Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - Blackouts: A Novel

Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

Blackouts: A Novel by Justin Torres

20 reviews

jessthanthree's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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drowsyowl's review against another edition

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It just didn't seem like it was ever going to have a real plot. I imagine it was only going to end up being a fake biography of a homosexual man which gives historical context of the gay experience. I'm sure the remainder of the narrative is interesting and heartbreaking and eye opening - I found the first 1/5 to be so. But it's not really what I consider a fictional plot, nor did the storytelling compel me to want more. It was is a numb sort of telling, one that made me as the reader also numb to it. Even to the things that were meant to elicit shock.
It's just not for me 😞

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readerette's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

It might be better read as a physical copy rather than digital, and certainly not as an audiobook if one is available--there are too many images that go with the text.

I found the literary structures overwrought and distracting. I appreciated the facts about the life experiences of the main characters as gay men in a time when homosexuality was still taboo, but watching everything through a scattered fever dream was not compelling to me.

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rachelfayreads's review against another edition

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informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

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badmom's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The structure of this novel can be confusing as it often moves between past & present, through different voices & states of consciousness, referencing literary quotes & research data & history & art. However, it is a fascinating look at memory + perspection as well as a glimpse at how society at large perceives homosexuality. The voices are poetic and rich and endearing; the imagery is entrancing.
I’m left wanting to reread it, and also read more.

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just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Well, I wasn't really planning to read this. But I flipped through it after it won this year's National Book Award for Fiction. And I was interested in the formatting - the sepia toned pages, the blackout poetry, the (seemingly) random, and quite explicit in some cases, images/photos. So, I decided to give it a go.

Somewhere, in what feels like the middle of nowhere in the desert (maybe in a place that's not even real?), a young man spends time with a dying elder, someone whose path he crossed years ago, tangentially. But now, the two spend their full days together, trading stories of their pasts, their families, their loves lives. And as part of this sharing, Juan Gay passes on his lifelong project to our younger narrator. This project is based on the (real) Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, a collection of "case studies" of queer people from the early twentieth century (collected, as a lesser known fact of the book, not by the name on the publication who co-opted the work, but rather by a queer female researcher, Jan Gay). And as the story of those stories mixes with those of Juan and our narrators, we see how the past is, always, all around us, informing our present and influencing our future, even as we lose and mourn parts that have been erased.

Look, my overarching feeling after finishing this novel is that I don't think I am smart enough to understand it. I mean, the writing was lovely, that poetry-prose style that is lyrical and intelligent and rhythmic AF. Torres also does some very cool things with his writing, like taking popularly understood grotesque/repulsive concepts (like end of life care and frail elderly bodies and institutionalization, etc.) and providing them beauty and grace through his language. It's also purposefully provocative, with some of the extra artistic pieces, like the images chosen and in the way the blackouts take out the context and leave just the raw sexual urges/acts (offering a powerful counter narrative to the original writing). And overall, the relationship between Juan and our narrator, the storytelling, and the memoria collected are building to an excavation that you know is coming, a coming together that you really wonder what will be revealed. But the snippets and vignettes jump all over, and I can vaguely see the connections, they also consistently felt just out of reach and honestly I couldn't always tell who was talking or what all they were referring to.

Another aspect that had me all mixed up was what was real and what wasn't. Like, so many of the references, the people (historical figures), the (queer) history are real. I Googled (and learned) *so* much. And there was, naturally and necessarily, an addressing of the patriarchy and colonial influence on mental illness, and what qualifies historically and today (queerness, cultural differences unique to Brown people, etc.). The way these populations were “criminalized, stigmatized, pathologized,” based on a matter of perspective and what popularly counts as respectable; none of this is new thought, but the presentation of it is gorgeously written. And it was all a gorgeous honoring of and reminder to learn from our elders. But then I couldn't tell where Juan fell on that: was he real, fictional, a figment of the narrator's imagination or a part of his own self? Not until the "post-face" was that sort of cleared up (ish), so I felt unmoored throughout a lot of the reading.

The way the title, Blackouts, is given multiple meanings - blackouts, as art form, as self preservation, as mental illness, as forgetting with age and time - is so intelligent, is so profound. Though it's balanced out a bit because I couldn't help but compare this in my head as "sad boy" literature, to complement sad girl shit like that of Otessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation) and Melissa Broder (The Pisces), though of course much "higher brow." And there's the thing: past all my thoughts and reactions, I honestly don’t know what I think, because at the end of the day, I don’t know how much I really, truly understood any of it.

