid work.
"Blackouts" also allude to gaps in the memory of the older Puerto Rican gay man named Juan who was briefly adopted by Gay and her partner, a whimsical children's book illustrator. Juan has tasked "nene," the book's anonymous, much younger narrator, to fill his dying wish by setting the historical record straight (oops I mean gay!) about Sex Variants which, despite its serious flaws and prejudices, represents one of the earliest attempts to address homosexuality from a clinical perspective. Yes, the novel definitely meditates on queer identity, but not so seriously that Torres doesn't leaven it with a little death-bed humor.
"How old am I?” [Juan] asks. “What do I look like?” “Handsome,” I say. “Distinguished. Hung.”
I guess size matters even at the end of life!
What resonated most about Blackouts is Torres' recognition of what Ethan Mordden, another gay novelist, calls "the knowledge," which has been passed down orally from one generation to the next.
"You know, nene, in my time, we all prayed to our private idols, some famous woman, usually an actress; we memorized her lines, her looks, practiced throwing ourselves down onto the divan, overcome—all of us old-school sissies, we carried these women inside, or alongside, our consciousness, private icons, whose mannerisms and wit we’d call forth … mimesis, Dionysian imitatio … though I suppose that kind of thing has gone out of style.”
Perhaps not. Juan's reminiscing vividly recalls a tutorial my Pines housemates and I led for a guest, a generation younger, who had never heard of All About Eve and The Women. After listening, with interest, to all of us natter on about these and other lodestar gay films, he commented "You guys should start a school."
But the transmission goes both ways. Juan also encourages "nene" to describe his own past as if it were a movie introduced with a perfectly chosen metaphorical image: a hand on a knob, opening a door into a different world in each new scene, providing the older man with a vicarious thrill.
Towards the end of the book, Torres baldly articulates his inarguable and profound thesis statement:
Juan had pushed me to grasp two concepts: (1) the idea that stigmatized persons live in a literarily defined world; and (2) the value of getting lost, or absorbed—sometimes haunted, sometimes enriched—by what’s been said and written about you and your kind, and what’s been erased or suppressed.
It's probably safe to say that few winners of the National Book Award for Fiction have ever been as meta as Blackouts. Torres has done exactly what Juan requested of "nene," and then some.
