“Out in the bright sun again, Clay tries to laugh off the weirdness of the whole business. What the hell is he getting himself into? Why should he feel so pleased to be doing this? Because he is pleased, nuttily tickled. He goes to his truck to fetch the hedge clippers and can’t help stopping by the side-view mirror to look at himself. Was his head really so interesting? He sometimes likes his looks, and secretly loves it when women call him craggily handsome. But it feels funny coming from a man, even one who’s an artist. Clay no longer suspects the guy might be a fruit. He can think such a thing only about strangers, men he does not want to know any better. This man made “Frankenstein.” And when you get to be his age, you can’t help seeming a little weird and creepy.
~From the novel “Gods and Monsters” by Christopher Bram
“On the patchily tarred road at the foot of the hill, a pickup truck appears, rusty and in need of paint. It turns and bounced up the bumpy dirt drive behind the swimming pool, springs squeaking like tin flutes. It comes to a halt behind the gray-shingled studio beside the pool. The radio in the cab is turned up loud and the morning is broken by Elvis Presley furiously grumbling ‘Hound Dog.’ A young man gets out, tall with broad shoulders and a flattop haircut. He lowers the tailgate and wheels a lawn mower across the truck bed, a red power mower with spiral of blades up front and large spoked wheels in the rear. The machine is heavy, but he lifts it, back muscles tensing beneath his t-shirt, thighs and buttocks flexing in his fatigue pants; his knees bend and he lowers the machine to the ground.”
~From the novel “Gods and Monsters” by Christopher Bram
The novel “Gods and Monsters,” originally published as “Father of Frankenstein,” was written by Christopher Bram in 1995. Bram was born in 1952, and he grew up in Virginia. His story reimagines the final days of “Frankenstein” director James Whale, who, in Bram’s telling, develops a strange and dangerous friendship with his gardener, Clayton Boone.
In my visualization of this novel, I will be focusing on the storyline centering around Whale and Boone. Though the novel jumps around in time and has several other characters, I wish to convey the intersection of homoeroticism, violence, and mortality that occurs within the pages.
I hope you enjoy this month’s book.
“He went in and found his lover asleep. Alec lay upon piled up cushions, just visible in the last dying of the day. When he woke he did not seem excited or disturbed and fondled Maurice’s arm between his hands before he spoke. ‘So you got the wire,’ he said.
‘What wire?’
‘The wire I sent off this morning to your home, telling you…’ He yawned, ‘Excuse me, I’m a bit tired, one thing and another…telling you to come here without fail.’ And since Maurice did not speak, indeed he could not, he added, ‘And now we shan’t be parted no more, and that’s finished.’”
~From “Maurice” by E. M. Forster
“But as he returned to his bed a little noise sounded, a noise so intimate that it might have arisen inside his own body. He seemed to crackle and burn and saw the ladder’s top quivering against the moonlit air. The head and shoulders of a man rose up, paused, a gun was leant against the window still very carefully, and someone he scarcely knew moved towards him and knelt beside him and whispered, ‘Sir, was you calling out for me? . . . Sir, I know…I know,’ and touched him.”
~From the novel “Maurice” by E. M. Forster
