Novel · 2024
A Gay (Happy) Novel
Gay literary fiction has a tradition of sadness. Loss, shame, difficult endings — these are the genre's default settings, and they exist for real reasons. But they've hardened into an expectation: that a gay story has to suffer to be taken seriously.
A Gay (Happy) Novel refuses that bargain. Its title is the argument. The parenthetical does two things simultaneously: it reclaims the older meaning of the word — this is a happy novel, the title insists — while making the sexual meaning unavoidable. The reader knows what they're getting. The book knows they know. That double awareness is the formal project.
The happiness is not a fairy tale. The novel follows its protagonist as he pursues his life, timidly at first, carrying the knowledge that a harder conversation is unavoidable. The weight is always there. The book earns its happiness honestly, which is the only way happiness means anything.