“…a work of intense observation transformed into a work of erasure.”

“I don't know what the word is...crestfallen, I suppose. / A fine word. / Where does it come from? I'm sure you know. / Well, cocks have crests, and other birds, and horses. / And mountains. / And mountains. And waves. And the houses of great families. / And they all fall down.? / That's right. The mountains crumble, and the waves crash, and they all fall down - the chickens and the families and the faces of landladies.” (this kind of verbal play, word dissection, dialogue, creative thought is always so impressive to me)

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. The way to dusty death.”

“The release of the want of the want of release.” (on electroshock therapy removing libido, and oh the layered meanings of this!, the wordplay!)

“Darling, the only thing anyone should be embarrassed about is taking themselves too seriously.”

“Yet the habits of poverty run deep - and I felt, underneath the surface, the same old dread. A constant sense that I'd forgotten to attend a vague but terrible urgency.”

“It’s true, all erotic experience can be reduced to crudeness, nene. But does that mean it ought to be?”

“How can you make a syndrome of a people?”

“Remember this: not all ambiguities need to be resolved, nene.”

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caseythereader's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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deedireads's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

Blackouts was vaguely on my radar before it got longlisted (now a finalist) for the National Book Award, but that solidified it on the TBR. It won’t be for everyone, but it’s impossible to not appreciate what a truly impressive work this book is.

Blackouts is a genre-defier, mixing media types, oral history, queer history, and fiction, with no care for formal plot. It’s composed almost entirely of dialogue between an unnamed young narrator and an older man named Juan who is dying. Mixed throughout are blackout poems made from a book of queer history that sits at the center of their conversations, which — together with the fact that the narrator also suffers from actual blackouts in memory — give this novel its name.

Thanks to the way it mixes media and wanders freely, this novel feels like a work of art in a much more tangible way than books usually do. Reading it, which can be accomplished in one sitting, is a bit like a fever dream, cerebral and emotional both. There’s a tenderness that weaves between the themes of identity, sexuality, the power of storytelling, and so much more. I’m still rooting for Chain-Gang All-Stars, but if this were to win the NBA instead, I would definitely understand why.

Finally, please take note that the physical book itself is also absolutely gorgeous, with the way the front cover reflects the light. Get your hands on a hardcover copy if you can!

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jayisreading's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

4.25

Blackouts was a quiet and introspective book, as well as a complex one. I'm not quite sure how to describe this novel, other than that it's very experimental and gets increasingly ethereal in the way Torres traces queer history and searches for queer hope. Most interesting about this novel was incorporation of a real-life text, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, to help guide the story and its themes along.

It was fascinating to see how the story unfolded primarily through tender, intimate conversations between two queer men: an unnamed narrator who is in his twenties, and a dying, elderly man named Juan. Torres is also tracing queer history through these conversations mixed with multimedia. It's also clear that queer history is more than "just" queerness, as Torres relates it to race, masculinity, and more.

I have no doubt that a number of things flew over my head as I was reading this, and Blackouts certainly is a book that asks to be reread for further contemplation. This is a book that asks the reader to take their time with every image/illustration, every line, and every utterance.

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mixedreader's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Aligned with a recurring metaphor in the text of behind below the surface of water, I felt submerged, willingly, just a reach away from gasping the full air of the story. And that feels purposeful and necessary for this book that is queer storytelling personified.

A young man befriends a man close to his last days, living in an institution called the Palace. Juan tells the young man stories, particularly of a woman named Jan Gay, who studied homosexuals and behavior; the research of which is collected in a book called Sex Variants. Juan describes how her work/history was attempted to be erased, and he passes the torch of this work to the young man. Between this history, they trade stories, recounting relationships and transgressions, becoming closer.

Blackouts includes art and snippets from Gay’s text, huge chunks blacked out that create mystery. Torres plays with genre/narrative is a fascinating way, as a few nuggets of historical truth anchor this underlying story. However, Torres is most concerned with emotional truth, with connection and sense of responsibility. His allegiance in this novel is to the non-linear, survivalist, fragmented reality queer folks live. He writes in the spirit of not being forgotten.

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