Paul Monette: Becoming a Man

In this memoir, Paul Monette describes his growing up as a gay man, from the first childhood memories where he played with another boy in a barn, through his school and college years, up to his fight to define his sexuality by having relationships with men and women in young adult age. The book ends when he falls truly in love with another man for the first time. He was born just at the end of the Second World War in an area around Boston.

By reading this book, one can gain insight into how was it to be gay then, not just through Monette's experience but also through gay men he meets in the book, older and younger than him. There are episodes of him being a teenager and having sex with an older man, him being a teacher having sex with his pupil and so on. The world in which they all lived is given with lots of details, so one can really gain insight.

The story is told by an author in his forties when he is already dying of AIDS complications. One can feel he is very rushed to tell every detail, and sometimes it is a bit too much. There are lots of characters passing through the book, so it is a bit tyring to memorize all the people he knew and everything he did. It is indeed an account of everything that happened to him up to the age of cca 25. By the time the book comes to the end, I've felt exhausted. The end also came too abruptly for me, without insight why was falling in love with that guy so different from previous experiences.

One can feel two voices, of the author-narrator (age 45) and of the author-then (age below 25). The author-narrator is very tough on himself, with severe judgment passed on what is happening to author-then. The author-narrator is especially tough on times when author-then has acted cowardly and unconsciously, whereas such behaviors were totally understandable, given the circumstances in which he lived. I've found that a bit irritating, since it interferes with the story, but on the other hand, one then gets another information about the author himself.

This is the first memoir I've read that deals with growing up as a gay man. It is a realistic account (or list if you want) of everything that happened, so there's no point writing another one in the same style. The book is considered a classic of American gay literature and it got the National Book Award in 1992 in the nonfiction category. You can order the book on Amazon.