Customer Reviews

Michael

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The ideas brewing behind the words of Flesh's novel show promise: an unemployed, AIDS-infected man wakes on the morning of the third anniversary of his lover's death and is visited by devotees of the cult of Michael. Religious atonement becomes a homoerotic embrace as the cultists mix religious dogma with unadulterated love (physical as well as forgiving), and our protagonist Stephen is suddenly faced with the very real possibility that End Time is near, and with it the promise of seeing his dead lover, Robert, again. As the novel continues, war in Russia becomes more and more probable, a war that might take the world down with it. Stephen sees this world as corrupt and not worth saving - his neighborhood dominated by drug dealers and the bars littered with gay sluts who would rather suck off a ring of willing participants than take an aging gay man home and show him some love.

But Michael as a whole is diluted and lacking vision. It's a novel that wants to say a lot but manages little more than a peep. Stephen is a dreary character who mainly stares at the wall and thinks. We learn all too soon (and far too much of) the biography of our protagonist, whose depth of insight about the world can be summed up by the statement, "Everything was f*cked." As a child, Stephen discovers a brief sense of belonging in the Bible, but his laughably stereotypical parents soon destroy any happiness in his life with their banal self-involvement and predictable shame of Stephen's sexuality. As an adult, Stephen pines for his dead Robert, but not for any discernibly convincing reason. In fact, all we ever really know of Robert is that he once tried to strangle Stephen. Is Stephen a masochistic character intended to spark our interest through his horrid weaknesses, a study in how a man can be thoroughly unlikable yet prove to be an interesting character worth redemption regardless?

Not in the least. Instead, Stephen is trying to prove he is someone deserving sympathy. His parents have rejected him for his homosexuality, friends have died of AIDS, his neighborhood is criminal-infested and he is out of work. But despite these sad circumstances, I found little sympathy for Stephen. Lack of character development is the central failing behind _Michael_. Stephen's problems are all exterior, his parents are drab stereotypes not worth hating, his criminal neighborhood exaggerated and unrealistic. His biography merely shows how forces beyond his character (or lack thereof) have continually beat him down, but there is nothing but bad luck in such a tale, and bad luck is nothing worth investing our sorrow in. Stephen's plight is unfortunate but in no way tragic. Tragedy requires participation; Stephen is merely a spectator. Even his motivation for letting the cultists into his apartment at the beginning of the book is vague and unknown even to Stephen. He is a protagonist who reacts dully to the world around him, a Mersault with not even the capability of shooting an Arab because he lacks direction to take such action. Perhaps this book's message lies in Stephen's frequent comparisons of the present with the past (the 1970s). His neighborhood was better, as was the gay night life. But this is a societal issue, not one of character.

Stephen's entire purpose in this book seems to be drinking, smoking pot and thinking about how bad his life is. With this pale center of a book, what chance does the end of the world have? Even nuclear devastation would yield little more than a fizzle when there is no interesting foreground of which to mourn the loss. Ultimately, Michael may attempt to be a powerful story of sorrow and redemption, but neither of these ever emerge in a noteworthy manner.

This author won a Lambda Literary Award for another book called MASSAGE in 1999 (perhaps I should have read that one). This book called MICHAEL wasn't a big HIT for me (I was hopeful since my name is Michael). It's more like a short story about a middle-aged gay man who is trying to find meaning in his life as he is about to 'follow the Light' to his death and be reunited to those he loves in the Heavens. There are some incidents that are brushed upon that clearly make him feel guilty about the way he (Stephen, the main character) lives his life. It got into a Christian religious tangent mixed with some homoerotic parts that weren't really necessary. Then, there's this whole 'end of the world' scenario with a nuclear bombing in Russia and planes disappearing & crashing in NY & elsewhere (a bit sinister since this was published in 2000--prior to 9-11-01). It's almost like the author is writing a story for himself about how he hopes the circumstances will be when he dies. When I think of this it makes it a bit more interesting.

Flesh's new book concerns Stephen, a man who may or may not be dying of AIDS, who is mourning the loss of his lover Robert who died 3 years ago. Stephen is visited by a group of cultists, where he experiences a sort of awakening. The end of the world is coming and he is not prepared. Stephen then begins an inner journey in the world where he finds God's true nature as well as his own. Flesh's style is potent and beautiful, and I found the book quite mesmerizing, and yet certain sections seemed to need more fleshing out. As perfectly as I could visualize this story as a movie, I never entirely connected to Stephen as a person.

In Henry Flesh's fantastic new book, we are taken on a dream journey and granted a moving meditation on the nature of memory, loss and mortality -- all under the insidious, still massively encroaching specter of AIDS. As the story begins, Henry Flesh's new fatalistic protagonist, Stephen, is in mourning over his dead lover and still trying to reconcile himself with his turbulent past -- a past filled with glimmering joys, abandonment and regret, at which point his growing dread takes human form as he receives a portentous visitation: three (as in the mystical number) members of a religious cult, the Children of Michael, appear at his door, cheerfully announcing that the end is near. "The Archangel Michael is coming." This sets up the rest of the narrative, in which we are taken down the corridors of man's mind, his ravaged memory, and a kind of hot fever dream coinciding with a stunning development: news of the break-out of actual nuclear war, between Russia and a former Soviet Republic, and -- in a kind of spectacular wish-fulfillment fantasy - no less than the end of the world as we know it.

Haunting, soulful and deeply moving - this is a wonderful book by an important artist. I can only wonder where Henry Flesh will take us next.

I love and am haunted by this book because of the way Flesh is able to convince me that the end of the world really will happen on a hot Sunday in the Village -- that we will ascend, intertwined with our memories. The beauty and poignance of Michael are sometimes too much to bear. As with Flesh's other work, this is an exploration of loneliness, perfectly pitched -- Flesh knows the way cigarette smoke looks floating out a bedroom window, and the desperation of a man whose loved ones have ceased to be. And yet, at the end, there's salvation -- or seems to be. Anyway, Flesh has recently been compared to Burroughs and Genet, but in his deepest explorations of the stark human soul reminds me more of the late Richard Yates.

Michael is at once disturbing and deeply moving. Set in the East Village of New York in an apocalyptic future with Blade Runner atmospherics, the reader is immediately immersed in a world of both terminal despair and an odd excitement. It is not at all surprising, in such a place, that portents appear. We experience viscerally every memory, every thought, every action in an ambiance of anxiety, dread, and even joy. Michael is a work of intense, impassioned realism, unlike any book I have read before.