St. Stephen's
by Sky Gilbert
Insomniac Press,
1999
Review by Ibolya Kaslik
St.Stephen's contains many genuinely compelling insights about gay
life, poignant moments and laughs but, unfortunately, a successful novel
it is not. Gilbert's central rambling narrator, Jack, starts with a clear
enough thesis-like statement: "Teaching is learning; learning is teaching".
As we follow Jack from his transformation from hip, urban, gay actor to
small-town university professor, we learn some incidental things but very
little about teaching and learning, except that it is probably not a very
good idea to sleep with your students.
The novel's shortcomings, however, have little to do with structure
as there is a clear sense of journey and movement through Jack's various
experiences at the college. His relationship with the older Matthew, the
"dapper dean", who adopts Jack as protégée and professor, shapes Jack's
narrative but provides a shakey, almost pointless line of reference as
the relationship sours and leaves Jack, two-thirds of the way through
the novel, where he began; an aging, bright homosexual with a penchant
for young men.
In fact, Gilbert's self-conscious need for structure is the weakest
part of the book as the tangential Jack is best when he discusses themes,
anecdotes and beguiles the reader with observations like:
"I think most of the
gay guys who work on the gay streets in any big burg are from small
towns. And they are just so goddamned happy they don't have to be closeted
hairdressers anymore that they get all snippy from the sheer joy of
living with their own people."
Aware perhaps of the self-indulgent nature of the confessional form,
Gilbert clings to a notion of theme and structure while the real richness
of the writing comes from the indulgent boldness of his narrator. That
is, St. Stephan's best moments occur when Jack derails his own
narrative and lectures to the reader on the dark side of urban-gay life,
pedophilia and when he is not so avidly, consciously, trying to give a
form to these themes within his narrative.
"They just seem to
be exaggerating the crumbs of affection or even attention they get from
their so-called loved ones. But then again, isn't that what love is?...Isn't
pederasty then, in a way, the love in our culture that is most like
the kind of "true" love in storybooks?"
This subtextual argument about pedophilia becomes foregrounded as
Jack's own attraction to young men resurfaces after his relationship with
Matthew dies. In the final scene of the novel, Matthew and Jack have an
intellectual argument about religious figures, teaching, and Jack's own
misdemenours as a prof. This scene is supposed to be high drama but is
forced and unbelievable. The true close of the novel is Jack's break-up,
in the rain, with his twenty year-old, student, cocaine-addict boyfriend.
This scene, though cliched in many ways, is emotive and cinematic: "You
make me feel cheap. You always make me feel cheap, you know that?" young
Theodore tells Jack, isolating the essential inequality in May-December,
adult-child, relationships.
While the dramatization of themes in his relationship with Matthew
is unsuccessful, the realization of the same theme with Theodore is. Perhaps
this is because Jack is closer to being a lover of young men than a victim,
perhaps also because Gilbert, caught up in the notion of ending the book
with a grand finale, is compelled to "show" us again. While there were
some beautiful moments in this novel, Gilbert's engaging expositions on
gay life are more in the vein of queer theory than fiction, and his voice
is more in line with improvisational monologue than novelistic scope.
Ibi
Kaslik is a graduate of the English Masters program at Concordia. Her work has
appeared in "Matrix," "Hour" and "Peckerwood".
She dreams of one day owning her very own banjo.
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