2.02.2005
a book a week: denton welch's maiden voyage
ok, another late new year's resolution: i will read a book a week (hopefully for the rest of the year) and jot something down about it each monday or tuesday. sound good???
first up is denton welch's autobiographical memoir maiden voyage, which is available from the always interesting exact change press. the story documents welch's sixteenth year, during which he runs away from school, travels to shanghai and, with great british understatement, begins to realize that he is homosexual.
i read this knowing little about it, other than that erin f. liked it (which is, here and elsewhere, a good sign). and it ended up complimenting the considerable amount of graham greene i read last year rather nicely. voyage feels almost like a greene novel seen through the eyes of a charlie brown character. with its youthful immediacy and stubborn sense of wonder, it envisions a world on the scale of a comic strip-- one where adults are seen only from the waist down, and life occurs in the shadow of their ignorance. welch becomes a kind of aristocratic wild-child left to his own devices. it took me a while to adapt to his prissiness and pervasive sense of entitlement, but it was well worth the adjustment.
maiden voyage captures the solipsism of adolescence with unapologetic honesty. he wanders through a graham-greene-esque "oriental" world, and approaches, fears and examines it with equally problematic assumptions. but instead of resulting in woeful christian melancholia (which i think greene is the master of, in both good ways and bad), welch provides one with a worm's eye view of its various intensities. the book is alternately seductive, fetishistic and peevish. welch objectifies his environment as he examines it. he judges it with a shockingly dead-on sixteen-year-old foolishness, and somehow avoids articulating his personal sovereignity in the process. maiden voyage is an archival collection of rash judgements and superficial enticements, but one handled delicately and with great warmth.
first up is denton welch's autobiographical memoir maiden voyage, which is available from the always interesting exact change press. the story documents welch's sixteenth year, during which he runs away from school, travels to shanghai and, with great british understatement, begins to realize that he is homosexual.
i read this knowing little about it, other than that erin f. liked it (which is, here and elsewhere, a good sign). and it ended up complimenting the considerable amount of graham greene i read last year rather nicely. voyage feels almost like a greene novel seen through the eyes of a charlie brown character. with its youthful immediacy and stubborn sense of wonder, it envisions a world on the scale of a comic strip-- one where adults are seen only from the waist down, and life occurs in the shadow of their ignorance. welch becomes a kind of aristocratic wild-child left to his own devices. it took me a while to adapt to his prissiness and pervasive sense of entitlement, but it was well worth the adjustment.
maiden voyage captures the solipsism of adolescence with unapologetic honesty. he wanders through a graham-greene-esque "oriental" world, and approaches, fears and examines it with equally problematic assumptions. but instead of resulting in woeful christian melancholia (which i think greene is the master of, in both good ways and bad), welch provides one with a worm's eye view of its various intensities. the book is alternately seductive, fetishistic and peevish. welch objectifies his environment as he examines it. he judges it with a shockingly dead-on sixteen-year-old foolishness, and somehow avoids articulating his personal sovereignity in the process. maiden voyage is an archival collection of rash judgements and superficial enticements, but one handled delicately and with great warmth.
