American Studies

Handsome prose and the erotic undercurrent of pre-Stonewall gay life strengthen this intriguing first novel. While recuperating from a hustler's brutal beating, Reeve, a 62-year-old gay man, finds his attention split between lustful thoughts for his young, straight hospital roommate and memories of his college professor and mentor, Tom Slater (a character based on critic, author and Harvard professor F. O. Matthiessen, 1902-1950). Slater, known both for his seminar on American studies and (among the cognoscenti) for his closeted lifestyle, was both a homosexual and a member of the Communist Party. Several scenes reoccur throughout this novel--particularly those of Reeve's beating and a university president's destruction of Slater's career during the McCarthy era--though neither plot nor character is further illuminated after the initial revelations. In fact, the work relies heavily on supposition: Slater's life and downfall is reconstructed as Reeve imagines it to have happened. Though this method reveals Merlis's considerable talent, it fails to raise his main characters, both passive victims, to the historical status they are due. ``He was so much a ghost that I couldn't touch him,'' Reeve says of Slater, who ultimately remains as much of an enigma as Matthiessen himself. (Sept.)