To:                ALL                   Date:    09/08
From:   WSRF10B    SHERRY KELLER         Time:     5:25 PM

A STONE BOAT by Andrew Solomon                              
                                                            
A beloved mother's death and its aftermath...one of the     
authentic achievements in American fiction. ---Harold Bloom 
                                                            
Very high praise indeed, and I dont blame the designers of  
the paperback for putting that quote directly between the   
title and the author, as if it were the subtitle. This is a 
book I would never have found on my own, since it was placed
in the gay and lesbian section of the book store. The       
narrator is gay and joint themes in the book are his mother 
coming to terms with his homosexuality and his coming to    
terms with his mothers reaction. But dont we all have       
similar crises of identity to hammer out with our family?   
Substitute religion, or lack thereof; substitute any life   
choice that might run counter to what  parents think is best
for child. Just substitute growing up. Its a timeless       
struggle that anyone can identify with. In truth, the       
homosexual issue is a secondary theme. This is  the story of
a very happy family (a literary rarity indeed!) that is in  
the process of losing its main character, the mother.  She  
reminds me of Charity (was that her name?) in CROSSING TO   
SAFETY.    Im not always charitable to the Charities of the 
world. I have a very personal aversion to women who insist  
upon their idea of perfection, so its hard for me to remain 
an unbiased reader.  But her familys struggle in the face of
her cancer is heartbreaking.   I know that the mother dies, 
but I have not come to that part yet. I know because it is  
part of Blooms subtitle, and the writing points to it. Im   
very interested in finding out how Harry (the narrator)     
grows and develops after her death.  Please read with me and
let me know what  you all think.                            
                                                            
Sherry, still unable to put in those apostrophes            


===============   Reply    1 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     WSRF10B    SHERRY KELLER         Date:    09/08
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:     7:15 PM

All you CRs!  READ THIS BOOK!  Then come contribute to our  
discussion, which I'm sure is going to be a good one.  Like 
Sherry, I never would have found this book on my own.  It   
would have languished in the G&L section, because I never   
think of going over there.  I'm going to recommend that my  
bookstore friend put it in with the general novels, because 
I don't think the theme in this book is so much a coming to 
terms with the narrator's sexuality as it is about love and 
how we deal with it.  Is there such a thing as too much     
love?  What are the faces of love?  Can perfect love be too 
perfect?  Come on, everybody, this is going to be a good one
to chew over.                                               
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply    2 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/08
From:   FAVB99B    JANE NIEMEIER         Time:     9:25 PM

EEK!!  I haven't started the book yet, and I will have very 
little time in the next two weeks to read.  Plus I have two 
other books that I am currently reading and want to finish. 
But, I WILL read it once I finish the BURGUNDY STARS book   
that I posted about last week.  Jane, in a tizzy            


===============   Reply    3 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/08
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     9:26 PM

Well, Sherry, I am feeling pretty good because I actually   
finished the assignment ahead of time for a change. So      
perhaps I will escape from the general hanging, drawing and 
quartering after all.                                    
                                                            
I am hoping other people will be ready to join the          
discussion soon.  I am very curious about others' reactions 
to this book.  I got on HOMEWORK HELPER last night, but     
didn't find any reviews of the book itself,  and only a     
couple of references to "Andrew Solomon". One article about 
"eligible" New Yorkers listed  a 31 year old novelist named 
Andrew Solomon who just happens o have a trust fund of $100 
million. Another referred to an Andrew Solomon who had      
published an article recently about how he and his brother  
had helped their mother , who was suffering from ovarian    
cancer,  commit suicide. What do you think? I think that's  
our man in both cases.                                      
                                                            
I am very curious to know just how biographical this book   
is. Writing fiction, of course, gives you the opportunity to
relive the past the way you wish it had happened,  and      
Harry, the main character, is an incredibly  devoted son.   
Both of my parents have died within the last 5 years, so in 
some ways this book was easy for me to relate to, although  
my experiences were quite different. In part this may be    
because I  was never close to my mother. Yet I can't say    
that I envy Harry his relationship with his mother. It      
struck me as a smothering kind of love, one that made it    
difficult for him  to love anyone else.  This mother was too
concerned with appearances -  the perfect clothes, flowers, 
menu, dinner plates, crystal - and far too controlling for  
my tastes. Sherry, your comparison of her to Charity in     
CROSSING TO SAFETY was perfect.                             
                                                            
There are passages of  really beautiful writing in this     
book. I particularly liked the following because it         
expresses something I have felt but could never put into    
words:                                                      
                                                            
"Some days, I dream of a life without sequence, a life all  
mixed up like a crazy salad, in which, when you suddenly    
yearn for a week of childhood, you can have a week of       
childhood, in  which, when you miss the quality of your     
grandmother's voice singing, you can find again your        
grandmother singing, in which, when you want a stretch of   
the calm maturity of middle age, you can settle into a      
stretch of it. I would love to move back and forth, to have 
days saved like summer flowers caught forever in winter ice,
days that I knew were waiting for me. ...what I wanted was  
not to be with my mother every second of every day (a       
programme well calculated to drive us both mad), but to be  
with my mother from time to time for the rest of my days."  
                                                            
Just think how wonderful it would be to spend a day every   
once in a while with your kids when they were babies or to  
be able to pick up the phone and call your Dad again. Time  
is a difficult thing.                                       
                                                            
Ann                                                         


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To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/08
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:    11:11 PM

Anne, I did a Net search because I too, was curious about   
how autobiographical this novel was.  It just had that kind 
of ring to it.  I found one reference which said this is the
same guy that wrote a NYer article about his mother's death 
and that this book is indeed autobiographical.  I'll say no 
more lest I be a plot spoiler.                              
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply    5 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/10
From:   FAVB99B    JANE NIEMEIER         Time:    11:14 PM

Ruth and all,                                               
I started A STONE BOAT while I was waiting for *P to update 
my e-mail.  Any book that starts out in Paris has to be     
good, n'est-ce pas?  Jane who finished BURGUNDY STARS this  
evening also                                                


===============   Reply    6 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     FAVB99B    JANE NIEMEIER         Date:    09/11
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:     1:15 AM

I thought you'd like the Paris part, Jane.                  
                                                            
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply    7 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/12
From:   DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Time:     2:17 PM

Hi, all.                                                    
I finished the book yesterday. I did look up Andrew Solomon 
at a library; I checked the periodical index abstract       
(abstract index?), which listed about sixty articles in     
magazines such as House and Garden, the NY Times Magazine,  
Art Forum, and The New Yorker. Many appeared to be about art
and design, particularly Soviet art. My guess is that Andrew
Solomon is a Solomon Brothers (the investment bank) Solomon;
did any of you guys find this in your research?             
    Are we talking about the book yet or are we waiting     
until more folks jump in?                                   
    --Susan                                                 


