 | A WRITER'S WIT |  A. Toynbee |
My Book World
Heim, Scott. Mysterious Skin: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Among the best novels I’ve ever read concerning adult male-to-young male molestation. Heim explores the issue inside out, from all angles. The adult, like a hawk (thus, the gay slang, chickenhawk), knows its target’s weaknesses and exploits them: the child’s loneliness, his lack of parental guidance, his need for what seems to be love (though it’s only the predator’s skewed view of love), the child’s own possible homosexuality one day. But another side of it is the fact that the child may perceive he loves this man, as well, in the case of the novel, a baseball coach. One of the coach’s victims is positive the man loves him, all the favors he bestows upon him, other gifts, the apparent affection, even the $5 bill he tosses at his favored victims, already setting them up to become whores. From the beginning, the protagonist is sure he’s been abducted by aliens, and, in a sense he has. The experience of molestation must feel like an abduction—the child’s brain scrambling to make sense of this baffling situation—makes aliens from outer space seem a lot less threatening than dealing with aliens that seem to arise out of the very ground here on earth.
Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Susan Faludi
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Richard Hughes
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Aubrey de Grey
FRI: My Book World | Paula Fox: Desperate Characters
Among the best novels I’ve ever read concerning adult male-to-young male molestation. Heim explores the issue inside out, from all angles. The adult, like a hawk (thus, the gay slang, chickenhawk), knows its target’s weaknesses and exploits them: the child’s loneliness, his lack of parental guidance, his need for what seems to be love (though it’s only the predator’s skewed view of love), the child’s own possible homosexuality one day. But another side of it is the fact that the child may perceive he loves this man, as well, in the case of the novel, a baseball coach. One of the coach’s victims is positive the man loves him, all the favors he bestows upon him, other gifts, the apparent affection, even the $5 bill he tosses at his favored victims, already setting them up to become whores. From the beginning, the protagonist is sure he’s been abducted by aliens, and, in a sense he has. The experience of molestation must feel like an abduction—the child’s brain scrambling to make sense of this baffling situation—makes aliens from outer space seem a lot less threatening than dealing with aliens that seem to arise out of the very ground here on earth.
Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Susan Faludi
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Richard Hughes
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Aubrey de Grey
FRI: My Book World | Paula Fox: Desperate Characters
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