Alan Sheridan (1934–2015)

André Paul Guillaume Gide lived from 1869 until 1951. He was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight". Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.

Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposed to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality, split apart by a straitlaced education and a narrow social moralism. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints, and centers on his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, even to the point of owning one's sexual nature, without at the same time betraying one's values. His political activity is informed by the same ethos, as indicated by his repudiation of communism after his 1936 voyage to the USSR.

Alan Sheridan's biography of Gide narrates his life year-by-year with beautiful style. He distills the significant biographical writings of Gide (Journals, autobiography, etc.) along with his literary work and very event-filled life. The book, at more than seven hundred pages, is nothing if not comprehensive; providing more detail on his subject’s life than you might want to know, unless you love his writing as I do. It is a scholarly work, with all the apparatus that one has come to expect of contemporary biographies – a forest of footnotes, an extensive bibliography and index.

From a relatively early date, Gide discussed his homosexuality in his books and elsewhere with commendable courage. His earlier autobiographical work, If it Die (Si le Grain ne Meurt), describes his African encounters, and in 1925 he published Corydon, an essay on homosexuality and its place in society, written in the form of a Socratic dialogue. Some of his arguments now seem, inevitably, dated, but to have published such a book at all at that time, even in the relatively more civilised culture of France, was brave. I especially appreciated Sheridan's commentaries on Gide's fiction, most of which I have read and love. Like all but the most famous European writers he is not well-enough known or appreciated in the United States.… (meer)

A young gentleman of leisure recounts the experiences of his youth covering roughly the period from 1890 to 1907. Well travelled and with a great interest in the Arts, especially the theatre, our protagonist in this extensively researched novel expounds on matters of literature, the theatre and music as he moves in the circles populated by many of the prominent in the Arts of the time. In between he relates his experiences as he pursues his private interest in the young men he encounters, including the more enduring relationship he enjoys with a young actor.
A wonderfully engrossing read full of surprising encounters with those of renown, or those who were later to attain that status.… (meer)

This is a novel qua biography and an artistic charmer in the gayest sense of the word. The protagonist, young Mark Sheridan, is precocious both intellectually and sexually with an ability to charm most of the men he meets in this book that seemed longer than it in fact was.

The story is narrated in the first person as though told by young Mark himself; with a diary-like form relating his experiences both in the acting world and earlier, as the son of a diplomat based in China and Russia in the late nineteenth century. Much of the book is set in Peking, St Petersburg, Paris, and London with travelogue-style descriptions of the cities, as well as lengthy but slightly less orthodox descriptions of Mark’s many encounters with men. These encounters were usually brief and when he did develop a relationship they seemed somewhat flat and not as well-developed as the settings in which they occurred. His essays on the usefulness of public conveniences as pick-up joints at a time when homosexuality was still expressly forbidden across most of Europe are quite frank!

The sense of place, then, was beautifully suggested. I felt I knew the avenues of Paris, the gardens, canals, and underground toilets of St Petersburg, and the compounds and back streets of Peking. It was if I was there with Mark as he explored, rutted, and trod the boards.

One difficulty I had with the book was with Sheridan’s handling of the time-scales involved. It opens in the early twentieth century with Mark as a fully fledged actor but soon flashes back to China and Russia of the 1890s when he was still a child, and from then on it progresses or regresses from the 1920s to the 1900s to the 1890s in a seemingly endless series of flashbacks. Each section was complete in itself and each one nicely presented the time in which it was set, but I soon felt that the continuity of narrative was confused at best.

Overall, however, I found the book rather enjoyable; written well enough to encourage the journey through the flashbacks. The beautiful locations also helped, but I would hesitate to recommend this book to an impatient reader.… (meer)