===============   Reply    8 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Date:    09/12
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     7:28 PM

Susan,                                                      
I figured he must be connected to Solomon Brothers too after
I read about the $100 million trust fund. I think we're     
ready to discuss this book. I'd love to hear your reactions.
                                                            
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply    9 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/13
From:   NCSH82B    BARBARA MOORS         Time:    11:09 AM

Ann,                                                        
  I *love* that quote.  What a lovely idea.  I would love   
to go back and get some days with my mother when I was a    
little girl and, oh for those first days with my boys as    
babies again....  Would also love to go back to the         
drives in the country with my dad, a large animal vet,      
while I rode with him on his calls and we sang "Found a     
Peanut" off-key.  What a nightmare it would be if you lost  
control though.  There are some days in high school that I  
definitely wouldn't want to drop into by mistake!      Barb 


===============   Reply   10 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     NCSH82B    BARBARA MOORS         Date:    09/13
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:     1:39 PM

Barbara & Ann, I've read that this book is autobiographical.
 Perhaps in some way, it's Solomon's way of doing just that,
choosing days to relive again through his writing.          
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply   11 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     WSRF10B    SHERRY KELLER         Date:    09/13
From:   FNMN56E    LYNN EVANS            Time:     1:48 PM

Sherry, This is off-topic (of the book) but has to do with  
apostrophes... are you writing your note in Word, say, and  
then using the copy/paste buffer to copy it to a post? If   
so, I think you can clear up the problem either by saving   
the note to text and then inserting, or maybe by simply     
changing the font to Courier (I think) so that your         
apostrophes are just those short little strokes rather than 
the fancier strokes that are curved one way or t'other.     
   I might just experiment with this a bit to see if the    
font thing is true! Procrasting as always, Lynn             


===============   Reply   12 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     FNMN56E    LYNN EVANS            Date:    09/13
From:   FNMN56E    LYNN EVANS            Time:     1:55 PM

P.S. No, that doesn't quite do it. What does work though is 
to save the note as text, close the file, and open it back  
up (you'll notice that the apostrophes have gone from       
whatever style they were in to straight up and down). At    
this point you can use the copy/paste buffer to copy from   
Word to prod. note.                                         
  Or else, when the file is closed, just import the text    
file. Lynn                                                  


===============   Reply   13 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     FNMN56E    LYNN EVANS            Date:    09/14
From:   DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Time:     4:11 PM

Hi, everybody.                                              
  By the end of A STONE BOAT, I came to admire it. Out of   
all the characters, the mother became the one that I liked, 
and this, to me, is one of Solomon's successes.             
  That said, I spent out the first third of the novel       
wanting to hurl it against the wall, irritated by the       
family's claustrophobic relationship and by what seemed to  
be European affectations--all those cold suppers, toasted   
breakfasts, and drinks parties. (Some of this, of course,   
has to do with the book's having been first published in    
England, I'm sure.) Now, that I think about it, though, my  
reaction was perhaps similar to those of Harry's lovers; I> 
felt shut out.                                              
  The chapter "Three Loves" was my favorite because it was  
about such a human reaction to really bad news coming down  
the pike, to get lost in a series of affairs. I enjoyed this
chapter's eroticism, too, especially in the scene at the    
club where everybody gets naked. I don't quite understand,  
though, what the narrator (Harry) is talking about when he  
says, "that the sublime is a matter of exchanging easier for
more difficult pleasures."                                  
  The narrator doesn't talk about God, does he? (Unless I   
read this entirely too fast and missed it, which is         
possible.) He goes out of his way not to talk about >       
religion at all. Why do you think this is?                  
  For a completely different treatment of a mother's dying, 
I'd recommend E. M. Broner's GHOST STORIES. Broner uses     
humor to tell her story, something that I missed in A STONE 
BOAT. Her prose is also a lot more pared down than          
Solomon's.                                                  
  As far as the Bloom quote goes, doesn't Bloom teach at    
Yale, the author's alma mater? Solomon thanks him in the    
acknowledgements. Is it possible that Bloom is a former     
teacher or a friend? Do you agree with Bloom's assessment of
the book, though?                                           
  I, too, liked the crazy salad part. And the stone boat>   
passage itself.                                             
  Were you guys really sad when the mother died? Did you    
feel like you knew these characters well? Why does Harry's  
mother keep insisting he have a girlfriend? (One of her last
wishes is to leave her jewelry to her daughters-in-law.     
Distinctly plural!) It definitely seems like there's a lot  
to talk about here.                                         
  One last thought. I also came to admire Solomon's         
completely portrait of a world, one in which patients get   
better rooms because they give a wing to a hospital, in     
which small museums are rented for parties, where money is  
absolutely no consideration. He does this unapologetically> 
which I think he should. The completeness of Solomon's      
depiction of Harry's world reminds me of Terry McMillan's   
WAITING TO EXHALE, with its portrayal of the professional   
black women in Phoenix. Neither is a world I know well, but 
both Solomon and McMillan give their readers good looks at  
these milieus. That is something that I appreciate. And,    
really, that's one of the reasons I read.                   
                                                            
Susan                                                       


===============   Reply   14 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Date:    09/14
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:     5:46 PM

Wow, what parties!  Now that I've got that off my chest, let
me admit that I had a bit of regret that about the          
homosexuality issue.  It's been such a cliche (and now out  
of favor) that homosexual men are the product of a          
controlling mother, or at least the product of a too intense
relationship with their mother.  I found myself wishing that
this idea wasn't floating around to muddy the waters of the 
book.                                                       
                                                            
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply   15 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/14
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     8:25 PM

Susan and Ruth,                                             
Glad you got the real discussion going here. I definitely   
think that this book is worth reading, but it was about a   
world that is very foreign to me -- tons of money,  great   
concern with superficial style,  the suffocatingly          
affectionate mother, New York, gay love affairs, etc. Some  
of the writing was exceptional, but by the end of the book  
the author was ready for the mother to die, and so was I.   
                                                            
 gail is currently rereading Anna Quindlen's ONE TRUE THING,
which also deals with the death of a dying mother who       
commits suicide. Quindlen's book touched me much more deeply
than Solomon's. Maybe it was because the heroine's          
relationship with her mother was both more distant (whose   
wouldn't be compared to Harry's?) and more ambivalent. I    
could relate to that. Also, the secondary characters,       
particularly the husband, were much better drawn. I wonder  
if Solomon's book was so closely based on reality that he   
felt he had to keep the father and brother in the shadows.  
                                                            
Susan, I had an opposite reaction to the chapter detailing  
the homosexual orgy--oops, I mean party scene. I kept       
wanting to shout, hey, guys, hasn't anyone ever hear of     
AIDS? Must be my conservative Midwestern upbringing.  What  
did you think about Harry's heterosexual affair with Helen? 
Yeah, and what about that Helen, who was certainly a mother 
figure if I ever saw one?                                   
                                                            
