Bibliography
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- Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll, 1978
- The Gold Diggers, 1979
- The Long Shot, 1981
- Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, 1988
- Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog, 1988
- Afterlife, 1990
- Halfway Home, 1991
- Becoming a Man: Half a Life's Story, 1992
- Last Watch of the Night, 1994
- West of Yesterday, East of Summer: New and Selected Poems, 1994
- Sanctuary, 1995
Genres
Categorization is odious. There is tremendous overlap among genres. These pigeonholes are offered only as a convenience.
Paul Monette (1945 - 1995)
added by ellholyday
Comments
Please consider recommending where to begin reading this author, or where not to. A few words about your experiences reading this author and why you make the recommendations you do will be helpful to other users. If you are the author or have studied this author extensively, please say so.
Monette was highly accomplished as a writer both of fiction and of nonfiction. I would recommend reading one or more of his memoirs before reading his fiction, because the novels benefit from some understanding of his cultural background and point of view; however, the later novels are very good independently as well.
The three memoir-like books are (in order of writing):
"Borrowed Time"
"Becoming a Man"
"Last Watch of the Night" (actually a collection of essays, most of them autobiographical).
I originally read them in that order, which is fine; I could also make a strong case for reading them in chronological order:
"Becoming a Man" (birth through meeting longtime partner Roger Horwitz)
"Borrowed Time" (later relationship with Roger; his illness)
"Last Watch of the Night" (political thoughts, travel diaries, his dog, etc.)
If you want to jump right to fiction, start with my favorite, "Halfway Home," then I'd say "Afterlife" and "Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll."
Biography
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Paul Monette is one of the essential writers of what might be termed the gay identity movement and of the era of AIDS.
Monette was born in a well-off family in New England and grew up in the repressive 1950s (as he would later lament). He was a star student and as a young adult taught English at prep schools. Finally sickening of the closet, he moved to southern California in the 1970s, a setting that strongly influenced his life and work.
He began the writing life as a poet; his poetry is collected in "West of Yesterday, East of Summer." Between 1978 and 1981 he established himself with three lighter novels about gay life and identity. In 1985, his longtime partner Roger Horwitz became ill from AIDS; he died in October 1986, leaving Monette HIV-positive and utterly changed as an artist.
The results are a loose set of three autobiographical works, "Becoming a Man," "Borrowed Time," and "Last Watch of the Night" (that's in chronological order, not order of writing), and two novels that movingly examine living with AIDS. He won the National Book Award for "Becoming A Man" and was widely honored by both the gay and literary communities. He was also active in protesting the U.S. government's indifference to AIDS research. His last book, "Sanctuary," was conceived as a first contribution to a universal gay mythology. Monette died of an AIDS-related illness in February 1995.
Other works of interest include a chapter in the anthology "Gay Soul" and the excellent documentary "Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer's End" by Monte Bramer, from which this short bio is drawn.
ellholyday November 14th, 2006 10:12 PM PST