Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature

Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature

Colm Tóibín knows the languages of the outsider, the secret keeper, the gay man or woman. He knows the covert and overt language of homosexuality in literature. In Love in a Dark Time, he also describes the solace of finding like-minded companions through reading. Colm Tóibín examines the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential writers of the past two centuries, figures whose homosexuality remained hidden or oblique for much of their lives, either by choice or necessity. The larger world couldn't know about their sexuality, but in their private lives, and in the spirit of their work, the laws of desire defined their expression. This is an intimate encounter with Mann, Baldwin, Bishop, and with the contemporary poets Thom Gunn and Mark Doty. Through their work, Tóibín is able to come to terms with his own inner desires—his interest in secret erotic energy, his admiration for courageous figures, and his abiding fascination with sadness and tragedy. Tóibín looks both at writers forced to disguise their true experience on the page and at readers who find solace and sexual identity by reading between the lines. John Banville Irish Times Is it permissible even to speak, as so many do nowadays, of a "gay community"? Tóibín treats [this] and many other questions with confidence and authority, both of which attributes are only strengthened by the moderation of his tone and the depth of his compassion. He writes with rare tenderness of figures as disparate as Elizabeth Bishop and Francis Bacon, Thomas Mann and Roger Casement, Thom Gunn and Pedro Almodóvar. John Gardner Times Literary Supplement It is Colm Tóibín's great strength that he is able to attune himself to nuances, and to the ways in which people "invent" themselves. Ruth Padel Financial Times Tóibín demonstrates wonderfully how a dedicated writer always thinks with other writers: their lives and sexuality, as well as their work. Tóibín can be engagingly mischievous and witty, but is deeply serious about books. Mark Levin Men's Journal Tóibín is a superb technician with a brave soul. Robert Sullivan Vogue Tóibín writes with high-voltage restraint; his sentences are masterfully devoid of trickery...He is tuned in to the silent language of families, the messages that are unspoken and slip past the rest of the world, landing deep into the hearts of those who understand. Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island , an Oprah’s Book Club Pick; The Magician , winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master , winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn , winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster, winner of the Hawthornden Prize, as well as three story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and was named the 2022–2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Introduction It was the winter of 1964 in the town of Enniscorthy in the southeast of Ireland and I was training to be an altar boy. My fellow apprentices and I spent an hour three evenings a week in the vestry of the cathedral learning the intricacies of serving Mass and Benediction. We learned by rote the names of all the vestments the priest wore -- the amice, the alb, the girdle, the stole, the maniple, and the chasuble. We learned how to ring the bell on the altar, first to alert the Mass-goers to the immanence of the Consecration and once more as the Host was raised and the chalice lifted. We learned how to serve the water so the priest could wash his fingers. We learned how to hold the gold plate under the chins of those who came to receive Communion. We were serious and dutiful, knowing that we had been chosen carefully not only because of our families' position in the town but because of something the priests had noticed about us, a lack of a rebellious spirit perhaps, a willingness to bow our heads during religious ceremonies and an ability to go straight home when they were over. After our training sessions we did not go straight home. We went to the chip shop opposite the cathedral, which served hamburgers and fried fish and fried potatoes. There were a few tables at the front, and although we ordered only take-away chips, we liked to sit there. Walking through the streets with the chips somehow did not involve the same pleasure as eating them in the shop. I loved pouring salt over the potatoes and then vinegar and watching the vinegar melt the salt. The fries were always too hot for my delicate altar boy's hands and I liked to sit in the window and let them cool. The two men who ran the chip shop wore white tunics and black-and-white trousers. One of them was thin and dark and very hairy. He always seemed to have a few days' stubble. He could have been Italian, but he was, I knew, from the town. The other had fair hair, was stockier. I w