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Editorial Review Product Description
The critically and popularly acclaimed coming of age/coming out story from the author of Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir. "Witty as it is anguished and as full of understanding as of anger, this is Monette's best book."--BooklistAmazon.com Review
Paul Monette first made a name for himself in 1978 with hisdebut novel, Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll, a comic romp withserious overtones. He established himself as a writer of popularfiction with three more novels before he and his lover were bothdiagnosed with HIV. In 1988 he wrote On Borrowed Time, a memoirof living with AIDS and of his lover's death. The passion and angerthat fueled On Borrowed Time surfaces again in 1992'sBecoming a Man: Half a Life Story, his National BookAward-winning autobiography. Although it follows the traditionalstructure of the autobiography and bildungsroman--early family life,education, reflections on how art influenced the subject's view oflife--Becoming a Man also filters Monette's story through twocentral facts: the closet and AIDS. Monette writes of the pain ofbeing closeted, the effect it had on his writing, and how it shaped(and often destroyed) his relationships. Monette's fear and fury atAIDS and homophobia heighten the same skill and imagination he putinto his fiction. This vision--poetic yet highly political, angry yetinfused with the love of life--is what transforms Becoming aMan from simple autobiography into an intense record of struggleand salvation. Paul Monette did not lead a life different from manygay men--he struggled courageously with his family, his sexuality, hisAIDS diagnosis--but in bearing witness to his and others' pain, hecreates a personal testimony that illuminates the darkest corners ofour culture even as it finds unexpected reserves of hope. ... Read more Customer Reviews (51) 
Paul Monette--Disingenuous?
Labeling Paul Monette as "disingenuous" is a fallacy in itself.First of all, the opinion disregards years of study that has been done on institutionalized oppression and compulsory heterosexuality.Second, and foremost--it should be noted that Paul Monette did a great deal to overcome the "privilege" he became heir to, turning it on itself--and making it into a weapon against oppression which stands to this day.
Unless you are familiar with the statistics about GLBTQ persons in the workplace, it is difficult to understand why someone would stay in the closet...stigma still persists, and still destroys the personal--and public-- lives of people who come out.The Southern Poverty Law Center has estimated that gay men and lesbians are six times as likely to be physically attacked as Jews and Hispanics in America, and twice as likely as African Americans. Valerie Jenness and Kendal Broad note: "By many accounts, violence motivated by homophobia and heterosexism represents the most visible, violent, and culturally legitimated type of `hate crime' in this country" (1994, p. 402)(as cited in Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Peace Psychology for the 21st Century,Christie, D. J., Wagner, R. V., & Winter, D. A. (Eds.).(2001).According to hate crime statistics, the number of hate crimes based on sexual orientation is rising (See the link below for more recent statistics.Also, another link for the hate crime statistics for 2008).
The Tri-County Domestic & Sexual Violence Intervention Network Anti-Oppression Training manual states:Institutional Oppression is "the systematic mistreatment of people within a social identity group, supported and enforced by the society and its institutions, solely based on the person's membership in the social identity group. InstitutionalOppression occurs when established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one's membership in targeted social identity groups. If oppressive consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs, or practices, the institution is oppressive whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have oppressive intentions.Institutional Oppression creates a system of invisible barriers limiting people based on their membership in unfavored social identity groups. The barriers are only invisible to those "seemingly" unaffected by it.
Blaming the victim is a way to avoid personal responsibility for the problem.It seems to me that Paul Monette has done everything in his power to overcome these forces for himself, and for all of us--why question his intentions? It's time that we all become accountable for the education of our opinions.
Anger, Vitriol, and Immaturity
This disturbing and polemical memoir is filled to the brim with anger, vitriol, and hate -- directed at not only the world around him, but at the author himself. This is the story of a dying man who chose to live in a closet rather than as an "out, open, and proud" androphile. Monette believed the closet was his friend, privacy was his screed, and anonymity his entitlement. In his final days, he wishes to indict himself and others for his terminal illness because of the choices HE made. It reads like an angry teenager, convinced every paranoid delusion, social slight, and his own self-loathing is his mystogical revelation.
I can only recommend this book to people that find the closet constricting and need an impulse -- albeit a very angry and destructive impulse -- to "come out." Yet, even here I hedge my recommendation, as the last thing the world needs is another "angry queer" whose own choices -- as much as society's opprobrium -- cause so much unhappiness. But then the deception, the closet, and concealment can either be a matter of personal privacy or sequestering one's self from life itself. For Monette, we cannot tell whether his anger is at the former or the latter, if not both.
If you hate the world and everything in it, believe you're own mistakes are the fault of others, and that your birthright "entitles" you to special attention -- you'll probably relate to his venomous tract. 19 years later, it is beyond dated, and hopefully, in the intervening years opened more windows than compelled slammed doors. It's ultimately the saddest memoir I've ever read, but proves that inauthenticity leaves everyone unhappy -- including this reader.
passionate but poisoned
I read this book years ago and recently came across it in an old box and reread a chapter in the middle.It is rather brilliantly written--the author is a great raconteur, and has style and wit; reading it is like spending a few hours with a cantankerous and opinionated old guy who never lets anyone else get a word in edgewise.But finally the prejudice and self-righteousness become overbearing.
Hack writer kindly informs world that it isn't worth his time
Paul Monette is not a subtle man. There is nothing in this trite tome to think about; Monette has already thought for you. He fully expects you to follow his two-hundred-and-seventy-eight-page diatribe to the end, and that you will not laugh at any point of the duration. Regardless of the fact that he has no, well, FACTS on which to rest his shallow, imperceptive, and generally useless memoir, this "man" thinks he has something useful to tell the world, gay and otherwise. ("Booklist" seems to agree: "[Monette's is a] book...which will powerfully move the parents, siblings, and friends of gays...." The idea of any straight man reading this tripe and genuinely enjoying it is comparable to that of a Jew reading "Mein Kampf" and feeling giddy. Apparently, "Booklist" thinks that speech can only be "hateful" if it's someone who isn't liberal doing the speaking.)
Monette hates everyone who is not already like him, or refuses to promptly conform to his narrow worldview. Sound familiar? Here's a man who believes that "[g]enocide is...the national sport of straight men," (pg. 2); that gays who die of AIDS are actually dying "of homophobia, [being] murdered by barbaric priests and petty bureaucrats" who refuse to pay for their lascivious, self-destructive lifestyles (ibid.); that straights have "let [gays] die [of AIDS]...collaborating by indifference," (ibid.); that all evil in the world is caused by men (ibid. and pg. 4); and, to add to his initial appearance as a raving lunatic whose mind runs on neither rhyme nor reason, that the witches burned in Salem were "mostly gay and lesbian," (pg. 5). Anyone who happens to disagree with Monette's rant is a Nazi in his eyes. And yet this trash is hailed as the Second Coming of Stonewall in the gay community. Let's ask ourselves: Why?
A most moving account
A frank, honest and very moving memoir, it is beautifully written (which makes the odd grammatical error all the more perplexing) with prose which flow almost seamlessly. The writer describes a varied and colourful life searching for Mr Right, and while he eventually finds fulfilment and happiness, the ultimate conclusion is nothing short of tear inducing. A most captivating read.
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The courage of a dying man