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| Author: Paul Monette
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $3.65
You Save: $10.30 (74%)
New (37) Used (30) Collectible (2) from $3.22
Avg. Customer Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 110525
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
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Excellent, Quickly mailed. Gently read, no binding crease.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not incredibly written, but profoundly important November 2, 2005
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a twenty year old heterosexual male I found this book to very insightful. Monette illuminates both the sturglles and the shame of the homosexual community. I understood that it was hard to be gay, but this book has really helped to show me that this strife comes not from any inherent feeling attached to homosexuality but is a result instead of the prejudice and hate of the public, many of whom are supposed closet cases. I think that eventually America's continuing and blatant homophobia will be seen in the same light that we now view the cross burning and racial pogroms that dominated our contry for centuries. I wish you all strength and courage in your battle against these evil forces. Thank you.
 Important text in gay literature June 29, 2005
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Becoming a Man is the National Book Award winning memoir by Paul Monette, and was a landmark text in the literature associated with HIV. This book was, in many ways, the "little book that could," beating out such non-fiction heavyweights as David McCullough for the NBA.
Monette is a fascinating character - shortly after reading this memoir, I saw the documentary about Monette's life. I have always enjoyed his novels...Taking Care of Mrs Carroll, The Longshot, and Halfway Home. This memoir is not only brilliantly written, it is well-suffused with the authors thoughts about being gay, suffering with HIV, and the experience of being "other."
When Monette passed away, literature lost a bright light.
No one ever told the truth as honestly and blatantly... May 13, 2005
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Paul Monette carries the reader with him through his life so smoothly you'd think he was actually happy about writing about his life. The best book I've read in a long time, Monette's straight-to-the-point, no holds, zero restraint, brutal honesty really tugs at the hearts of those who read his wonderfully written prose. It's what we've all felt [in the gay community] but could never put in words. No writer ever better deserved the National Book Award than he.
Powerful Story February 25, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I found this to be a very powerful and moving story about a man struggling to come out of the closet. Very inspiring, yet also very sad that Paul Monette died relatively young. The times and the cultural standards of his youth were in many ways much more challenging and difficult than the world today. A very inspiring story.
Brilliantly Written but Disingenuous February 22, 2004
13 out of 19 found this review helpful
Born in 1945 to a small-town, middle-class New England family, Paul Monette--like most Americans of the era--was spoon-fed a negative knee-jerk re homosexuality. When he himself began to realize that his own sexuality was at odds with society's dictums he entered two decades of struggle: first a struggle to at least give the appearance of conformity, then a struggle to step beyond the status quo itself. And BECOMING A MAN is a very powerful testament of that struggle, of the price paid, of the self-destructive behavior that the false conformity of "being in the closet" inevitably produces.It is extremely difficult to read BECOMING A MAN without sharing the sense of fury and bitterness that Monette felt when he contemplates his life, and if ever there were an argument in favor of sexual honesty, this is it: the language, an artful mix of the literary and the hardbitten, is remarkable, and Monette pulls no punches when it comes to detailing the fear that drove him. Truly, the book deserves every accolade heaped upon it. All the same, it is a remarkably disingenuous memoir. Even as Monette displays a justifiable loathing for the social institutions that buried him alive for some three decades, he tends to disregard a basic point: he was in many ways a remarkably privileged individual who actually fed upon those same institutions, having a host of opportunities that few people--gay or straight--ever have. It was his own determination to place social advantage above personal integrity that led to his decision to remain in the closet in the first place. True, Monette (who died of AIDS not long after this book was published) was born and came of age in an era that had little tolerance for anything beyond the status quo. But Monette presents being in the closet as something forced upon him by external forces--and this is not strictly true. There was a choice, and bitter though it was for him and the many others who made it, being in the closet was actually the path of least resistance at the time. To pretend that it was otherwise does a tremendous disservice to those of his generation who found the courage to select an even more difficult road of sexual honesty. GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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