Embracing a gay identity : gay novels as guides /

This reads like a self-help book, complete with apparatus, that aims at analyzing the coming-out process depicted in six prominent gay novels: James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (1956), John Rechy's City of Night (1963), John Cheever's Falconer (CH, Sep'77), Paul Monette's Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll (1978), Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance (1978), and Edmund White's The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988). Koponen devotes a chapter to each novel but becomes distracted in these crucial chapters, embarking within them on discourses that frequently cause him to lose focus at the expense of analyzing closely the novel under discussion. Some readers may view skeptically a taxonomy of coming out based on Elisabeth Ku"bler-Ross's stages of adjusting to impending death. At best, the analogy is strained and ill-chosen, at worst subconsciously homophobic. Koponen's book presents interesting and important information, but its impact is weakened by his digressions (however interesting they are) and by the gymnastics he employs to make his thesis conform to K"ubler-Ross's paradigm. Solid bibliography, glossary of gay terminology, helpful index. Recommended with reservations. R. B. Shuman; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign