Mel Bossa's Reviews > American Studies

Edit added on August 25th 2017. Just found out that Merlis passed away at age 67 on August 15th. He was one of the first gay authors I read and his book American Studies is one I will never forget and will continue to reread every few years. An enormous talent and wit to spare. R.I.P.

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A profoundly moving story about the Lavender scare during the McCarthy days. But more than this, it's a very funny, touching, and human tale of Reeves, a bitchy, witty, and lonely, aging gay man, victim of an assault he suffered at the hands of a "trick." As he lies in a hospital bed recovering, he thinks of his past, and fantasizes about the straight guy in the next bed.

This book is so full of grace and intelligence, and every time I read the inevitable and tragic end, I feel a bruise on my heart.

This is very atypical sort of narrator for a gay book. Meaning, Reeves isn't this muscular gym addicted, Will and Grace type of gay man. He's a queen, from a time where it was dangerous to be one--come to think of it, it still is a little dangerous these days, right? A lot, depending on the country.

What I love about this book, is the details and vivid emotions Merlis awakens in my mind when I read his carefully chosen words. It's all there: the pre-WW2 years, the post-war years, the sexual liberation, the artificial eighties, the fear, the love, the sex, everything. Nothing is left behind.

And it always has me dreaming of Tom Slater's Invisible City...

Someone said that this book is about the Civil war between straight men and gay men in America, and it is.

The talent of Merlis is in the way he managed to show us that war raging in the tiny trench between two hospital beds.