Non-Transitional Adolescences in The City and the Pillar and Other Voices, Other Rooms

in Boyhood Studies
Author:
Chung-Hao Ku National Chiao Tung University chku@umich.edu

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/bhs.2016.090107
Keywords:
adolescence; backwardness; gothic; non-transitional; queer temporalities
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ABSTRACT

In this article I study two American novels in order to tease out the stakes, in boyhood studies, of viewing adolescence as a transition. In Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar and Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, boy protagonists seem to suffer from arrested development or undergo a phase of sexual exploration. But such readings either define marriage and reproduction as the only way of growth, or envision a homo/hetero-identified subject who looks back on his adolescence as an experimental transition. In Vidal’s and Capote’s narratives, such a heteronormative life trajectory and homo/hetero subject do not exist. Since the narratives open the protagonists to the backward temporalities of return and the gothic, the narratives and the characters together thwart teleological or linearized notions of maturity and identity formation.

Contributor Notes

Chung-Hao Ku is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. His teaching and research interests include twentieth and twenty-first century American literature, gender studies (men’s and boyhood studies), queer studies, and ethnic and diaspora studies. His work has appeared in Concentric, The Henry James Review, Journal of Bisexuality, and Modern Fiction Studies. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Boyish Characters: Narrative, Time, Maturity. Email: chku@umich.edu; chku@nctu.edu.tw

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Boyhood Studies

An Interdisciplinary Journal

Cover Boyhood Studies
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
20
Keywords:
adolescence; backwardness; gothic; non-transitional; queer temporalities
Print Publication Date:
01 Mar 2016
Online Publication Date:
01 Mar 2016
Copyright:
© Berghahn Books 2016

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