Blackouts by Justin Torres: A skilful but indulgent intellectualisation of the gay experience

A young man, Nene, arrives at a palace where an older man, Juan, is dying. They knew each other briefly some years ago when both were incarcerated in an asylum, and now, as the latter reaches his end days, they’re reunited as Juan encourages his friend to continue his work on the 1920s lesbian activist Jan Gay after he is gone.

It’s an intriguing premise, far removed from Torres’s debut novel, We the Animals, one of the most entertaining coming-of-age stories of recent years, although both books are firmly rooted in Puerto Rican culture, one from the universal perspective of childhood, the other from the more individual viewpoint of homosexuality.

As anyone knows who has ever passed through the so-called Jurassic Park of the Dublin bar the George en route to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory beyond, gay culture has always prioritised the splendour of youth over the diminishing glory of the aged, something Torres exposes in his central characters. Nene is discomfited by “the shock of Juan’s skeleton” and needs to grow “accustomed to his emaciation”, while the narrator himself, proud of his lithe body, strolls around in his underwear, peacocking his desirability while being simultaneously embarrassed by his “broken and browning front teeth”, something he has in common with the hero of Edmund White’s most recent novel, who relies on his much older lover to reconstruct his discomfiting smile.

Scattered throughout Blackouts are sections from Gay’s real-life work, with multiple lines redacted as if they’re part of some illicit government project, offering a suggestion of subversion, an appropriate conceit considering the difficulties Gay must have encountered in exploring what was then a largely taboo topic.

‘I hugged my kids and had a Guinness at the finish line’: Meet the woman who smashed the record for running the length of Ireland

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‘You’re not Irish. You’re not one of us’: Northern students on a year in the South

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Claire Byrne and Mary Lou McDonald come unexpectedly close to a shouting match

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September, Blackrock, review: We need more walk-in restaurants in scenic spots like this - absolutely delightful

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There are moments when it feels a little indulgent, as if Torres is so conscious of his linguistic skills that he’s determined to make sure we’re aware of them too

How engaged one is with the novel, however, might largely depend on whether one enjoys languid, stylised prose and characters discussing art, history and gender politics in an elevated fashion while staring out windows with one hand pressed dramatically against their forehead. Personally, I adore it, but there are moments when it feels a little indulgent, as if Torres is so conscious of his linguistic skills that he’s determined to make sure we’re aware of them too.

Moving back and forth between Gay’s heroic efforts to normalise what was once seen as a perversion and the sexual lives of Juan and Nene offers an appealing balance. Her book Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns was not one that I had come across before, but a little research, along with Torres’s slow release of information, makes it sound compelling. Interviewing 80 subjects, her research preceded that of Alfred Kinsey by some 20 years but succeeded that of Emma Goldman, to whom it is dedicated.

Incorporating an existing nonfiction work into an original novel works well. A section on a Masculinity – Femininity Test amuses in its probing of subjects based entirely on gender cliches – “Do you like people to tell you their troubles?” (girl, presumably); “Can you stand as much pain as others can?” (boy, presumably) – and provides context for Juan’s interest in a chronicle of his community and the traumas inflicted upon it, while educating the somewhat blasé Nene, who takes for granted the rights fought for and won by previous generations.

A similar didacticism recurs in the use of the word “queer”, which is rather forced upon the reader. Torres bathes in it, oblivious to how, for many, it recalls traumas of the past

Occasionally the narrative becomes a little moralistic, as Juan instructs Nene in historic indignities. He quotes from the American Psychiatric Association’s Manual of Mental Disorders, which until 1974 classified homosexuality as an illness, and describes the back and forth between “conservative pockets of the psychiatric industry” and their more enlightened brethren who sought a new definition, or an outright deletion, for the group’s third edition in 1980. A similar didacticism recurs in the use of the word “queer”, which is rather forced upon the reader. Beloved as it is by some members of the LGBT community and, even more frequently, by self-proclaimed heterosexual “allies”, Torres bathes in it, oblivious to how, for many, it recalls traumas of the past. When historic terms of abuse are summoned back into the language, it’s not always an empowering act of reclamation but can serve as a concession to bigotry, and it’s disappointing that Torres fails to confront this.

At its best, Blackouts is pleasingly erotic in the intensity of its central relationship but it’s a book that one might admire rather than love, unlike the work of other contemporary gay writers such as Garth Greenwell or Édouard Louis, whose novels match Torres for the beauty of their language while, perhaps, being more attendant to the reader’s need for an emotional, rather than a purely intellectual, stimulus.