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A review by yorgos_a
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer
3.0
WARNING: heavy spoilers ahead.
I am not sure what dangerous writing is, but, after reading this novel, I think I can take a guess:
1. Pick one or more controversial topics. For instance, incest, child rape, gory amputations, hurtful racist slurs
2. Build a story around these topics
3. Make sure there are plenty of plot twists to outsmart your reader
4. Voilà!
Having said that, reading “The man who fell in love with the moon” was overall an enjoyable experience from the literary perspective, and if you don’t carry major trauma with any of its controversial topics, you’re on the safe side of enjoying it. This is partly because the story elements are so over the top that it’s hard to perceive them as realistic.
I’ll first mention the merits of the novel:
You cannot deny that Tom Spanbauer is a master of the English language. His descriptions of people and places are so vivid that you feel you’re right there, in Idaho, with the protagonists. It made me want to visit Idaho to witness the raw beauty of its landscapes firsthand. I also appreciated a lot the Western drawback of the story and the cocky attitude towards sex. A Western full of sexually fluid whores, dicks, alcohol, and locoweed. What’s not to like? From what I read, this novel probably also served as a proverbial middle finger to the AIDS-fueled anti-queer political climate in the USA of the late 1980’s – time around which this project was developed. This is all good!
I won’t talk much about the treatment of sexual orientation in this novel, because all the main characters are by default bisexual, and since I am not bisexual, I’ll have to take the writer’s word for an accurate description of it. To me, it sounds plausible that, in a time before the term “homosexual” was widely spread, people were sexually more fluid as they didn’t have to go by specific labels. I’d love to hear from bisexual readers about how accurate these depictions are.
Now the stuff that disappointed me by the end of the reading:
My biggest issue is with the treatment of race and racism. At first, I thought that this novel wanted to say something substantial about the genocidal acts of the US government upon Native Americans. The novel includes a very real and heart-wrenching description of what genocide must feel like to the victims. It describes pretty accurately the hopeless dismantling of traditional societies by colonialism. That’s when my love for the novel was at its peak, and I was ready to forgive previous descriptions of the main white protagonists as “not like other tybos” (a word the main character uses for Whites).
However, the writer’s interest in that topic faded away very quickly. At the end, it turned out to be no more than a side plot; as also was the arrival and swift lynching of four black characters, which greenlighted the abundant use of the n-word in the novel. At that point, I saw clearly through the novel. Weirdly, it reminded me of Harper Lee’s “to kill a mockingbird” in the way it treats racism: unlike anyone else in the fictional town of Excellent, Idado, our main characters, for reasons nowhere explained, are welcoming to the black visitors and they treat them with humanity and dignity. The feeling I got was that, just like Atticus Finch, these characters were too good to be true. The novel treats racism as moral bankruptcy and not as a systemic problem, which can affect “good people” as much as “bad people”. I would have liked more nuance. It felt condescending and missing the point of why racism is vile completely.
From the beginning of the novel, I wondered whether a white writer has the right to tell the story from the perspective of a person of color. This is an open question, but I feel that today that would be an absolute no-no. But maybe in 1991, this was still kinda ok. I am not sure if it’s an accident or a premeditated move, but a plot twist at the end of the novel, maybe the most annoying one, allows the writer to slip away from having to deal with this issue.
Child rape and prostitution or incest did not affect me that much because they felt for some reason less tangible or realistic to me. Maybe it’s because the writer didn’t treat them with the gravity they deserve. But I can totally understand other readers’ issues with them.
Overall, the book deserves a read, but I hope Spanbauer’s later novels show more maturity in the way he treats vital topics such as racism. I’ll definitely read some more of him.
I am not sure what dangerous writing is, but, after reading this novel, I think I can take a guess:
1. Pick one or more controversial topics. For instance, incest, child rape, gory amputations, hurtful racist slurs
2. Build a story around these topics
3. Make sure there are plenty of plot twists to outsmart your reader
4. Voilà!
Having said that, reading “The man who fell in love with the moon” was overall an enjoyable experience from the literary perspective, and if you don’t carry major trauma with any of its controversial topics, you’re on the safe side of enjoying it. This is partly because the story elements are so over the top that it’s hard to perceive them as realistic.
I’ll first mention the merits of the novel:
You cannot deny that Tom Spanbauer is a master of the English language. His descriptions of people and places are so vivid that you feel you’re right there, in Idaho, with the protagonists. It made me want to visit Idaho to witness the raw beauty of its landscapes firsthand. I also appreciated a lot the Western drawback of the story and the cocky attitude towards sex. A Western full of sexually fluid whores, dicks, alcohol, and locoweed. What’s not to like? From what I read, this novel probably also served as a proverbial middle finger to the AIDS-fueled anti-queer political climate in the USA of the late 1980’s – time around which this project was developed. This is all good!
I won’t talk much about the treatment of sexual orientation in this novel, because all the main characters are by default bisexual, and since I am not bisexual, I’ll have to take the writer’s word for an accurate description of it. To me, it sounds plausible that, in a time before the term “homosexual” was widely spread, people were sexually more fluid as they didn’t have to go by specific labels. I’d love to hear from bisexual readers about how accurate these depictions are.
Now the stuff that disappointed me by the end of the reading:
My biggest issue is with the treatment of race and racism. At first, I thought that this novel wanted to say something substantial about the genocidal acts of the US government upon Native Americans. The novel includes a very real and heart-wrenching description of what genocide must feel like to the victims. It describes pretty accurately the hopeless dismantling of traditional societies by colonialism. That’s when my love for the novel was at its peak, and I was ready to forgive previous descriptions of the main white protagonists as “not like other tybos” (a word the main character uses for Whites).
However, the writer’s interest in that topic faded away very quickly. At the end, it turned out to be no more than a side plot; as also was the arrival and swift lynching of four black characters, which greenlighted the abundant use of the n-word in the novel. At that point, I saw clearly through the novel. Weirdly, it reminded me of Harper Lee’s “to kill a mockingbird” in the way it treats racism: unlike anyone else in the fictional town of Excellent, Idado, our main characters, for reasons nowhere explained, are welcoming to the black visitors and they treat them with humanity and dignity. The feeling I got was that, just like Atticus Finch, these characters were too good to be true. The novel treats racism as moral bankruptcy and not as a systemic problem, which can affect “good people” as much as “bad people”. I would have liked more nuance. It felt condescending and missing the point of why racism is vile completely.
From the beginning of the novel, I wondered whether a white writer has the right to tell the story from the perspective of a person of color. This is an open question, but I feel that today that would be an absolute no-no. But maybe in 1991, this was still kinda ok. I am not sure if it’s an accident or a premeditated move, but a plot twist at the end of the novel, maybe the most annoying one, allows the writer to slip away from having to deal with this issue.
Child rape and prostitution or incest did not affect me that much because they felt for some reason less tangible or realistic to me. Maybe it’s because the writer didn’t treat them with the gravity they deserve. But I can totally understand other readers’ issues with them.
Overall, the book deserves a read, but I hope Spanbauer’s later novels show more maturity in the way he treats vital topics such as racism. I’ll definitely read some more of him.