Homosexuality in America
This is a big book split into three sections each telling different stories taking place at different times and with differing amounts of reality. One of the unifying aspects tying them is an examination of homosexuality. The first section takes place in a completely reimagined alternative reality during the Gilded Age when homosexual marriage is legalized and accepted. The second section is set during the actual AIDS epidemic of the 1990’s when homophobia was hitting one of its many peaks. The third section is a dystopic near-future when there are so many other problems that homosexuality is no longer the main focus of the story. Ironically, the relative absence of the focus on this theme in that third section seems to be the real point.
Epidemics
The last two sections are set in time periods beset by viral epidemics, but as with homosexuality in the third section, this theme is not a major part of the first. Again, absence makes the theme grow stronger. Especially in comparison to the second section taking place in the real historical period in which the epidemic didn’t bother most people because it was widely believed to be merely a “gay epidemic” the tamped down presence of an “illness” is made more important because it does not take the spotlight. Is there supposed to be a connection between a society more open-minded about sexuality and the lack of a raging epidemic? It would seem to be a point of exploration considering that the epidemic-heavy sections take place in societies far more Puritanical in their approach to what is seen as immorality.
Connectivity is a Fiction
Almost every review of this novel—both those passionate favorable and dismissively negative—are most in agreement on one aspect: the three sections don’t really connect in any obvious way. What really seems to irk many critics is the expectation that there should be a greater sense of connection since names are shared by characters across the three sections without those characters actually sharing anything else other than names. There are multiple characters named David and Charales and Edward and for the most part they are kind of archetypally similar versions, but in the details they are completely different.
Why it should bother reviewers that people with different names do not all act the same seems kind of weird just generally speaking—have they never met two different people with the same name—but more annoying is the laziness of not trying to see a point. What would be the point of giving different characters in three completely distinct stories in one novel the same name? Ask the question: have you never met two people with the same name? Connectivity across the ages is the domain of fiction. It is not the real world. And maybe that is the point the author is struggling—vainly, it would appear—to make.