 Susan,  I have absolutely no idea what the author meant by 
"the sublime is a matter of exchanging easier for more      
difficult pleasures."   If anyone else does, I would really 
like to hear your thoughts. The chapter detailing Harry's   
love affair with Nick, struck me as very sad, but I guess   
that was the point.                                         
Ruth, good point about this story implying that the         
domineering mother was to blame for Harry's homosexuality.  
The author also seemed to hold her accountable for Harry's  
inability to have a successful romantic relationship with   
either sex. (Believe me, I had a lot of sympathy for        
Bernard).                                                   
                                                            
One thing that I found very appealing about this story was  
that the mother was allowed to choose the timing of her own 
death and was able to exit was so much dignity. I am not    
sure how realistic that was. In my experience, death is far 
uglier. But, given the absence of all hope, that is how I   
would like to leave.                                        
                                                            
Sherry, I think it was you who mentioned that this book is  
on college reading lists.  Do you know the courses?         
                                                            
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply   16 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/15
From:   KGXC73A    GAIL SINGER GROSS     Time:     1:43 AM

greetings AMAZING ANN..                                     
                                                            
on college reading list..yes..i too must know about this... 
                                                            
kindly post..                                               
                                                            
i used to waltz over to the SAN FRANCISCO STATE BOOkstore at
the beginning of each semester to go through the books to   
get a handle on what the professors are prescribing!:-)     
 enjoying your discussion....will not be reading this       
book...however you all give it such high marks...glad you   
had a good journey...  gail..hp..a p r..rain in san francisc


===============   Reply   17 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/15
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:     2:09 AM

Glad you brought up the AIDS thing.  Not only did I want to 
stand around handing out condoms during the partyparty      
scene, but what about Helen?  Was she nuts?  Falling into   
bed with a homosexual who she knows has been sleeping       
around?  Solomon could have given us a nice dose of reality 
here and he blew it.                                        
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply   18 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/15
From:   WSRF10B    SHERRY KELLER         Time:     9:28 AM

Ann,                                                        
I said THE BONE PEOPLE was on college reading lists. I've   
never heard of A STONE BOAT before. I would have liked to   
read the entire Bloom review. I think there were parts of   
this book which were exceptional and parts where I almost   
threw the book against the wall, too. But I thought it ended
spectacularly. He quit describing scenes and actually put us
there, instead of removing us. The section about the red    
pills and red fingernails, etc., was riveting.              
Sherry                                                      


===============   Reply   19 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     WSRF10B    SHERRY KELLER         Date:    09/15
From:   MXDD10A    DALE SHORT            Time:    10:39 AM

Ann, Sherry & All: I don't know how people who read as many 
books as CRs do could possibly get THE BONE PEOPLE mixed up 
with THE STONE BOAT.                                     
  Not to be confused with Russell Banks' RULE OF THE BONE,  
Jim Crace's THE GIFT OF STONES, Ursula Hegi's STONES FROM   
THE RIVER, Harriet Doerr's STONES FOR IBARRA, Gordon        
Weaver's GIVE HIM A STONE, Anne Fairbairn's FIVE SMOOTH     
STONES, not to mention Thomas Wolfe's THE WEB AND THE ROCK, 
and...and...and...                                          
  Why are writers so obsessed with stones and bones? Maybe  
because it's such a *hard* profession...Aaarghhh...         
  >>Dale, trying to stonewall in Ala.                       


===============   Reply   20 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     MXDD10A    DALE SHORT            Date:    09/15
From:   DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Time:    11:17 AM

Ann, I think you're right about the secondary characters    
here. They did remain in the background. Some of the        
dialogue was stilted, too.                                  
  Sherry, my guess about the Bloom quote on the front of the
book is that it was a solicited blurb and not part of a     
longer review. I bet Solomon is a former student of Bloom's.
 One of the things I liked about the Three Loves chapter is 
that Solomon finally let us in, and we were right there with
Harry. Frankly, I 'm glad he didn't say anything about      
condoms; I think that would have sounded preachy. As far as 
his sleeping with Helen, I don't think we can assume that it
was unprotected sex. And isn't sleeping with anyone these>  
days risky? Gay, straight, etc.                             
   Now, was that narrator Harry a talkative guy or what? I  
will confess that sometimes when things fell into the       
overwritten/overly sad mode, I found myself inserting comic 
one-liners. Also, the ridiculously perfect portrayal of the 
parents' marriage was something I had a hard time with, but 
perhaps Solomon is saying that Harry needed, for whatever   
reason, to believe that.                                    
                                                            
Susan, admiring Dale's list of all these Stones and Bones   
novels                                                   


===============   Reply   21 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Date:    09/15
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:    12:22 PM

Susan, I assumed that the "perfect marriage" existed more in
Harry's mind than in reality.  Part of his problem.         
                                                            
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply   22 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     MXDD10A    DALE SHORT            Date:    09/15
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:    12:23 PM

Dale, got it! The title of your next novel--- STONES AND    
BONES.  Or maybe BONES AND STONES?                          
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply   23 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Date:    09/15
From:   MXDD10A    DALE SHORT            Time:     1:12 PM

Susan: Your mention of the narrator (in a book I admittedly 
haven't read) being "overly talkative" reminds me of a      
memorable fiction workshop I attended, by the late novelist 
Jesse Hill Ford, years ago.                                 
  Jesse discussed all of the "devices"...read,"alternatives"
...that writers of various cultures have come up with, over 
the centuries/millennia, to get their narrative told in     
spite of societal constraints. He gave a very enlightening, 
and very funny, talk filled with examples from literature,  
much of which focused on dialogue of the 20th-century       
"Western hero"--by definition, a guy of few words. Thereby, 
says Jesse, was invented "the sidekick" as a foil for a guy 
who just didn't talk much...establishing outwardly a cynical
and/or more naive alter ego for the hero, among other       
aspects.                                                    
  All of which is not unlike the Roman/Greek playwrights'   
reliance on the "chorus," who give us the straight sh**     
about everything the locals are intuiting but the principals
are too close to see.                                       
  Narrative/art will inevitably find a way to speak with its
own voice, no matter how intrusive that thread seems when   
it's first introduced into readers' consciousnesses...      
  >>Dale in Ala., waxing verbose about a tradition that     
means a lot to me, however imperfectly I understand it      


===============   Reply   24 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/15
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     8:04 PM

Sherry,                                                     
Well, I thought perhaps STONE BOAT was on a reading list for
a course in gay literature--is there such a thing? Thanks   
for clarifying that.                                        
                                                            
