Dear Max (Les Bienveillants)

[skull_bearer]

I am going to assume you were actually a really fucked up straight guy, because reading you as gay has finally become not just unbelievable, but homophobic. I'm blaming the author for that one, because if I compare how you see men to how you see that woman you met in the swimming baths there's no fucking way you're gay, with men it's like 'wham bamn thank you sir', woman it's like 'wow, look at her eyes, they're deep and wow look at those lovely white hands (all the fucking women have white hands, I know you frequent party members but wow, variation much?). It's like how the lesbian stereotype goes 'or they're only lesbos because they haven't had a good MAN'. You're only gay because you haven't found a good WOMAN (ie your sister). It's offensive and it sucks.
Seriously, I have precisely zero respect for you either way by this point, because unlike Johannes or Mengele or indeed any other member of my nazi harem you clearly have neither a  warped conscience nor a code of morals, no matter how fucked up, and I just can't like you, no matter how you monologue. You're offensive and you're not hot and frankly at this point you're boring me. Die in a camp, fucktard.

Comments

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

Mhm, funny reaction. I'm not going to argue with you about this; if you can't stand him, I won't change that. Just had to say something about the whole women vs. men thing. Yeah, he does react differently to women - but it's never sexual. He sees a woman and thinks, "oh, it's pretty", the way you'd think that about a flower or another pretty thing. It's not a "I wanna touch it"-pretty, it's a "I wanna look at it from afar"-pretty. While men ... well, with men it's clearly a sexual attraction. I'm not going to argue about how fucked up Max is, but c'mon, he's not straight. I'm not even sure he's bi, because even his sister isn't really a woman, but this idealised mental image. Whatever, it's too early to rant. :D

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

Ah, I still want to add to my rant that Helen is indeed all kinds of annoying. ;) I kinda hoped the whole time she'd die, but then again I always hate female characters. ;)

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

I don't know why, I quite liked her. I kept thinking 'girl, get out of the city and AWAY from this loony and shack up with a nice dentist in Switzerland or something'.

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

I found her a) very Sue-ish, b) very annoying, c) completely random. I have no idea what the hell Littel was thinking. I don't have all that much to criticise about this book, but I do think that it would have been a lot better without her.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...now THIS seems VERY interesting...who is this Max fellow? I sooo want to read this.

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

Maximilien Aue, the narrator and main character of Les Bienveillantes/The Kindly Ones.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Beat you to it, thanks to Google. I'm ordering the book at amazon as we speak. Now what was the name of that other novel, where the character had that wonderful line of showing up for an SS promotion or something with arse full of semen? I need to order that one, too.

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

That was the very same character in the very same novel; no need to order another book. ;) Yay, if I keep this up I will get everyone I know to read Les Bienveillantes, bwahaha! ;)

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

WUNDERBAR!!! Can't wait to read this, I just finished a review of it.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

It's a very good book for all my dislike of the main character, so go for it. prepare to be here for a long time though, it's 1400 pages of very tiny text.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Actually, I would say my problem is that he reacts far more strongly to female than to men. His descriptions of women as more closely observed, while with men they tend towards the summary.
I think that what gets me is that certainly later on in the book he makes it very clear that his homosexuality is an act of conscious choice, to bring him closer to his sister and because he will not allow himself to have sex with women.

I wish this was a world in which such a thing would be chalked up to just Max being 'fucked up', but his homosexuality is so familiar to the homophobic idea of 'sick, peverted, conscious choice homosexuality' that it is disturbing. It's like how the protrayl in District 9 (a film I love) of the Nigerian gangsters got so much flak was because it subscribed to some very racist tropes. Yes, they were clearly used without meaning to be racist, but the associations were still there and it did not make for comfortable watching.

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but then again you shouldn't forget that Max isn't just a character described by a neutral, observing narrator, but that he's the narrator himself and of course he sees himself quite differently than somebody else would. HE thinks that is homosexuality is his conscious choice, that doesn't mean that it's true or that the author thinks it. It's the character who wants to think that. Also, the way I see it, Max is purposely downplaying the importance of the men he meets. Thomas means obviously more than a little to him, but Max is constantly trying to convince us that he really just likes hanging around with him, nothing more. Same with Voss, because Max wants to believe (and wants us to believe) that he can only love his sister, and therefore he can't sleep with men he likes and respects, because he might risk falling in love with them. Or that, what's his name, Pathenau? Max describes in big detail how he seduced him, but then he only tells us that he fucked with him regularly - happily omitting that there must have been -some- sort of emotional connection with a guy with whome he spent so much time.
So, if Max' relationships with men are either not sexual, or purely sexual, it's not because the author is trying to tell us that Max is a sick, perverted guy who just hasn't found the right woman yet. It's because Max himself would rather be a sick, perverted guy who fucks around with men he doesn't care about because he's too scared to start a proper relationship with someone like Thomas or Voss. It's not homophobic or anything, but simply Max, as the narrator, trying to present himself in a certain way, also because Max is still a man of his time, who might accept that he likes getting fucked, but not that he'd want a serious relationship with a man.
My rants get longer and longer. ;) I hope this even makes sense to you. :)

I'm not going to say anything about District 9, because I found it quite boring and already forgot most details. ;)

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

It does, but frankly I think you're reading a bit too much into it. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I'd like to think that but I can't see any reason to.

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

*shrug* If you think so. I'm just trying to make sense of Max, and "he's a stereotyped pseudo-gay" is not a good enough explanation for me. ;) (Or I'm just scarred by too many literature classes. ;))

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to reading the book, but I've also read a great deal of gay male literature, from John Rechy to John Preston to the "Straight to Hell" chap books. And having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I've been around gay men and had gay friends since I was 10--almost 42 years now. There are so many different nuances in play in how a man thinks of himself sexually, especially a man who's had sexual relations with other me. I happen to agree with Gore Vidal, that there are no homosexual people, only homosexual acts--I hate the idea of people being pigeon-holed by a so-called sexual "identity." On the one hand there are men (and women) who clearly consider themselves exclusively gay, and have felt that way since they were perhaps 3 - 5 years old. But there are also a lot of people for whom there is no clear divide; I've known men who enjoy sleeping with women but can only imagine having an emotional attachment to another man. I've also known men who have been the complete opposite--they enjoy men purely for the raw sex,they find the sex much more exciting than with women, but still enjoy sex and prefer emotional attachments with women. And I've known men who just enjoy sex, period, and find it tremenously exciting with any willing partner of legal age. Of course, it gets even MORE complicated when you add BDSM to the mix!! If people want to define themselves as strictly homosexual or strictly heterosexual, that's fine--they just shouldn't pigeonhole other people, and they need to be prepared to be confused and upset when they find themselves attracted to the "wrong" gender in accordance with their self-definition--because it happens to EVERYONE, no matter how gay or how straight they think they are. Why in hell can't we all just enjoy ourselves and each other without having to worry about identity/gender bullshit??