Review of “Postlude to the Afternoon of a Faun” by Jerome Stueart

This novelette is a finalist for the 2020 World Fantasy Award in the short fiction category, plus the Eugie Foster Award, presented annually at DragonCon. It was published by F&SF magazine 3-4/2019. This review contains spoilers.

Mr. Dance is old and joyless satyr, crippled by Billy Sunday and the Prohibition gang years ago. He uses a wheelchair and lives in a dark, messy house with the yard gone to seed. In an effort to do something different, he signs up to teach jazz clarinet through the State of Missouri’s Masters/ Apprenticeship Program. His first student, Eric Elkridge, arrives and confides that he plays football, but his heart really isn’t in it. He wants to be a musician instead. When the boy brings out his clarinet, Dance is shocked to see that it’s his own clarinet, the Shaft of Moonlight, stolen from him all those years ago by Billy Sunday. Eric has learned to play classic jazz tunes, but his playing lacks any magic, and he has no feel at all for improvisation. Dance suppresses all the issues the clarinet brings back about his past, and works hard to help the boy improve his musical sense. He eventually convinces Eric to go with him to a local bar to play jazz, but now Dance has to deal with his own loss of magic. Is there some way he can become the jazz player Moonlight Dance again?

The faun is actually a well-known character, and there are literary allusions here. The best known is “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” a.k.a. “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune,” an impressionist musical composition by Claude Debussy from 1894. This, in turn, was inspired by the poem “L’après-midi d’un faune” by Stéphane Mallarmé from 1867. Debussy’s composition is considered the moment of transition from the Romantic period to modern music. His work later inspired the ballet Afternoon of a Faun choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky (considered scandalous), followed by a later version by Jerome Robbins. There’s also a fairly well-known painting of Nijinsky as the faun, done by artist Léon Bakst for the program to Nijinsky’s ballet. Take what you will from all these works.

Besides the allusions, there’s also a subtext here about Prohibition crippling jazz music. Billy Sunday was a celebrated and influential US evangelist during the first two decades of the 20th century and was instrumental in establishing Prohibition with the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution (repealed January 16, 1919). The Amendment forbade the “manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors,” but not their consumption, which fueled a lively trade in production and transport of illegal moonshine spirits.

Okay, about the story. This is very touching, an old man revitalized by a young student interested in his art. It’s also about life and joy and the magic of music. The characters are fairly well fleshed out, and the story develops gradually, from the first meeting on though the revitalization process where Dance cleans up his act and gets his life back in order. There is a certain sexual tension, mostly in Dance’s notice of Erik’s young, healthy body, but nothing comes of it here. The allusions do seem to fuel a few jokes about sex toward the end of the story, but that’s all.

On the less positive side (and I’m being nitpicky here), the story doesn’t flow like it might. I think the issue is a bit too much telling and not enough showing. Plus, it feels a little stilted in the beginning, where the author tries to slip in too much background information by way of adjectives, rather than, say, revealing it through events or dialog. That adjective thing always just feels really awkward to me.

Four and a half stars.

Review of Wrap Your Body in Time by David Neil Drews

This is a first novel, self-published in October of 2017, and runs about 750 pages. David Drews is a Jewish writer and suffers from multiple identity disorder.

Arron has esophageal cancer. He has watched his dad die slowly of chemotherapy and makes the decision to refuse it. Instead, he sets out to really live in the time he’s got left, to exercise, to see the world, to enjoy friends and family—and to deal with the ghost of his abusive father. On the journey he meets his schizophrenic grandfather, finds a potential wife. Can Aaron defeat his own demons before he reaches the end of his road?

This is a pretty sweeping novel that chronicles the bout with cancer on the one hand, while providing human interest through absorbing characters on the other. It didn’t have much of a hook, but by chapter 2 when we got the cancer diagnosis, the book had hit its stride. There’s a touch of magical realism here, including chatty animals and the various ghosts that lurk about. There’s a sort of wry humor that runs through it, and a lot of play-by-play for sports fans.

Four and a half stars.

Review of David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy

This novel features a gay protagonist named Paul who is a high school sophomore. About his town, he says, “There isn’t really a gay scene or a straight scene in our town. They got all mixed up a while back, which I think is for the best.” The result is that Paul has both gay and straight friends who hang out together. At a local bookstore, Paul falls in love with Noah, but their relationship is complicated by Paul’s ex, Kyle, who wants to make amends for ending their relationship, and maybe take it up again. Paul’s friend Tony has a problem with very religious parents, so the gang helps Tony get out to a “study group” on Saturday nights. Paul’s friend Joni has taken up with Chuck, who doesn’t treat her very well. Infinite Darlene, football team quarterback and Homecoming Queen, flounces onstage with regular advice. Tony’s parents catch on to the “study group,” which causes a crisis, but everything ends happily, and Paul says about the results, “It’s a wonderful world.”

So, this is a great little book, but it reads like fantasy. Levithan has totally written around the elephant in the room, which is sexual orientation. He has built a world where being gay doesn’t matter, and being a drag queen doesn’t prevent Darlene from being the football team quarterback and the Homecoming Queen at the same time. There are real reasons to do something like this. In order for something to happen, somebody has to frame the picture. What’s unsaid is that Levithan is presenting a changed world order where gay teens are accepted for what they are and treated as friends without regard to their sexual orientation. He hopes that a lot of kids will read this and take it for reality.

The novel won a Lambda Literary Award in 2004.