Ruth,  I agree with you 100% about Helen, who seemed like a 
very wooden character to me. I too wanted to shout, Helen,  
are you CRAZY??--even 2 condoms wouldn't have been enough to
make me feel secure with Harry, considering his recent love 
life. Since Helen seemed to represent the voice of dry      
reason in this novel, this part of the novel didn't ring    
true to me. While we are discussing Harry's sex life (which 
really didn't occupy that much of the novel, folks, trust   
me), I was turned off by the episode where he had a perfect 
week of glorious sex with a nameless foreigner.  He made    
such a big deal of the fact that he never even learned this 
guy's  name. Maybe this is just a female reaction. Soon     
after I finished this book, I heard a very articulate older 
gay author interviewed on Fresh Air (sorry I can't remember 
his name) who said that anonymous, rough sex is something   
that appeals to men in general, not just gay men. There     
now--how is that for opening a can of worms? .           
                                                            
I agree that the parent's marriage seemed too perfect. Could
anyone be that perfectly giving and devoted through such a  
long illness? No matter how much you love someone, your     
patience would wear thin at times. I think the story would  
have been more interesting if Solomon had fleshed out some  
of the secondary characters. As it was, at times it was a   
bit  claustrophobic.                                        
                                                            
Nevertheless, I do think that this young author has  a real 
gift with words. Parts of the novel are very beautiful.     
                                                            
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply   25 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/15
From:   DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Time:    10:38 PM

Ann, was it Edmund White you heard on Fresh Air? I didn't   
hear the show, but I know he has a new book out, the third  
in a trilogy that starts with A BOY'S OWN STORY, which I'be 
been meaning to read for years.                             
                                                            
One thing I keep forgetting about Harry is how young he is; 
he is only in his mid-twenties or so, isn't he? Perhaps     
that's why he needs his mother's approval of his choice of  
romantic partners.                                          
  This family is really into aesthetics, especially Harry   
and his mother. Do you think they could be the modern-day   
equivalents of the folks in HOUSE OF MIRTH?   --Susan       

===============   Reply   26 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/15
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:    10:39 PM

As I was reading this book, the thought kept coming to me   
that I hoped the discussion here wouldn't focus mainly on   
the homosexual aspect.  I think the family dynamics were    
very interesting. Like others, I feel some of the characters
could have been fleshed out a bit.  But the relationship    
between the 4 people in this family was intriguing.  And not
completely healthy.  Is any husband as fixated on his wife  
as this one seemed? And why was the other brother, whose    
name I've forgotten, always the one to do the responsible   
thing, to kind of mother the other two, now that the actual 
mother was out of commission.  Did anyone else dislike the  
actual mother, find her as manipulative and controlling as I
did?                                                        
                                                            
And lastly, what was this book REALLY about?   Sexual love  
relationships (including homosexuality)?  Mother/son/family 
love?  Or assisted suicide?                                 
                                                            
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply   27 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/15
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:    10:41 PM

Oops, forgot to add one more alternative.  Or does it fail  
to focus on any one issue as the main issue, because it is  
too closely autobiographical and what's really happening is 
that Solomon is choosing to deal with his particular demons 
by writing this book?                                       
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply   28 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/16
From:   WSRF10B    SHERRY KELLER         Time:     7:56 AM

                                                            
I didn't like the mother much, either, Ruth. She had some   
qualities I admired, but on the whole, women who are that   
"perfection" oriented are bad news. I may have a personal   
bias here because there are women in my life I have to deal 
with who have very similar characteristics. I find myself   
having to deal with the aftermath of all this enforced      
"perfection". Sometimes it's not a pretty sight. Harry was  
24 years old, for heaven's sake, and she was ragging him    
about getting a haircut. He didn't even seem to think there 
was anything unusual about this. I think people should work 
on improving themselves, but the idea of perfection is so   
nebulous. It is sort of like religion. It implies a one true
thing that negates any other truth. It implies there is one 
right way.                                                  
I think  you're right, Ruth, about the themes of the book. I
found the assisted suicide portion the most well-written and
intense. The other parts were a bit too flowery for my      
taste, except for a few passages, the stone boat passage    
being one I really liked.                                   
Sherry                                                      


===============   Reply   29 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     WSRF10B    SHERRY KELLER         Date:    09/16
From:   DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Time:    10:11 AM

Hello, everybody. Ruth, I'm going to be thinking about what 
the book is about. Although the assisted suicide is         
certainly central, I'm not sure that's the book's main      
point. Events do all lead up to that, however. I'll have to 
ponder this one, but off the top of my head, I'd say the    
book is about love.                                         
  One of my favorite scenes was when Harry (the narrator)   
was practicing at his parents' home, and his mother came and
sat down beside him to listen. Harry realized, somehow, that
she had quit planning everything and had come to take one   
day at a time, enjoying as much of the time she had left as 
she was able to. This is when I came to like the mother. >  
For a lot of people, it's hard to live in the moment, and I 
liked the mother a lot for having come to this decision to  
do so.                                                      
                                                            
Susan                                                       


===============   Reply   30 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Date:    09/16
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     9:19 PM

Susan,                                                      
White may have been the guy I heard interviewed. I was      
listening at work and only caught part of it. He had written
a series of books, which were autobiographical in nature but
he classified them as fiction because he changed details to 
make the stories more readable. This sounds reasonable to   
me. I can never figure out how writers of "autobiographies" 
can possibly remember so many details. He was very          
interesting.                                                
Now that you mention it, I can certainly see THE HOUSE OF   
MIRTH connection-- Like you, I started liking the mother 
after she accepted her death and started concentrating      
on creating beautiful memories for her family. I am still   
not sure how realistic that is. This woman was presented as 
having tremendous will power and perhaps there are those who
can eventually face death with so much acceptance. I        
realize, of course, that she first went through this very   
long, angry phase when she was impossible. I thought she    
died very well--too well, in fact, even managing to make    
beautiful speeches to her sons about all that they had meant
to her. I didn't totally buy it. I think that real death is 
much messier. Of course, this was a woman who wanted to do  
everything perfectly. Maybe I don't give her enough credit. 
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply   31 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/16
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     9:31 PM

Ruth,                                                       
I think that this book was basically about the intense love 
between a mother and son, and how one lives through the     
lingering  death of the person you love most. A strong      
secondary theme was Harry's eventual acceptance of his      
sexual identity. I don't think Harry could feel comfortable 
with himself until his mother accepted that part of him.    
                                                            
It is hard for me to imagine how anyone could begrudge this 
woman her assisted suicide, but I am sure there are those   
who might find it controversial.                            
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply   32 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     WSRF10B    SHERRY KELLER         Date:    09/16
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     9:35 PM

Sherry,                                                     
I keep thinking about your comparison of the mother to      
Charity in Stegner's CROSSING TO SAFETY. I think these      
characters have an awful lot in common. I will never forget 
Charity's death, which she refused to let her husband share.
Control was really the name of the game for both women, but 
they expressed it in different ways.                        
                                                            
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply   33 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/18
From:   DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Time:    10:34 AM

