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2-1998 My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid (Book Review) Daryl Cumber Dance University of Richmond, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Dance, Daryl Cumber. "Review of My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid." Art & Understanding 7 (February 1998): 59-62.
This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the English at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Part of the trouble with Some Men Are a beginning, a middle, and an end, ideally Lookers is in the telling. For instance, a in that order; but this story has two begin fight scene among dog walkers is heavily nings, and here's the first one," begins one Some Men Are Lookers mediated by narrative summation even section. The circuitous narrative that fol By Ethan Mordden though it's written in present tense-the lows fails to make significant exactly why St. Martin's Press most immediate voice available to a writer. breaking a tenet of good storytelling is This dilutes what could have been a won central to the section; what could have Ethan Mord den's Buddies stories-which derful comic effect. Time and again, seri been profound becomes perfunctory. first appeared in the pages of Christopher ous themes and comic aesthetics butt In general, the jabs at comedy and wit Street and later in three hardback collec heads in this book instead of providing in Some Men Are Lookers aren't sharp tions-surface again in Some Men Are the sharp relief necessary to appreciate enough to support what the book would Lookers. The fourth installment, a loose each extreme. Granted, that's a difficult like to be about-how aging gay men sur hybrid of novel and short story cycle, con task to achieve, but this is Mordden's vive their surrogate families. tinues the tale of opera queen Bud, his fourth time out with these characters. By Mordden, hopefully, will shelve these best friend Dennis Savage, and their choosing to write about them again, he gay blades until they reach retirement age. respective flighty boyfriends, Little Kiwi raises the bar himself. By then maybe they'll have grown up (now Virgil) and Cosgrove. Only the newcomers breathe fresh life enough to be worth looking at again. By now, this circle of friends is turn into this tale-chief among them the won -Rhomylly B. Forbes ing on itself-tension mounts between derful Peter Keene, who straddles the span Bud and Dennis due to Dennis' refusal to of having one foot planted at home in My Brother visit another friend dying of AIDS. Vir straight America and the other off tip by Jamaica Kincaid gil and Cosgrove are up to their old, amus toeing through gay camp. Keene, a book Farrar; Straus and Giroux ing tricks, but their once youthful glee editor "just coming out and a little cock now seems forced, at times embarrassing crazy," disrupts a dinner party to attack a In Jamaica Kincaid's six previous autobi as they curdle into poster children for the gorgeous Venetian youth before going on ographical novels and essays (At the Bot Peter Pan syndrome. to transform into a kid in the candy shop tom ofthe River, 1984; Annie John, 1985; A Somebody should have made Mord of gay Manhattan. This Ivy Leaguer's Small Place, 1988; Annie, Gwen, Lily, Pam den stop at book number three. delayed coming out evokes humor and and Julie, 1989; Lucy, 1990; and The Auto poignancy in a way that shows biography ofMy Mother, 1996), her readers Mordden at his best since How have the feeling that she has told all about Long Has This Been Going On? her troubled life in Antigua and her painful But overall, narrative drama emotional conflicts with her family (espe threatens to collapse beneath cially her mother). We discover with her the old characters' arched new memoir, A1y Brother, however, that awareness of their own melo some things have been just too painful to drama. Part of the problem? tell-until now. Clearly the most obvious Narrator Buddy is as self-indul omission from these earlier work<> is her gent with his own cleverness as three brothers, whose appearance after many of his friends are with sex. Jamaica was nine years old was one of the Never has the island of Man many "betrayals" for which she can never hattan seemed so insular, pop forgive her mother. Their disruption of ulated entirely of gay men either her previously Edenic family life as an only dying, on the make, or shoring child was apparently so traumatic that she up shaky relationships. Clearly, chose to write her brothers out of her fam Mordden is more concerned ily history-until now. In the previous with mapping the gay ghetto autobiographical pieces set in Antigua, than he is with his subjects' notably At the Bottom ofthe River and Annie place in the larger world. That John, her persona is an only child; and the would be fine if the story brothers' appearance is only briefly men worked better. But too often it tioned in Lucy. Only with the death of reads like a diary foisted on the Devon Drew, the youngest of these broth reader, lacking the shape and ers, does this obsessively confessional substance of literature. Transi writer finally reveal the degree to which tional devices designed to ease her bitterness towards her mother stems A CO!'\TJ.'liUATI0"1 OFTllE "BliDDIES" CYC:J.E readers into flashbacks or pro from the birth of these boys. That he (like EthanJVIordden vide backstory show their his brothers) is a messy interloper whose seams. "All stories should have dirty diapers Jamaica is not about to allow to soil her hands and interrupt her life forts, luxuries, that I enjoyed was either during his infancy or his death at reading a book"; as in her childhood thirty-three from AIDS is a major, though memories when she was supposed to perhaps inadvertent, theme of this book. have put her book down to change Though she recalls changing his diapers his diaper, again she must interrupt as a baby, the recurrent recollection is of the Eden that is her life in Vermont the time she was left to look after her baby to fly to Antigua. The events of that brother all day, and her mother returned and other trips to see this brother to find her engrossed in a book while her during his struggle with AIDS are the brother was in a dirty diaper with a hard subject matter of My Brother. In the ened stool. Her mother was in such a fury process we learn a little about him. that she gathered all ofJamaica's books, She informs us, "Nothing came from doused them with kerosene and set them him: not work, not children, not love on fire. The reader is constantly reminded for someone else"; and yet through of Devon's incontinence as his AIDS pro out there is the recollection of his gresses, but though Kincaid returns to love of growing things and scores of Antigua, sits with him, talks with him, and images of plants and trees to remind arranges for him to get advanced medical us of the possibility that this life cut attention, it is clear that she does not down too short might have blos change his diapers. Indeed it becomes somed and grown under different cir quite apparent that, from the perspective cumstances. In the course of this of the narrator, his dwindling manhood, memoir, we also learn a great deal his regression into infancy and his ulti KINCAID about the process of dying of AIDS. mate death are merely poetic justice His suffering is presented in Kincaid's removing this thirty-three-year inconve Ulben he grabbed his penis in his hand, usual direct, unflinching honesty, and some nience and allowing her to go on with her he suddenly pointed at me, a sort of descriptions turn the reader's stomach ("a life. After all, the arrival of these male sib thrusting gesture, and he said in a voice stream of yellow puss flowed out of his lings with their "hog guts" (to borrow that was full of deep panic and deep anus constantly; the inside of his mouth words of Lena in describing her brother fear: "Jamaica, look at this, just look and all around his lips were covered with Milkman's sense of privilege in Toni Mor at this." a white glistening substance, thrush"). The rison's Song ofSolomon) meant only addi pain Devon suffers is exacerbated by the tional labor, economic deprivation, and The ultimate irony is Kincaid's dis lack of medication and adequate medical the end of an education for their sister. covery after his death that her brother was facilities (they are actually primitive and Kincaid cannot understand her brother actually a homosexual. filthy) to deal with this disease in a third Devon's "compulsion to express himself Kincaid's presentation of this brother world nation like Antigua, and the absolute through his penis." Despite the privileges is couched in inconveniences to her and desertion by friends, a few of whom would her brothers enjoyed at her expense, the "her" family. On the night of his birth, make one visit to stand outside the door intelligent and charming Devon had dis "the routine oflife was upset": she had to of his room and never return again. Kin sipated his life in crime, drugs and careless go for a midwife and ·an of the children caid is appalled at someone's suggestion sex. When she had earlier warned him to had to go out to stay with neighbors. It is that she take her brother to the United use condoms, he replied "Me no get