Mary Renault As the First Gay Novelist

ESSAY Mary Renault as the First Gay Novelist ALAN BRADY CONRATH eST KNOWN for her historical novels set in an- coming from her adoring public, which turned novel after novel cient Greece, many with overtly homosexual into abestseller.Butshe was also esteemed by other writers, themes and scenes, Mary Renault began her ca- such as Gore vidal, who gave The Persian Boy (1972) a rave re- reer with a novel set in modern times called the view, marvelingthat the author had found areadershipfor a Charioteer (1953). Taking place during World novel about ahomosexuallove affair between aworldcon- BWar II, the novel recounts the story of a wounded queror and his Persian eunuch. Renault also won numerous soldier named Laurie “Spud” Odell who is both torn between awards for her work, and got a front-page obituary in The New two lovers and conflicted about his own homosexual feelings. York Times upon her death in 1983. Still, she is generally ranked One of his lovers is similarly confused, but the other, anaval below such writers as Robert Graves and Marguerite yource- officer who’s aveteranof the British public school system, nar, who also wrote of ancient times. And she appears rarely if seems quite comfortable with his sexual leanings and accepts ever among the “greats” of 20th-century literature when critics himself as a different kind of man. take to drawing up their “top ten” lists. That the Charioteer was read as a “gay novel” is demon- it is worth pondering for amomentwhy Renault isnotin strated by the fact that it became an instant bestseller among fact included among the mightiest of literary lions. one factor homosexual readers soon after its publication. Indeed if there’s is certainly the 20th-century bias in favor of experimentalism, acasetobemadeforitas“thefirst”suchnovel,itliesinthe especially in the use of language. Alas, Renault was a writer of fact that it found a large and eager audience of gay readers— gorgeous, realistic prose in the great 19th-century tradition; she as did Renault’s nextnovel, the last of the Wine (1956). In- was not Proust, Faulkner, Woolf, or Joyce. And while some of deed these two novels undoubtedly provided these earlier writers did achieve popular suc- much of the rank-and-file American public It would be difficult to cess, by the time Renault came along—her with its first exposure to homosexual themes overstate the importance first books were published in the 1950s—the and characters. And while the City and the of Renault’s works in the arbiters of literary greatness were starting to take adimview of anything that ventured Pillar (1948) had sold quite well a few years closeted 1950s and ’60s, earlier, authorGore Vidalhad seen fit to onto the Times bestseller list. there also create two angst-ridden protagonists one of when positive representa- seems to be some critical bias against the whom murders the other in the final scene. tions of gay people were historical novel, once a revered literary form Renault, in contrast, took pains to portray virtually nonexistent. that’s now seen as a sort of genre fiction. same-sex relations in apositivelight, no- But one can imagine other reasons, ex- tably in the Mask of Apollo (1966) and in the Persian Boy traneous to strictly literary criteria, for why Renault occupies a (1972), which effectively outed Alexander the Great. less elevated rank than she may deserve. For starters, there is Taken together, thesebooks might qualify Mary Renault, that profuse presence of explicit homosexual content in most of herself alesbian,as the first gay novelist,asshewrote not a her novels. Renault clearly believed that one cannot write mean- one-off novel about same-sex love but a body of work that kept ingfully or accurately about ancient Greece without treating ho- it front-and-center as a recurring theme. mosexual behavior and relationships, which she saw as Following is an essay by the late Alan Conrath, slightly ed- intimately connected to core Greek values. Many have tried, ited by me, which appeared in the May-June 2004 issue. —RS needless to say. For example, until Renault there was a virtual conspiracy of silence concerning Alexander the Great’s unde- tSeeMStHe GoDS will have their revenge, or at niable homo-, or at least bi-, sexuality. onlyin the last thirty least their ironic outcomes. thus we owe it to a woman years or so (with a few exceptions) has any serious work deal- and alesbianto have written the most authentic and ing with that subject received mainstream critical attention. beautiful prose about romantic love between men in all of literature. in eight novels and one history (a definitive “it iS A lovelytHinG to live with courage, and to die leav- i ing everlasting fame.” these words of Alexander the Great epit- biography of Alexander the Great), Mary Renault recre- ated the world of ancient Greece with an intensity and an au- omize Renault’s characterizationof him in two of her best thenticity unmatched by any of the writers who have attempted novels, Fire fromHeavenand The Persian Boy.Renault’s it, including some of greater critical acclaim. Alexander personifies the ethical ideal found in Greek culture Renault received her share of praise, to be sure, most of it from Homer to Plato and Aristotle: the concept of “virtue” as a moral standard—as the moral standard. this is quite a different Alan Brady Conrath, who died in 2005, was a writer and poet—by day approach to morality than the Christian habit of setting down a an accountant—based in Boston. set of rules or principles that must be followed more-or-less ex- 28 The Gay & lesbian review / wOrlDwiDe.

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