Hello, everyone. Y'all are probably winging your way to     
Denver right now. Have fun!                                 
   Yesterday I was doing some work at the library, and right
before it closed, I picked up the issue of The New Yorker   
(May 22, 1995) in which Andrew Solomon's article appeared.  
While the article focuses closely on euthanasia, with quite 
a bit about the Hemlock Society, it does include some       
personal information. In the piece, Solomon refers to A     
STONE BOAT as "sporadically autobiographical" and says that 
it was "most true to life in the description of [his]       
mother's death." And the deathbed scene he describes in The 
New Yorker is very much like the one in A STONE BOAT. >     
   While I am often leery of reading too much autobiography 
into fiction, I found this pretty interesting.              
   In regard to Harry, the novel's narrator, I'm not so sure
that he does accept his own sexuality; I don't know if his  
mother does, either, because, after all, at the end she is  
still talking about saving her jewelry for her              
daughter*s*-in-law.                                         
  Although I'd read the Solomon piece several years ago when
it originally appeared in The NYer, I would not have heard  
of this book if it hadn't been on the CR list. I'm glad to  
have read it, so thanks very much to the nominator.         
--Susan                                                     


===============   Reply   34 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Date:    09/26
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     8:03 PM

Susan,                                                      
Thanks for the report on the NEW YORKER article. Did Solomon
say if his mother actually gave those speeches to her sons  
about how much they had meant to her? If so, I am really    
impressed. I suspect the part about the mother not dying    
right away was from real life.                              
                                                            
Have you read Anna Quindlen's ONE TRUE THING, which also    
deals with the right to die?                                
                                                            
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply   35 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/26
From:   DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Time:     8:21 PM

Ann, yes, Solomon said that his mother did say to him and   
his brother how loved they were. In his article, he says she
said this to them together; in the book, it's separately,   
right?                                                      
  I loved Anna Quindlen's work when she was a reporter for  
the Times, especially a column called Around New York (or   
something like that). I have picked up the novel you're     
talking about, but for some reason put it down before       
reading too far in it. Maybe it's time to try it again.     
Esther Broner's GHOST STORIES is a good one, too.           
                                                            
Susan, sorry to have missed the Denver fiesta               


===============   Reply   36 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Date:    09/26
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:     8:36 PM

I keep thinking about how they all went in the other room   
and left the mother to die alone and wondering if that's the
way it really happened.  Somehow it doesn't seem like       
something someone would think up.  It sounds really         
heartless to leave her like that.  But on another level I   
can understand not wanting to watch her die.                
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply   37 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/26
From:   FAVB99B    JANE NIEMEIER         Time:     9:49 PM

Hi all,                                                     
I finished A STONE BOAT a couple of days ago and have been  
thinking about it quite a bit.  I came to admire the mother 
at the end of the book.  The part where she says to Harry   
that it is his fault that she got cancer is just awful.  But
I had to admire her at the end when she apologized to Harry 
for saying that.  I think she wanted to hurt the people     
closest to her when she became ill, because she was hurting 
so much.  Perhaps, she subconsciously wanted to share the   
pain with her loved ones.                                   
                                                            
The THREE LOVES chapter was a bit "talky" for me when AS    
was describing his love scene with Nick.  Harry talked his  
way through the whole sex episode.  I have also been        
thinking about the "exchanging easy pleasures for more      
difficult ones" philosophy.  From the books I have read, the
films I have seen, and the gay friends I have talked to, the
casual sex with several partners is all too common for gay  
males. There was a wonderful autobiographical French.film   
called SAVAGE NIGHTS that dealt with this subject.  The main
character wrote the script, starred in the film, and then   
died of AIDS shortly after the film was released.  In this  
film he showed scenes of young men having sex with multiple 
partners under a highway in Paris.  It was frightening      
because the search for "love" and acceptance was frantic.  I
got the impression that Harry was doing similar things. I   
thought that this represented the easy pleasures while a    
more lasting relationship would represent difficult pleasure
s                                                           
Anyway, I also liked the part of the book where the mother  
goes crazy and screams at everyone after her second surgery.
 I feel that most of us would react this way.  Later, she   
calms down and becomes very philosophical.  I found that    
harder to believe than the screaming scene.                 
                                                            
Jane who has thought a lot about this book                  


===============   Reply   38 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     WSRF10B    SHERRY KELLER         Date:    09/27
From:   NDKB53A    THERESA SIMPSON       Time:     0:35 AM

I did not read this selection, I have too many books (and   
other matters) to attend to ... but I am curious about the  
title.  Does anyone know why "The Stone Boat?"  It reminds  
me of the elaborate stone boat built by the Dowager Empress 
of China - the one who ruled over China, plus her son, the  
Last Emperor, in the final years of China's monarchy.       
                                                            
Theresa                                                     


===============   Reply   39 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     NDKB53A    THERESA SIMPSON       Date:    09/27
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:     1:40 AM

The mother always wanted everything to be absolutely perfect
and absolutely beautiful, as if it were built from gems.    
But you can't travel in a boat made from diamonds and       
rubies, after all they're stone.  Stone boats don't float   
too well.                                                   
                                                            
Ruth, hoping she's remembering this somewheres near         
correctly                                                   


===============   Reply   40 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Date:    09/27
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     4:41 PM

Susan,                                                      
Because the entire book deals with dying,  ONE TRUE THING is
not a book for everyone.It was a book that really resonated 
for me.                                                     
                                                            
We wished you had been in Denver, too--hopefully next year? 
                                                            
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply   41 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/27
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     4:51 PM

Ruth,                                                       
My mother died alone, unexpectedly, in a nursing home after 
many years of illness. My Dad died of lung cancer and we had
plenty of advance notice. He had gone into a coma and the   
hospice nurses told us that it wouldn't be long. All four of
us children were there when he died, and it was very        
important to me that I be there when the time came. His     
actual passing was very peaceful. The part leading up to the
coma was not.                                               
                                                            
In this book, the family took an active part in the mother's
death and maybe that is why it was harder for them to       
watch her go. I believe very strongly in the right to die   
and admire them for helping her. However, I am sure that    
they participated with a great deal of ambivalence.         
                                                            
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply   42 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     FAVB99B    JANE NIEMEIER         Date:    09/27
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     5:00 PM

Jane,                                                       
I liked what you said about the exchanging easy pleasures   
for more difficult ones.                                    
                                                            
 Harry seemed to realize how ridiculous he was being with   
Nick, but he just couldn't seem to shut up, could he?       
                                                            
I also agree that the scenes that showed the mother angry   
and lashing out were realistic. By the time the mother      
reached the acceptance stage, she had almost turned into a  
saint. If this part of the novel was really autobiographical
Solomon truly had an exceptional mother.                    
I am curious. Did anyone envy Harry for the close           
relationship he had with his mother? Very few people have   
that close a bond with another human being.                 
                                                            
