It's 2008, so if it's not entirely preposterous to begin thinking about the Best of the Decade lists then certainly one of the top novels will be Irène Némirovsky's masterpiece Suite Francaise. (You'll recall, she wrote the book as she was fleeing the Nazis and didn't finish it because she was murdered in Auschwitz, but the manuscript was only discovered by her aged daughter a few years ago and was not published until 2005.) Understandably, that novel's popularity has sparked an interest in her earlier work, and although Knopf heavily promoted last fall's thin Fire in the Blood, they've been much quieter about releasing David Golder via their Everyman imprint. Being accustomed to rabidly anti-gay closet cases, we all know minorities sometimes attack their own kind from a misguided mix of self-loathing and self-preservation, yet it's still a shock to see a Jewish novelist of such breadth and humanity succumb to the worst cliches of antisemitism. Not only does the narration continually hurl hateful anti-Jewish comments, the Jewish characters are made to say awful things about each other. The story of an aging, ill Jewish businessman, his grasping wife, and a spoiled, greedy "slut" of a daughter, the book's antisemitism is surpassed by its misogyny. So, when two straight men discuss the gorgeous gigolo's being gay, the reader reflexively braces for the vilest homophobia. Instead, they are surprisingly blasé:
Fischl indicated Alec with a sullen shrug. "They say he prefers men. Is it true?"
"Not for the moment, in any case," murmured Hoyos. He stared at Joyce and Alec with a sardonic look on his face. "He's so young, people don't know what they like at that age."
Némirovsky wrote David Golder from 1926 to 1929, when it was published to widespread acclaim and became a bestseller. It's another reminder that gay life could be known, discussed, and accepted four decades before Stonewall, during a time we're often told such behavior was unheard of, unforgivable, and unspoken.
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