The Dark Mother by Waldo David Frank (.ePUB)(.AZW3)
File Size: 1.2 MB
The Dark Mother by Waldo David Frank (1920)
Requirements: .ePUB / .AZW3 reader, 1.2 Mb
Overview: One of the “lost” novels listed in:
Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century by Anthony Slide (2003)
The Dark Mother (Boni & Liveright, 1920) is an early example— perhaps the definitive one—of a novel in which two men are in love, but in which the homosexual nature of the relationship is never revealed. In The New Republic (December 29, 1929), Stark Young wrote one of the few complimentary reviews of the novel, remarking:
One thing Mr. Frank does do: he brings home to us anew in this book the very valuable reminder that there are vast areas of life that our literature has not yet known how to include. In that sense this novel in places may be called a creditable experiment in material.
The two men in question here are nineteen-year-old David Markand and the somewhat older Thomas Rennard, who meet in a small town. Rennard is a visiting lawyer from New York, and Markand, following the death of his mother, is about to leave for New York to work for his uncle.
An intimate relationship develops between the two, and it is nurtured in New York when both men decide to share an apartment. Both have close female friends, and both lead semiseparate lives, coming together at night but sleeping in separate bedrooms. Rennard is very much obsessed with Markand who, in turn, does not understand the feelings that the other man has for him and gives an impression of naiveté.
When he first returns to the city, Rennard tells his artist sister Cornelia that he met somebody interesting on his vacation. When she asks was it the girl at last, he responds, “No—not the girl” (p. 50). Rennard attempts to explain his feelings to Markand by telling him the story of a man who loves his friend…
Genre: Fiction > Romance > Gay > Male friendship
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