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply   43 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/27
From:   DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Time:     5:18 PM

Ann,                                                        
                                                            
I definitely didn't envy Harry's relationship with his      
mother; it seemed too claustrophobic.                       
                                                            
And I do hope to make the next CR convention!            
                                                            
Susan, happy as a clam with a new Gateway computer (I       
abandoned Apple...)                                         


===============   Reply   44 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Date:    09/27
From:   FAVB99B    JANE NIEMEIER         Time:    10:47 PM

Ann,                                                        
I think that Harry's relationship with his mother was too   
close. It seems to me that he will never get over her death.
Although I am not a parent, I am a daughter.  It seems to me
that a parent should reach a balance in that the parent is  
close to the child but not too close.  The child should be  
able to survive alone without the parent.  I am talking     
about an adult child not a young child.  I once taught with 
a man who at one time, I heard tell, was a fantastic        
teacher.  By the time I knew him, his mother had died and he
had given up doing a good job.  According to my students, he
would fall asleep in class and the students were very cruel 
to him.  Of course, I don't know how I will react when my   
parents are gone, because I am lucky enough to have both of 
them.  But I have been grateful to them all of my adult     
life, because when the time came for me to leave home, I was
able to do so without too much fear and with a lot of       
excitement.  Jane who thinks that children should accept    
their parents as they are and not expect them to be perfect 


===============   Reply   45 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     FAVB99B    JANE NIEMEIER         Date:    09/27
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:    11:06 PM

Jane, I think you're absolutely right.  From day one a      
parent's biggest job is to teach the kids to get along      
without them.  Harry's mother was a failure.                
                                                            
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply   46 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Date:    09/27
From:   KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Time:    11:07 PM

Susan, we're on our 3rd Gateway and have been very happy    
with them, especially their Customer Service.               
Ruth                                                        


===============   Reply   47 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     KDEX08B    RUTH BAVETTA          Date:    09/28
From:   DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Time:     7:00 PM

Ruth,                                                       
                                                            
I am quite charmed with the Gateway; so far we're getting   
along fabulously. The customer service aspect was one of the
reasons I decided on this one. Love those boxes too.        
                                                            
As for Harry, isn't it too soon to tell if he's going to get
over his mother's death? After all, he's still ostensibly   
pretty young. I guess I see their relationship as more of a 
two-way street--that they both chose this for some reason. I
don't see it as necessarily the mother's fault.             
--Susan                                                     


===============   Reply   48 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     DNBR75A    S THOMSEN             Date:    09/29
From:   TQWX67A    ANN DAVEY             Time:     8:04 PM

Susan,                                                      
Good point. Now that I am one, I'm all for cutting mothers a
little slack now and then.                                  
                                                            
Ann                                                         


===============   Reply   49 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     FAVB99B    JANE NIEMEIER         Date:    09/30
From:   NCSH82B    BARBARA MOORS         Time:     8:17 PM

Just finished this book last night, came to read the notes  
and am relieved that the discussion is still going on...I   
hate it when I finish late and folks just aren't interested 
anymore.                                                    
  You know, I thought one of the themes of this book was    
the difficult transition from a very close immediate family 
to your own space in the world.  It seems to me that        
sometimes you can create too close a situation, add to it   
some of your own myth about its perfection and then never   
find its equal again.  Helen seemed to be telling Harry     
repeatedly that this was his trap and I think I agree with  
her.  Harry's mother was the creator of this aura of        
perfection, but the family was the product.                 
  Also, though I too got impatient with this book at times, 
some of the verbal pictures were absolute perfection.  Was  
anyone else struck by the description of the peonies at the 
part and their comparison with roses?  I don't think I'll   
ever look at peonies quite the same again.  And, Helen's    
description of their family as a stone boat was a perfect   
metaphor.                                                   
  Regarding the Harold Bloom blurb, I think that            
Harold must be a friend of the family...or at least a       
friend of Andrew's.  In the Acknowledgements, Harold is     
included in a list of people that Solomon thanks for giving 
"wonderfully close responses to single drafts."             
  Also, what did you think was the significance of Harry's  
soliloquy during his lovemaking with Nick?  Was it to try   
to block out the physical?  Or, was it part of the hysteria 
with which he was pursuing every sensation at that point to 
block out or survive his grief?  I didn't really get it and 
it got almost ridiculous eventually...or was that the point?
  Ann, I heard that Edmund White interview on Fresh Air too.
Wish I'd known you'd heard it in Denver as it really got me 
thinking.  Came home immediately and asked my husband if he 
thought that White could possibly be right.  He saw it as   
one more overgeneralization on the basis of gender.  I      
still was left with some questions particularly concerning  
this tendency to have an incredible number of partners,     
sometimes in a very short time, among gay men at some point 
in their lives.  It was true of a gay friend of mine a long 
time ago too.  And, Harry's behavior in this book, not just 
during the period that his mother was dying, brought the    
whole subject back up again.                                
  One more question...didn't you kind of expect Harry's     
brother to be a bit jealous?  I didn't get the sense that   
he was nearly as close to his mother as Harry was.  But, in 
a sense, he seemed glad about that.  And did you notice     
that the mother became closer to him at the beginning of    
the book when he broke up with his girlfriend?              
  Interesting book...not great literature, but some very    
arresting moments.  I loved ONE TRUE THING and could        
certainly relate to it more.  However, this book was really 
about something else.  It seems to me that the intensity of 
their relationship was the more important part of the story 
and its loss, of course.  Come to think of it, the          
relationship with the father in ONE TRUE THING was the      
intense one initially and it too was lost though he was     
still alive.                                                
                         Barbara...rambling because I'm     
                         tired....                          


===============   Reply   50 of Note   11 =================

 
     

To:     NCSH82B    BARBARA MOORS         Date:    09/30
From:   FAVB99B    JANE NIEMEIER         Time:     9:56 PM

Barbara,                                                    
I felt the same way about Harry's monologue during his love 
scene with Nick.  I thought, "Why doesn't Nick tell him to  
shut up?"  I was wondering if Harry was trying to distance  
himself from Nick, because he didn't want to be too close to
anyone at that point in his life.  You mentioned the        
multiple partners that many gay men have.  I think that this
is a sign of desperation.  They all seem to be desperately  
searching for happiness or at least forgetfulness.  One of  
my good friends who is gay says that they want acceptance   
because they are not accepted by most of society.  These are
the easy pleasures that Harry talks about.                  
I, too, loved the description of the peonies.  I have always
loved those deep rose peonies, but they certainly don't last
long in the garden - two weeks maybe.  Jane in sunny        
Colorado        oard:      BOOKS & WRITING   
Topic:      B


***  ADDENDUM TO THE STONE BOAT THREAD  ***

   Some months after we had the preceding discussion, Andrew
Solomon, author of A STONE BOAT, came across the Constant
Reader website and noticed we had his novel on our reading list.
What follows are his comments on that discussion.


