Bertram Cope's Year

I've always thought Bertram Cope's Year, first published in 1919, as one of the (if not the) first totally gay-positive novels. No dead homo at the end punished for being an abomination, no villagers with flaming torches, no career or life destroyed by scandal, no bashing, no agonized guilt-ridden self-destruction. Just what might be described as a gay Jane Austen novel, except here the main character, a young grad student at a small Midwestern university, cohabitating with a special male friend, is desperately and humorously trying to avoid marriage at the hands of three eligible and very determined young women--the novel's version of the three Fates, you might say. And yet, it might not all be quite so clear as that. Oh, there's no doubt that gay-ness is to be had aplenty in Fuller's novel. There's Basil Randolph, a middle-aged businessman who relocates to a cozy bachelor pad, purely for the purpose of luring Bertram into sleeping over after some late night chat. There's Medora Philips, Basil's middle-aged female friend, who represents "society" in the novel and who seems to sense Bertram's preferences and observe his pursuit by the girls with humor and skepticism. There's Medora's brother-in-law and Basil's friend, Joseph Foster, confined to a wheelchair, contemptuous of Bertram and of Basil's fascination with him (but perhaps that's only sour grapes because he feels himself no longer in a position to compete for Bertram's affections himself). And there's Arthur Lemoyne, Bertram's companion, who joins the university's drama club and is then asked to leave after giving a too-close-for-comfort portrayal of a young girl and staying in character a little too long after the play had ended. But Bertram himself is a bit more mysterious--as indeed he remains mysterious to all the characters who observe him with so much interest throughout the novel. He certainly appears to be sexually or, at the very least, romantically involved with Arthur, and there are passages in the novel that seem to suggests that he is pretty definitely "gay". And, mulling over the requirements of courting and engagements and marriage, Bertram seems pretty clear in expressing, at least, what he does not desire: "For he was conscious of a fundamental repugnance to any such scheme of life and was acutely aware that--for awhile, at least, and perhaps for always--he wanted to live in quite a different mode." (171) But still, not to be a spoilsport or anything, you can't quite erase that "for awhile, at least". Today, after a "sexual revolution," a feminist movement, and forty plus years of gay activism, it may be difficult to imagine a young man who simply isn't sure whether he wants to "remain gay" or end up married and "straight", but what Fuller's work (as well as others at the time, including Hemingway and Anderson) suggests is that, in a time before gay-ness was a clearly recognized "identity", and before men with same-sex desires had models of what a happy l

A young man about 24 or 25 with beautiful blond hair and good teeth enrolls in a University in the Midwest to get an advanced degree in English while teaching students. A woman in her 40's, along with her niece and two other young women, a secretary and a boarder, cannot leave the young man alone. The older woman Medora Phillips would like to see him wed her niece, as would the niece. But the other two young women want him as well, along with an older man in his 50's. Of course the blond, Bertram Cope, already has a boy friend, who, when Cope writes him that he has somehow gotten himself engaged to Niece Amy, responds in what is my favorite line from the entire novel: "This thing can't go on, and you know it as well as I do. Nip it. Nip it now." Does this scenario sound familiar? In Andrew Solomon's "Afterward" he opines that Bertram Cope is an "anti-hero" in that he is quite ordinary, not remarkably intelligent, and weak, both physically and emotionally. I disagree. Bertram is the Gay Everyman, at least until the most recent times when the love that dare not speak its name is on the ballot in many states in an attempt to get to the altar. Practically every gay man knows the frustration of finding out, sometimes too late, that by being friendly and polite to single women-- something our mothers taught us to do-- we have either sent mixed signals or they believe what they want to-- we have convinced them that we want to wed them. Henry Blake Fuller self-published this novel is 1919. It was decades ahead of its time and is certainly interesting from a historical point of view. On the other hand, it remains relevant and is well worth reading. Mr. Fuller writes well and with great subtlety.

If you are a fan of Wharton and Forster, then you will apprciate this wonderful novel. The misadventures represented in "Bertram Cope's Year" are truly inspired, especially as this volume was written in 1919. This is a comedy of manners. The author has taken great pains to expose his character's never-to-be-discussed nature. Clues are plentiful. However, the ladies keep falling in love and in line. Even his benefactress is smitten. A refined bit of drollery. An early gay classic.

Fuller's neglected, glistening novel poses the question, "Who of any of us is worth the bother other people make of us?" This novel's characters--all of them--are hungry for companionship, for mirrors to reflect back images of themselves, for romanatic alternatives to prosaic lives. They might have wandered out of a T.S. Eliot poem, but instead they are the flesh and blood of 20th century Evanston/Churchton, Illinois, moving spectral-like through their lives, essentially impenetrable to each other. It is a gay novel--and one of the best I've encountered--but it offers an extremely perceptive account of the straight world, too, as that world intersects--or blindly collides with--with the gay. To Fuller's credit, both worlds are fully developed here.Fuller's wit is amazingly sharp; his writing is concise and unornamented, yet there are also beautiful moments--lyrical descriptions of the changing seasons, the Indiana dunes, and the Churchton landscape. In his afterword to the novel, Andrew Solomon rightly calls the book "a gentle tragedy," but I emerged from it recognizing that life for all of these characters does go on, repetitively and unfulfillingly at times, wildly romantic and full of possibilities at others. Although Bertram Cope's circle of friends ages throughout the pages of this book, the characters are even fresher and sharper at the end of the novel than they were at the beginning. A wise, intelligent book, full of insights and memorable characters.

I can't imagine why anyone would find this charming novel's depiction of of gay men to be "chilly." If there's a "chill" to be felt in this subtle comedy of manners it would stem from its depiction of women who persist in imagining that men with no sexual or romantic interest in them still "want" them in some way. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, as Arianna Huffington has so spectacularly demonstrated. In any event Fuller's book testifies to the fact that we all still have an enormous lot to learn about gay life before Stonewall. It wasn't always lived in "the closet" -- as "Betram Cope's Year" shows with style, taste and enormous wit.