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Disjointed memoir fails
By Benoit Denizet Lewis |
September 4, 2011, Sunday
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Print Edition
HILTON Als, a writer for The New Yorker, probably did Justin Vivian Bond a disservice by contributing the preface to Bond's novella-length childhood memoir, "Tango." That's not to say that the preface is bad - quite the opposite. It is poetic and affecting, and it features revealing descriptions of Bond, a transgender singer-songwriter and performance artist with a fervent following among New York City's avant-garde.
"Justin Vivian has learned to dance with V's self," Als writes, "to wear the heels and the suit that fit V's being, all cut and formed to suit V's soul, having earned it as so many of us earn it, through being brutalized and suppressed and sometimes through love, too." ("V" is Bond's preferred, gender-free pronoun.)
The preface falters only when Als claims that Bond's memoir "hardly needs an introduction." "Tango" is a promising but uneven book in dire need of an introduction, a narrative structure and an editor. Als beautifully written preface serves only to make the memoir's shortcomings, from its inconsistent writing to its skim-the-surface introspection, all the more blatant by comparison.
The book's faults are a shame, because the 48-year-old Bond can at times be a funny and thoughtful narrator, guiding us through his childhood in Hagerstown, Maryland, the United States, where he fell asleep every night "imagining that I would wake up the next morning with a closet full of 1940s evening gowns." Bond fans will probably find much to like in this memoir, including a dozen or so laugh-out-loud passages and some touching descriptions of growing up as a "trans child." (He was fond of wearing his mother's frosted pink lipstick to school. When she put a stop to that, Bond says that he went to school "defeated, disappointed and bland.")
"Tango" is ostensibly framed in the present (I say ostensibly because it isn't effectively or persuasively framed there), as Bond is moved, by two events, to recall his childhood. First, he is given a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder. He wonders whether "queer" people may be predisposed to ADD because "we never really know who the enemy is or who might turn on us at any minute," and so "become hypervigilant about everything."
It's an interesting thought, but like so much else in the book, it isn't explored in any depth. Before you know it, Bond (the ADD at work, perhaps?) has moved on to his next rumination.
Second, Bond learns that his childhood lover, Michael Hunter, has been arrested for impersonating a drug enforcement agent. The memoir's most absorbing sections involve Bond's relationship to Hunter, who was also a cruel bully. Their dysfunctional affair began after Bond had already been branded the neighborhood "fag."
"While most of the gay boys in my college class were experimenting sexually" during the AIDS crisis, Bond writes, "I was trying to find love. Most of those boys are dead now."
"Justin Vivian has learned to dance with V's self," Als writes, "to wear the heels and the suit that fit V's being, all cut and formed to suit V's soul, having earned it as so many of us earn it, through being brutalized and suppressed and sometimes through love, too." ("V" is Bond's preferred, gender-free pronoun.)
The preface falters only when Als claims that Bond's memoir "hardly needs an introduction." "Tango" is a promising but uneven book in dire need of an introduction, a narrative structure and an editor. Als beautifully written preface serves only to make the memoir's shortcomings, from its inconsistent writing to its skim-the-surface introspection, all the more blatant by comparison.
The book's faults are a shame, because the 48-year-old Bond can at times be a funny and thoughtful narrator, guiding us through his childhood in Hagerstown, Maryland, the United States, where he fell asleep every night "imagining that I would wake up the next morning with a closet full of 1940s evening gowns." Bond fans will probably find much to like in this memoir, including a dozen or so laugh-out-loud passages and some touching descriptions of growing up as a "trans child." (He was fond of wearing his mother's frosted pink lipstick to school. When she put a stop to that, Bond says that he went to school "defeated, disappointed and bland.")
"Tango" is ostensibly framed in the present (I say ostensibly because it isn't effectively or persuasively framed there), as Bond is moved, by two events, to recall his childhood. First, he is given a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder. He wonders whether "queer" people may be predisposed to ADD because "we never really know who the enemy is or who might turn on us at any minute," and so "become hypervigilant about everything."
It's an interesting thought, but like so much else in the book, it isn't explored in any depth. Before you know it, Bond (the ADD at work, perhaps?) has moved on to his next rumination.
Second, Bond learns that his childhood lover, Michael Hunter, has been arrested for impersonating a drug enforcement agent. The memoir's most absorbing sections involve Bond's relationship to Hunter, who was also a cruel bully. Their dysfunctional affair began after Bond had already been branded the neighborhood "fag."
"While most of the gay boys in my college class were experimenting sexually" during the AIDS crisis, Bond writes, "I was trying to find love. Most of those boys are dead now."
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