     To: VRCH78A
   From: Andrew Solomon 
Subject: Re: Discussion, Part 2
   Date: 04/15/98 02:52 AM

Dear Allen Crocker:

Thanks so much for forwarding all of these.  I may write to
some of the participants individually, but I thought I'd give
some general responses for the moment, and these follow.  I'd
love to know more about the group and what it is and how it
works.

Yours,
Andrew Solomon



Dear Everyone:

I was looking for something else on the internet a few days
ago and came upon a mention of my book on your list.  I
e-mailed Allen Crocker and asked whether I might see the
discussion, and he forwarded the whole thing to me. I'd love
to respond to each of you individually, but schedules are a bit
tight at the moment, so I'll just write some general remarks,
which I hope will be of interest to you all (if not, skip 'em);
I felt a real warmth from you as a group, and was really very
moved by your serious and attentive and intelligent readings
of my novel.  I thought you all brought a great openness to
the book.

First, let me straighten out a few things about me.  Sadly,
I do not have a $100 million trust fund, though if any of
you would like to set one up I'll be glad to give you my
social security number and any other information you require.
I grew up in what I guess you'd call an upper middle class
family, and my father has had some more substantial business
success in the last few years.  The article about eligible
bachelors was about me, but it was full of exaggerations and
fictional details.  I am not related in any way to Salomon
Brothers (note spelling).  Harold Bloom was the advisor for my
senior essay at Yale, and he and I have remained friends ever
since; in fact, he now lives around the corner from me and we
see each other frequently.  He had asked to read the novel,
as he had known me through the period when my mother was ill
and had met her once.  He called me on the phone shortly after
I gave him the manuscript, and said that he loved it. When I
mentioned this to my editor, he immediately said he wanted to
get an official quote for the book, and Harold sent him a short
letter, from which my editor extracted the words on the cover.
I have done quite a broad range of writing (and wonder how the
"eligible bachelor" article could have turned up on its own
without the material I think of as more substantial).  I wrote
my first book, when I was in my twenties, about Soviet artists
and the changes in their lives during the glasnost period. Since
then, I've written regularly for The New York Times Magazine,
where I am now a Contributing Writer (it's a dopey title, but
that's the Times) and I also write for The New Yorker, where I
published an article on depression recently.  I have spent time
in and have written about Russia, China, Turkey, Taiwan, South
Africa, Angola, and various other exotic spots; I'm a dual
national (UK/US) but was born in the United States and define
myself as an American.  I've written several speeches for
President Clinton (on foreign policy--not on domestic affairs
of either kind) and I have also written for a broad range of
other magazines: Artforum, The New Republic, The Specatator
(the English magazine, not the alarming American one), Travel
and Leisure, the TLS, Icarus, Interview, etc.  I did do a stint
writing articles for House and Garden long ago, when I was
writing anything to scrape by (oh, if I'd only had that trust
fund!).

I've often said that A Stone Boat is autobiographical in its
emotional trajectories and fictional in many of its scenes and
narratives.  My mother did die of cancer when I was 27.  She
died as described in the book, and the monologues in the chapter
about her death are transcribed almost word-for-word; my father,
my brother, and I wrote them down that night.  We had had a party
for the publication of my first book, and my mother did keep
herself alive to attend that party; she died exactly a week later,
after taking an overdose of pills, as she had intended, as the
novel describes. I'm interested that some people feel that we
abandoned her by withdrawing to another room after she had said
her last; once she had gone deep below the surface and had lost
all consciousness, we felt it would be gorey to sit there
watching her breathe less and less, and she had to some extent
made it clear that she thought of those last words as her exit.
We all felt that she did not want us sitting around with her
body; that was part of the cleanness of her departure.  I think
if she'd been able to finish saying what she had to say and
dissolve into thin air, she'd have done that.

The quote about the sublime as the exchange of easier for more
difficult pleasures comes from Lucretius and is quoted in several
books by Harold Bloom, from whom I first heard it.  I think the
idea is that the easy pleasures, those that make no demands and
require no sacrifices, are usually less important and less
profound than the difficult pleasures that entail some self-
denial and some suffering.  At the simplest level, you can say
that social acquaintances who are sheer fun are often less
meaningful than engaged friends in one's long-term committment to
whom pain and conflict play some part.  Harry is pretty desperate
when he quotes that line; he's really trying to justify all his
suffering, to insist that it has some value.  He brings it up
when he really knows that Nick is going to leave him, when he's
driving Nick away so that Nick won't just leave him without
any justification.  The message of my book, I think, is that
Harry's suffering DOES have some value, that he learns and grows
through it.

I never thought of the book as a book about sexuality, except as
Harry's realtionship to and understanding of his own sexuality
are entangled with his complex relationship to his mother.  In my
view, it's a book about the intense relationship between a mother
and a son, and about the way that the experience of loss alters
both individuals and their understanding of each other.  The
mother, who was in many ways very wonderful all along--but who
was also possessive and terribly controlling and judgmental--turns
into a much more open, relaxed, accepting person, whose intense
love becomes a gift rather than a demand.  Harry, who has been
brilliant and interesting and adoring--but also childish and
repressed and manipulative--becomes an open person, able to
understand himself in relation to his mother and outside the
relationship to his mother, freed from a narrow and angry life
into a big, open, free, and terribly confusing world full of
previously unimagined possibilities.  And the relationship between
them, in which love had been so elaborately tangled with
distortions and irritations and frustrations and
miscommuinications, eventually seperates itself out and becomes
a singular, apparent emotion, which each of them can see and
experience for itself.  By the time that Harry's mother dies, she
has distilled her love into something completely positive, and
has made it the basis for a deep self-confience in Harry, rather
than the basis for a deep neurosis.  The book is about the
process through which people become their best selves, about how
to make of difficulty something invaluable.  When Harry's mother
reaches her point of acceptance, to which several of you
responded, she has learned a real lesson, and I think she does
quite a lot in the remaining short time to teach that lesson to
her sons.  

(By the way--Harry, the narrator, clearly tries to exclude
Freddy some of the time, as though he is trying to own his
mother, but this was intended to indicate an edge to Harry's
possessiveness; if you look at and listen to what happens,
you can see, I think, that the mother herself does not neglect
Freddy, that she really pays pretty close attention to both of
her children.)

