Edited by Steve Bamlett, Saturday, 10 Dec 2016, 21:03
Matthew Griffin
(2016) Hide London, Bloomsbury
It is difficult to over-state the significance of this novel
either as a transformation of the niche quality of the male gay novel but also of
the metaphysical novel –exploring the experience mortality torn free of false
hopes of salvation or eternity.
The title indicates the rich themes. It is a novel in which
things are hidden – not least the central relationship (a marriage if there
ever was one) between Wendell and Frank that is forever disguising its meaning
in fear of the disgust and retribution of others – perhaps even from their
introjections in these men’s (especially Frank’s) lives. But ‘hide’ is also
that we bear in common with the animals – skin and covering hair, and a thing
of great importance to Wendell, a retired but still practicing, in every way, taxidermist
– resurrecting skin to a notion of its contents.
What skin covers or hides is very much the topic of the
novel at its most painful – I cannot even bear to recollect the fate of Daisy,
the dog representing in part the love of the two men for each other (their baby
p.203) – but our inattentive disgust at bodily effluvia and slippery inner
organs or matter released is a constant in the novel. In Frank’s bodily
deterioration – to a collector of his own urine and faeces to other secret or
dark interiors which people in the novel variously find disturbing, even
potentially disgusting like the inadequately sized implements Frank fills with
urine and sometimes faeces or ‘secrets’ so deep no-one knows their contents:
For a moment he stands absolutely still, as I’ve caught him
at something illicit (p.180).
There is a moment where Frank and Wendell hold hands
together under the skin of a deer as the work on it, feeling its edges tremble ‘with
surface tension as they stretched wide’. That is a precise description of the
prose here as if gives away its themes just below the ‘hide’ (a passage in
which the word ‘married’ does a lot of work):
I watched our fingers creep under
it, a little bit at a time, along the warm, slick neck, all the way to the top
of the spine, nearly to the skull, until the skin was so delicate and married
to the muscle we could see it stretch across our fingertips, the hairs that
covered it spreading apart to show the paled hide underneath. … He looked like
he was going to be sick. If we pushed any further, our fingers would tear
through, out into the cold, thin air.
This novel strains to comprehend mortal love like no other
while being enmeshed in selves, bodies, communities and changing social mores
and ideologies. The moving passages refuse to hide what sustainable love must
mean – which is to confront pain, waste and death. In a novel almost where what
is spoken of as ’sex’ is absent, physical love is experienced when Wendell
clears the ‘mess’ off of Frank’s now odorous body. This passage is painfully
beautiful that shows him handling Frank’s ‘privates’:
When I touch them, they rise a
little, then fall again, like a wounded animal heaving a shallow breath: like
the first bird I ever held in my hands, … I felt its life gutter and go out. I
was surprised by the brittleness of its wings. There was no grace in them at
all. (p. 246)
As in The Winter’s Tale the search for love is confounded by
the search for grace. If grace exists, it is still, cold, statuesque. Love
lives when it cares and remembers, compares and remains:
He kisses me on the corner of the
mouth, whiskers tickling my lips, and turns to go. His stubble’s soft now. Used
to scrape me till I was sore. (p. 25)
That kiss recalls the one given to the dying Daisy which captures
the dog’s saliva (a tense moment of disgust and passion) at the corner of her
mouth, a kiss for Frank who like ‘each man’ has ‘killed the thing he loves’.
Read this book if you can. I write about it in the hope I
can lose some of the visceral nature of the memories it leaves in me.Biut it really is worth it. Pain or no pain!
Matthew Griffin (2016) Hide London, Bloomsbury
Matthew Griffin (2016) Hide London, Bloomsbury
It is difficult to over-state the significance of this novel either as a transformation of the niche quality of the male gay novel but also of the metaphysical novel –exploring the experience mortality torn free of false hopes of salvation or eternity.
The title indicates the rich themes. It is a novel in which things are hidden – not least the central relationship (a marriage if there ever was one) between Wendell and Frank that is forever disguising its meaning in fear of the disgust and retribution of others – perhaps even from their introjections in these men’s (especially Frank’s) lives. But ‘hide’ is also that we bear in common with the animals – skin and covering hair, and a thing of great importance to Wendell, a retired but still practicing, in every way, taxidermist – resurrecting skin to a notion of its contents.
What skin covers or hides is very much the topic of the novel at its most painful – I cannot even bear to recollect the fate of Daisy, the dog representing in part the love of the two men for each other (their baby p.203) – but our inattentive disgust at bodily effluvia and slippery inner organs or matter released is a constant in the novel. In Frank’s bodily deterioration – to a collector of his own urine and faeces to other secret or dark interiors which people in the novel variously find disturbing, even potentially disgusting like the inadequately sized implements Frank fills with urine and sometimes faeces or ‘secrets’ so deep no-one knows their contents:
For a moment he stands absolutely still, as I’ve caught him at something illicit (p.180).
There is a moment where Frank and Wendell hold hands together under the skin of a deer as the work on it, feeling its edges tremble ‘with surface tension as they stretched wide’. That is a precise description of the prose here as if gives away its themes just below the ‘hide’ (a passage in which the word ‘married’ does a lot of work):
I watched our fingers creep under it, a little bit at a time, along the warm, slick neck, all the way to the top of the spine, nearly to the skull, until the skin was so delicate and married to the muscle we could see it stretch across our fingertips, the hairs that covered it spreading apart to show the paled hide underneath. … He looked like he was going to be sick. If we pushed any further, our fingers would tear through, out into the cold, thin air.
This novel strains to comprehend mortal love like no other while being enmeshed in selves, bodies, communities and changing social mores and ideologies. The moving passages refuse to hide what sustainable love must mean – which is to confront pain, waste and death. In a novel almost where what is spoken of as ’sex’ is absent, physical love is experienced when Wendell clears the ‘mess’ off of Frank’s now odorous body. This passage is painfully beautiful that shows him handling Frank’s ‘privates’:
When I touch them, they rise a little, then fall again, like a wounded animal heaving a shallow breath: like the first bird I ever held in my hands, … I felt its life gutter and go out. I was surprised by the brittleness of its wings. There was no grace in them at all. (p. 246)
As in The Winter’s Tale the search for love is confounded by the search for grace. If grace exists, it is still, cold, statuesque. Love lives when it cares and remembers, compares and remains:
He kisses me on the corner of the mouth, whiskers tickling my lips, and turns to go. His stubble’s soft now. Used to scrape me till I was sore. (p. 25)
That kiss recalls the one given to the dying Daisy which captures the dog’s saliva (a tense moment of disgust and passion) at the corner of her mouth, a kiss for Frank who like ‘each man’ has ‘killed the thing he loves’.
Read this book if you can. I write about it in the hope I can lose some of the visceral nature of the memories it leaves in me.Biut it really is worth it. Pain or no pain!
All the best
Steve