A review by nickartrip102
Better Angel by Richard Meeker, Forman Brown

3.0

“In a strong dark flood the sense of the destiny of this boy swept over him, the destiny of all such boys everywhere — their heritage of desire and shame, of uncertainty, of deception, of hypocrisy, and of tumultuous joy and burning regret, of friends without friendship, of concealing the truth and revealing the lie, and ultimately — what? Would such a one be better off never to know, never to recognize his inversion for what it was — but to live lonely and apart in an incomprehensible and unfriendly world? No. No.”

One of my goals this year was to read more pre-Stonewall era queer literature, so I shopped around for several books and added them to my bowl of TBR titles. Better Angel by Forman Brown was my first selection. Written in 1933, the novel focuses on Kurt Gray, a shy boy growing up in small-town Michigan. Even as a child he recognizes that he is different. He is much more sensitive than the other boys in his community and takes no interest in sports or their rough games. Gradually, he begins to recognize his own desire for love and companionship with another man. As an adult, Kurt begins to plant the seeds of his own happiness, although he must also grapple with his own naivety.

I felt such a kinship with Kurt. The opening passages of the novel introduce us to the sensitive boy with his nose buried in a book. The way his parents worry over him, his mother's fear that he is too pliant, the invisible, contrived barrier between him and his father, all felt so familiar and still so relevant that it made the ninety some year gap between the writing of this novel and the present feel much smaller. Kurt was thirteen in the early 1900s, while I was 13 in the early 2000s, yet so much of his childhood experience was similar to my own. It is difficult to not feel a need to offer the young Kurt a hug or some reassurance.

"When Kurt would come home as he too often did, white-face and trembling — when she would should put her arms around his narrow shoulders — when she would kiss his cheek and he would shake her off, ashamed that she should see his racking bitterness — when, at last, hesitantly, perhaps in a flood of tears, he would admit that the boys at school had teased him about his fair skin: ‘Where’d ya buy yer paint, sissy? Sissy! Sissy!’–when, with a body shaking and hands clenched, eyes strangely dark in his white face, he would sob, ‘Why–Mom–why, why, why? Why can’t they leave me alone?’”

There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the story of Better Angel, but what does make it remarkable is the early depiction of a somewhat happy ending for the gay protagonist. Sure, Kurt wrestles with his demons, especially as a child, but by the end of the novel he really has come to accept himself, the limitations imposed on him by society, and the inherent beauty of his love. It really does function quite well as a coming-of-age novel. I do think there is a bit of a cynical view of monogamy and the gay man in the novel, but I can’t protest too much. It’s still a topic that inspires controversy, besides both monogamy and other relationship models are entirely valid. Maybe it even adds to the book’s modern sensibility. What impressed me most, however, was the way that I could really my own experiences and my own certainties in Kurt. Parts of Better Angel felt like taking a peek at my own soul and I’m not ashamed to admit that reading the epilogue, penned in 1995 by a 94-year-old Brown, brought a tear to my eye.