Customer Reviews

American Studies

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American Studies is a boldly crafted debut novel about gay generational changes and connections, betrayal and loyalty, moving ahead, and individual identity. The novel revolves around the theme of healing on several levels. Reeve is 62 and hospitalized after a severe beating by a hustler. He feels his sex life, his dignity, and everything he held sacred - those very things which defined him - are all gone. Over the four day span of this novel, Reeve gradually regains his footing, adapts, and rebuilds his life. Most importantly he recognizes that he is a survivor. Much of this realization occurs in his detailed reminiscing about Tom, an early mentor of his who killed himself when his exposure as a homosexual as well as his betrayal by a lover combined to undermine his world. Reeve also gets a renewed zest for life by the hunk in the adjoining hospital bed. American Studies is a book of incredibly strong characterization abundant in insights and displaying a skilled interweaving of stories. It also contains interesting gay history, a strong narrative, and even some great laughs along the way. Merlis has created a real gem!

Merlis' story is so beautifully crafted, that it can be read just for the appreciation of the language alone. The literary device he uses takes him from the present, where he is recovering from a vicious attack from someone he brought into his home, to the past, where he ruminates on his first romantic involvement with an erudite, but inhibited professor, battling the McCarthyism of the Fifties. At the center of the dilemma is having to live in a world that has no tolerance, let alone respect, for age, individualism or political integrity. This is a rare treat. Compelling story, mesmerizing language. You'll laugh out loud at times and at times you'll have tears in your eyes. Watch this writer.

Merlis' novel achieves all that historical fictions can do at their best. Through the eyes of Reeves, a middle-aged, gay bureacrat hospitalized after being brutally attacked in his home, Merlis looks back on 50 years of gay life in America. Merlis manages to make the past distinct enough to defamiliarize his audience while enabling it to speak to contemporary concerns. As Reeves composes his recollections of a relationship with a professor whose sexual identity led to censure during the McCarthyite red scare and ultimately to his suicide, we learn to recognize the human tragedy of discrimination, an unfortunately (and seemingly) timeless cost. The novel is not, however, glum, dreary, or overly heavy. Reeves' wry humor and touching honesty balances the novel's emotional weight.

American Studies, very sadly out of print at the moment (but surely not for long), is one of the great gay novels of the 20th century. Narrated by a gay man in hospital after being beaten by a trick, the novel tells the story of F.O. Matthiessen, a great American literary critic who committed suicide in 1950 after being outed and ostracized at Harvard, where he taught for more than twenty years. Most importantly, though, Merlis writes like an angel, every sentence beautifully made, charming, amusing, and moving. It is as perfect as a novel can be.

There seldom comes into my reading life a book as fine as this one. I read a lot of books, and frequently try new authors being published for the first time. This book completely blew me away. The author has such a wonderful command of our language - using phrases and words to their best advantage. He exhibits such an intense ability to get inside his characters - to be able to give them feelings that are so easily conveyed to his reader. I laughed at times, I cried at times. This is one of those fine examples of books that you don't want to finish - you simply sigh at the end and wish for more.

I'm lesbian, not gay but I have mant gay friends.and being 73 now I lived thru the McCarthyite era, the witch hunts, being scared to go to gay bars which were likely to be raided (REALLY!) and the fear of losing your job if you were discovered. It was a chilling time and the author tells it like it was. We HAVE come a long way, baby!! Read this book to discover how it was like to be gay/lesbian back in the Dark Ages when homosexuality was a psychiatric disorder. BORN TOO LATE!!

i've read an arrow's flight, pyrrhus (yes, it was worth the second read), man about town and american studies. i want more. is merlis alive? is he still writing? someone please recommend something as creatively, hilariously wonderful as pyrrhus even if it isn't merlis. i'm going through withdrawal and may be forced to read it yet again. i feel sorry for all the homoqueasies who will never make it through one of the funniest most intelligent books i've ever read.

Merlis brilliantly composes American Studies, but unfortunately, his character development comes to a screeching halt somewhere in the middle of the novel. Merlis goes from a fine story to some sort of a soap opera-esqe ending that leaves this reader cold.