For whatever it's worth as an autobiographical matter, I had
never had a sustained sexual relationship with a woman before
my mother's illness, and had described myself as gay.  I did
become involved with a good friend (who is somewhat but not
entirely Helen-like) when my mother was ill; eighteen months
after my mother's death I became involved with a woman with whom
I lived for two years; I then was involved with a man for about
two years; and I am now living with a woman again; we've been
together for nearly three years and are thinking of marrying.
If we were to split up, I might be involved with a man and I
might be involved with a woman (though I think I will spare you
all a full discourse on that question).  I do not think that
there is a specific link between sexuality and family
relationships, but I think that sexuality is multi-determined,
and that Harry has expressed his homosexuality in part as a
way to distance himself from his mother.  It is when he stops
fighting for that distance, and experiences sex simply as 
sex, and love simply as love, that he discovers both the
passionate qualities of gay sex and the erotic/emotional
content of heterosexual sex.  The rather hollow relationship
with Bernard gives way to two models, each of which is
vital and engaging in a way that Harry could not previously have
conceived. He ends the book knowing that many things are possible,
and totally unsure of where to go and what to do.  It's not ideal
and it's not comfortable, but it's a giant stride forward
nonetheless.

Several of you suggest that he is not "recovering" from his
mother's death at the end of the book.  She has been dead a few
months there, and it seems to me that the insensitivity of
walking out of the room in which she is breathing her last
breaths in a comatose state is considerably less than the
insensitivity of being totally focused on recovery  a few months
after such a loss.  I think that Harry will survive this trauma;
that he will be a stronger person for the battle; that it will
not be easy; and that he will miss his mother in some ways for
the rest of his life.  But I think she has in fact preapred her
children to manage without her, and that when Harry says his
final bit about her love being not protective cotton, but the 
steel inside him, that that's what he's talking about.  He's
actually got quite a lot of the grit that allowed his mother to
come to his party, or so I think.

By the way: I am HIV-, and I assume that Harry probably was as
well.  The kind of sexual experience described in that nightclub
sequence is not unsafe; people are mostly really just rubbing
against one another.  It's socially dubious and emotionally
disturbing and it does have a frantic, desperate quality as
well as a liberated escstatic quality.  I do think that many
men have extreme sexual fantasies of one kind or another, and
that gay men, having already transgressed a social boundary,
feel they might as well trasngress the remaining boundaries
(or as someone I know once said, if you have found the forbidden
fruit and decided to taste it, you might as well make a big
apple pie while you're at it).  There is certainly no indication
that Harry and Helen had unsafe sex.  At the time that I was
writing A Stone Boat, there were many books being published
which dealt with the specific complexities of avoiding unsafe
encounters, which detailed every application of a condom and
so on; and I admired the authors' attempts to include the
new sexual rules in their stories.  But the descriptions of
sex in this book are lyrical and emotional; there are no four-
letter words, no elaborate explanations of exactly what people
are doing to each other, no extended depictions of how one act
is performed and how it leads to another.  To have put condoms
in the middle of all this would have concretized it, and I
wanted to show Harry as someone resistant to the concrete
mundane qualities of love and of sex, someone who could be
practical in life but who was given to a kind of nostalgia in
memory that erased the mundane.  Whether Helen was taking a
foolish emotional risk is another matter, but Helen's eyes were
open, and I would like to think that she saw and participated in
Harry's ambivalence, that she expected trouble but really felt
for him and wanted to connect to him every way she could.  And
that she also wanted not to close off any possibilities until
they had been tried.  

I chose to set the book in a wealthy millieu because I did not
want it to be put through any of the readings that identity
politics and Marxist cricticism have popularized in the last
decade.  I didn't want anyone to say that the real problem for
these people was that they didn't have enough health insurance;
that they really couldn't solve their problems because they were
frozen out of the areas in which they might have wished to
succeed; that the issue for them was that they'd never been able
to make the choices that a democracy should guarantee.  These
people have everything in external terms, so their lives are
formed by their internal emotional realities, and internal
emotional realities are what interest me most.  I also do have
aesthetic leanings, and loved describing the opulence.  Thanks
to those who responded to the words about peonies; I get a lot
of pleasure from describing those flowers, and from describing
all the rest of the almost incidental beauty that surrounds
these people, and that gives them (especially Harry's mother)
so very much pleasure.  On the one hand, she was too focused on
perfection (toward the end, she says that so many things she
thought mattered really don't matter); on the other hand, she
acheived a lot of perfection and some of that perfection gave
enormous pleasure to her and to those around her.  Some of the
perfection came at too high a cost; some of it was glorious.


I'm thrilled to be compared to The House of Mirth, which is
one of my all-time favorite books.  I'll be looking forward to
reading the Stegner, which I don't know.  

I think that my mother was an extraordinary woman, and that my
parents did have an extraordinary marriage, and I feel
enormously lucky to have grown up the way I did.  I know also
that it was not always such an easy pleasure; our lives
definitely included some ugly moments of conflict.  All my 
friends always thought it would be great to be in my family
instead of in their families, and that was not always the
easiest way to live.  I was aware of a public perception (in
our limited public) or all of us that was not wholly inaccurate
but that was often burdensome.  When I felt as though I wasn't
living up to this standard of elegance, brilliance, and
happiness, I felt as though I was failing, and that was hard
for me.  These days, I have no ultimate regrets about having
grown up in my family; I can't imagine a family I would have
preferred, and if I'd grown up elsewhere, I'd be someone else,
I guess.  The novel is really about what it was like to grow
up as I did, and what it was like to see a chaos of ambivalent
emtions resolve themselves.  

It is, however, a novel.  I wanted to make a central character
who was naive, confused, unable fully to interpret his own
behaviours and actions; and I wanted to give him a performer's
ego (performers are very different creatures from composers or
writers), an ego that prevented him from recognizing the origins
of his own behavior and controlling it.  Harry's a bit wild and
a bit foolish, and he needs the wisdom of Helen to keep him on
balance and to help him understand things.  (Interestingly,
among the letters I've had from the great public, Helen is
usually a favorite character.  I've even had letters from
people who read the book as wholly autobiographical and
wanted to meet her!)  Harry fails to appreciate a certain fine
sensibility in Bernard; he cannot accept his ambivalence about
Helen; and he obsesses about Nick, who is sexy but a real jerk.
He ignores his father and his brother; he notices the qualities
of his parents' wonderful marriage, but doesn't really examine
it closely enough to imagine a way to include what is best in
it in his own life.  The formal challenge of the book was to
create a narrator who was unaware of things that I thought I
understood, and to convey through his narrative the insights he
didn't have.  I hope that I succeeded in doing this, at least
in places.

You're all fantastic readers, the kind of readers of whom
writers dream. You picked up on lots of interesting things,
and several of your comments will stay with me and change
how I see passages in my own book.  I've actually had a lot
of letters since the book was published, and I don't usually
babble on quite so much as I have allowed myself to do here
(possibly boring you all to death).  Perhaps there was a
special thrill in the sensation of eavesdropping that I had
reading all this e-mail, but your responses affected me a lot,
and made me feel anew that there is a point to writing fiction,
that it does touch people, that it has its place in the modern
cynical world!

If any of you want to be in touch (but please don't feel
obliged), you can reach me at andsolomon@mindspring.com.
If not, all my best to all of you, and thanks--

Andrew Solomon