A review by gerhard
The Coming Storm by Paul Russell
5.0
I am amazed at how topical and incendiary this novel remains 15 years after its publication in 1999. Paul Russell went on to win the Ferro-Grumley Award for The Coming Storm in 2000 (and for a second time in 2012 for The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov, a much different novel that marks the true skill and depth of this remarkable writer).
I was a bit leery about reading this as I kept on thinking of a gay version of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. However, Russell’s classically simple story of a 25-year-old teacher at a New York prep school having an affair with a 15-year-old student is remarkably free of both cliché and melodrama.
It is written with a clarity and a tenderness that must render this one of the pivotal texts of gay literature. Just as the ‘coming out’ novel is associated automatically with A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White, so is the ‘under-age romance’ indelibly linked with The Coming Storm.
The novel speaks volumes about free will, love and desire and the long shadows that parents cast over their children’s lives. This is largely due to the immense technical skill and insight of Russell as author, whose finely wrought characters range from the ageing head master and his wife to his younger protégé and his various lovers and acquaintances, to crucially the character of the young Noah himself, whose vulnerability and volatility are heartbreaking to behold.
The reader may think he or she knows how this is going to end, but Russell manages to eke out superlative nuances from what is ultimately such a hackneyed plot. Yes, the resolution is morally problematic, especially in the light of Arthur’s admonition to Tracy to hold onto this beautiful love and never, ever to reject or abandon Noah, which would be a betrayal of the uncompromising nature of their love itself.
There is a fascinating contrast and debate here between the young Tracy, who succumbs to his illicit passions, and the older Louis, who spends the bulk of his life closeted and unrequited. Is the one state of existence preferable to the other, or are both indeed equally morally compromised? And how thin is the divide between love and lust, sex and infatuation?
Russell’s depiction of Tracy’s first weekend away from the Forge School in the flesh pit that is New York City is deliciously lewd, and got me worrying how he was going to handle the inevitable sex scene between Tracy and Noah without it being titillating. Russell deals with this dilemma by having Noah experiencing gay anal sex for the first time with a fellow pupil, and having him reflect on the animal messiness of the act during a buffet hosted by his father:
Suddenly claustrophobic, and focusing on A.J.’s laden plate, Noah said, “Food. That looks like a good idea,” and fled for the buffet table that caterers had set up in the dining room. Shiny metal bins held spicy-smelling Indian food: yellow rice, mercurochrome chicken pieces, unidentifiable lumps in mustardy brown sauce, cheese cubes in spinach. Too many of the dishes looked like one kind of shit or another, and he thought back queasily to the dark matter on himself when he’d pulled out of Chris Tyler’s butt.
Contrast that with the following:
To speak a language that was as intimate and free as certain dreams, saying darkly, thrillingly, My cock inside of you. Your come in my mouth. Already in that dream he was easing his new friend out of those hip, baggy jeans, exposing smooth young flesh to the surprise of cool air. He focused on the boy’s slim, tight hips; with the tip of his tongue he tasted an asshole’s bitter, forbidden mystery.
Russell asks us to consider the separate fates of Tracy and Louis, the former giving in to desire and the latter never acknowledging the possibility within himself. Which is the stronger? Which is truer to his real self? There are no easy answers here, and everyone is culpable to some degree or other.
Is desire itself monstrous? Is love the true enemy of human happiness and achievement? While I was reading this the thought lurking at the back of my mind was: just how is Russell going to end a novel that transects such highs and lows? The end, when it does come, is of course just another bittersweet, exalted beginning.
I was a bit leery about reading this as I kept on thinking of a gay version of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. However, Russell’s classically simple story of a 25-year-old teacher at a New York prep school having an affair with a 15-year-old student is remarkably free of both cliché and melodrama.
It is written with a clarity and a tenderness that must render this one of the pivotal texts of gay literature. Just as the ‘coming out’ novel is associated automatically with A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White, so is the ‘under-age romance’ indelibly linked with The Coming Storm.
The novel speaks volumes about free will, love and desire and the long shadows that parents cast over their children’s lives. This is largely due to the immense technical skill and insight of Russell as author, whose finely wrought characters range from the ageing head master and his wife to his younger protégé and his various lovers and acquaintances, to crucially the character of the young Noah himself, whose vulnerability and volatility are heartbreaking to behold.
The reader may think he or she knows how this is going to end, but Russell manages to eke out superlative nuances from what is ultimately such a hackneyed plot. Yes, the resolution is morally problematic, especially in the light of Arthur’s admonition to Tracy to hold onto this beautiful love and never, ever to reject or abandon Noah, which would be a betrayal of the uncompromising nature of their love itself.
There is a fascinating contrast and debate here between the young Tracy, who succumbs to his illicit passions, and the older Louis, who spends the bulk of his life closeted and unrequited. Is the one state of existence preferable to the other, or are both indeed equally morally compromised? And how thin is the divide between love and lust, sex and infatuation?
Russell’s depiction of Tracy’s first weekend away from the Forge School in the flesh pit that is New York City is deliciously lewd, and got me worrying how he was going to handle the inevitable sex scene between Tracy and Noah without it being titillating. Russell deals with this dilemma by having Noah experiencing gay anal sex for the first time with a fellow pupil, and having him reflect on the animal messiness of the act during a buffet hosted by his father:
Suddenly claustrophobic, and focusing on A.J.’s laden plate, Noah said, “Food. That looks like a good idea,” and fled for the buffet table that caterers had set up in the dining room. Shiny metal bins held spicy-smelling Indian food: yellow rice, mercurochrome chicken pieces, unidentifiable lumps in mustardy brown sauce, cheese cubes in spinach. Too many of the dishes looked like one kind of shit or another, and he thought back queasily to the dark matter on himself when he’d pulled out of Chris Tyler’s butt.
Contrast that with the following:
To speak a language that was as intimate and free as certain dreams, saying darkly, thrillingly, My cock inside of you. Your come in my mouth. Already in that dream he was easing his new friend out of those hip, baggy jeans, exposing smooth young flesh to the surprise of cool air. He focused on the boy’s slim, tight hips; with the tip of his tongue he tasted an asshole’s bitter, forbidden mystery.
Russell asks us to consider the separate fates of Tracy and Louis, the former giving in to desire and the latter never acknowledging the possibility within himself. Which is the stronger? Which is truer to his real self? There are no easy answers here, and everyone is culpable to some degree or other.
Is desire itself monstrous? Is love the true enemy of human happiness and achievement? While I was reading this the thought lurking at the back of my mind was: just how is Russell going to end a novel that transects such highs and lows? The end, when it does come, is of course just another bittersweet, exalted beginning.