Queer Joy in Literature
Guillaume Dustan's Nicholas Pages (1999, trans 2023)
In Bret Easton Ellis’ novels, people fall in love or lust with other people irrespective of gender. It’s beautiful, the idea of being attracted to a person beyond the construct of gender, rather than feeling so little for approximately half of humanity. Or of course, you could say that the possibility of love/lust for all of humanity is greedy or somehow a reflection of the amoral, attachment-free promiscuity of modern times. Both could be true; it depends on one’s perspective and personal philosophy.
Ellis wrote his first novel in the mid-1980s, when he was only twenty-one. It’s a beautifully bleak take on life growing up in sunny California and going to a private liberal arts on the East Coast. Amoral, empty, ennui, boredom, complete disregard for others, even though the characters have wealth, beauty, and each other1. In Nicholas Pages (1999, trans 2023), someone asks Guillaume Dustan if the rumor that he (Dustan) has only read Ellis for the past seven years is true. It’s the second…