Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story (Perennial Classics) | 
| Author: Paul Monette
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 318568
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0060595647
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.766092
EAN: 9780060595647
ASIN: 0060595647
Publication Date: June 1, 2004
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Amazon.com Review
Paul Monette first made a name for himself in 1978 with his debut novel, Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll, a comic romp with serious overtones. He established himself as a writer of popular fiction with three more novels before he and his lover were both diagnosed with HIV. In 1988 he wrote On Borrowed Time, a memoir of living with AIDS and of his lover's death. The passion and anger that fueled On Borrowed Time surfaces again in 1992's Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, his National Book Award-winning autobiography. Although it follows the traditional structure of the autobiography and bildungsroman--early family life, education, reflections on how art influenced the subject's view of life--Becoming a Man also filters Monette's story through two central facts: the closet and AIDS. Monette writes of the pain of being closeted, the effect it had on his writing, and how it shaped (and often destroyed) his relationships. Monette's fear and fury at AIDS and homophobia heighten the same skill and imagination he put into his fiction. This vision--poetic yet highly political, angry yet infused with the love of life--is what transforms Becoming a Man from simple autobiography into an intense record of struggle and salvation. Paul Monette did not lead a life different from many gay men--he struggled courageously with his family, his sexuality, his AIDS diagnosis--but in bearing witness to his and others' pain, he creates a personal testimony that illuminates the darkest corners of our culture even as it finds unexpected reserves of hope.
Product Description
A child of the 1950s from a small New England town, "perfect Paul" earns straight A's and shines in social and literary pursuits, all the while keeping a secret -- from himself and the rest of the world. Struggling to be, or at least to imitate, a straight man, through Ivy League halls of privilege and bohemian travels abroad, loveless intimacy and unrequited passion, Paul Monette was haunted, and finally saved, by a dream of "the thing I'd never even seen: two men in love and laughing." Searingly honest, witty, and humane, Becoming a Man is the definitive coming-out story in the classic coming-of-age genre.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 44 more reviews...
 passionate but poisoned August 12, 2008
I read this book years ago and recently came across it in an old box and reread a chapter in the middle. It is rather brilliantly written--the author is a great raconteur, and has style and wit; reading it is like spending a few hours with a cantankerous and opinionated old guy who never lets anyone else get a word in edgewise. But finally the prejudice and self-righteousness become overbearing.
 Hack writer kindly informs world that it isn't worth his time June 5, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Paul Monette is not a subtle man. There is nothing in this trite tome to think about; Monette has already thought for you. He fully expects you to follow his two-hundred-and-seventy-eight-page diatribe to the end, and that you will not laugh at any point of the duration. Regardless of the fact that he has no, well, FACTS on which to rest his shallow, imperceptive, and generally useless memoir, this "man" thinks he has something useful to tell the world, gay and otherwise. ("Booklist" seems to agree: "[Monette's is a] book...which will powerfully move the parents, siblings, and friends of gays...." The idea of any straight man reading this tripe and genuinely enjoying it is comparable to that of a Jew reading "Mein Kampf" and feeling giddy. Apparently, "Booklist" thinks that speech can only be "hateful" if it's someone who isn't liberal doing the speaking.)
Monette hates everyone who is not already like him, or refuses to promptly conform to his narrow worldview. Sound familiar? Here's a man who believes that "[g]enocide is...the national sport of straight men," (pg. 2); that gays who die of AIDS are actually dying "of homophobia, [being] murdered by barbaric priests and petty bureaucrats" who refuse to pay for their lascivious, self-destructive lifestyles (ibid.); that straights have "let [gays] die [of AIDS]...collaborating by indifference," (ibid.); that all evil in the world is caused by men (ibid. and pg. 4); and, to add to his initial appearance as a raving lunatic whose mind runs on neither rhyme nor reason, that the witches burned in Salem were "mostly gay and lesbian," (pg. 5). Anyone who happens to disagree with Monette's rant is a Nazi in his eyes. And yet this trash is hailed as the Second Coming of Stonewall in the gay community. Let's ask ourselves: Why?
 A most moving account September 9, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
A frank, honest and very moving memoir, it is beautifully written (which makes the odd grammatical error all the more perplexing) with prose which flow almost seamlessly. The writer describes a varied and colourful life searching for Mr Right, and while he eventually finds fulfilment and happiness, the ultimate conclusion is nothing short of tear inducing. A most captivating read.
Angry, thoughtful, disheartening, and triumphant December 28, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The tone of this book is sometimes so overwhelmingly negative and self-deprecating that, if you don't know at least a little about the author, it would certainly overshadow the meaning and ultimate victory of this journey, chronicled here with such amazing detail as to transport a reader, almost, deep inside Paul Monette's head.
If you're reading the book, or would like to do so, know that Mr. Monette does find love, more than once, and that he finds his journey to have been both extraordinary and extraordinarily painful, I believe. Sadly, he is gone now.
Also keep in mind that Mr. Monette lived long before Will & Grace and Latter Days and anything that would counter his impression that the world was out to uncover his homosexuality and that it wasn't the greatest sin/evil that he could have imagined.
In another place and time, I see many parts of myself and my journey in his, although likely drastically less dramatic and with far fewer prep schools involved. (Like none.) His journey provides insight and detail that can assure countless masses that they are not alone and are not unworthy to find happiness and love despite not filling the traditional recipe for heterosexual roles.
SO READ THIS BOOK, and feel his pain. Relish his rich experiences, his amazing writing ability, feel his loss, and relish his ultimate victory, if not victory over AIDS, then the victory of finding love. Not easy reading, but highly recommended.
Taps into the rage many of us felt growing up gay December 12, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I give this book 5 stars because of the intimate way in which I related to the story told here. I am not sure if a non-gay person would enjoy this quite as much, although I'm sure they would find it a worthwhile read. An important read, really, for straight and gay alike, because it explains by example how many of us felt violated and suppressed growing up in a society that had little tolerance for homosexuality. True, things have changed now, (though not enough), but this book details the state of growing up gay in 20th century America, and all that it entailed, written lavishly and flowingly.
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