This week saw an outbreak of the recurring online ‘discussion’ about women writing gay male characters. I’m not going to rehearse the arguments here, they are easy enough to find. However one point did set me thinking … my pen name is non-gender specific, (though I’m upfront about my pronouns being she/her). So why choose Ripley?
Tom Ripley is the creation of lesbian/bisexual author Patricia Highsmith. If you haven’t read the The Talented Mr Ripley, look away now and go and read it! Tom Ripley is, amongst other things, a murderer, and a thoroughly unsympathetic character. But by the end of the book, readers are rooting for him which is both counterintuitive and a tribute to Highsmith’s brilliance.
I fist came across Tom Ripley in a writing class. The class tutor is a marvellous writer of literary fiction and I disagreed with them about pretty much everything the class discussed. One of those things was Ripley. I think he is a gay man. The tutor thought he was straight. Highsmith never said one way or another, although in later books, Ripley has female partners. The tutor said this was decisive, as if no gay man ever had a female partner/friend/lover/beard. I relied on the text for my argument. See what you think.
This is from the opening section. Ripley realises he is being followed. The book was published in 1955.
”Automatically, as he strolled to an empty space at the bar, he looked round to see if there was anyone he knew … The red-haired man waved a hand, and Tom’s hand went up limply in response. He slid one leg over a stool and faced the door challengingly, yet with a flagrant casualness.
“Was this the kind of man they would send after him? … Was that the kind they sent on a job like this, maybe to start chatting with you in a bar, and then bang! the hand on the shoulder, the other hand displaying a policeman’s badge. Tom Ripley, you’re under arrest.”
Gay or straight?
I’m firmly on Team Gay (in every sense). I think Highsmith was a lesbian/bisexual woman writing about a gay man in the Ripley books. She wrote about lesbians too, (The Price of Salt filmed as Carroll) and about straight people (Strangers on a Train).
I will never be the writer Highsmith was. All we share is that I am a queer woman writing about gay men. And lesbians too, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Hi, I’ve just finished your latest book – Interwoven – and I first wanted to write and say how much I enjoy your books. I’ve read them all and they are a must read for me.
I’m a gay man and I read a lot of gay fiction, and your books stand above almost all others in their believable and empathetic characters, evocation of place and their compelling, complex but easy to follow naratives.
I read your piece about women portraying gay men with interest. Of course there is no reason why that should be problematic – everyone should be free to write whatever characters they like and if they empathise and research there’s no reason their characters can’t be authentic. You, Josh Lanyon and Dal McLean have written consistently some of the best gay characters I have read. There is some truth though that a good amount of gay fiction written by women has some ridiculous characters that somehow become completely different people when they fall in love. Not to mention that the sex scenes are often laughably unrealistic.
I mentioned I’m a fan of Josh Lanyon and when I discovered her I devoured her back catalogue. I remember being disappointed a few years back when it was widely revealed that Josh is a woman. Her writing felt authentic to me and I think perhaps I had convinced myself that that was because Josh was a man. Of course that is nonsense and I’ve read plenty of weak gay fiction written by gay men. My reaction challenged me and my preconceptions and it was a good lesson for me!
Finally, I’m also a big consumer of audiobook and I wonder if you’ve considered producing your books in audio? It’s tough to find the right narrator and if you get it wrong a book can be but destroyed, but get it right and it can really come alive, and often reveal new interpretations of the text. I’d definitely be up for buying your books in audio, not least because my husband reads very little but we listen to audiobooks together and I know he would love your stories.
Anyway, thanks again for your books – they have brought me a lot of pleasure.
Thank you for those comments. I really do like to hear from readers.
If my sex scenes are realistic, thanks are due to my gay male friends who have been, how can I put this, delightfully open about their experiences! Even so, there have been the occasional comment that I have no idea what I’m writing about. Which of course is completely true. I will never experience sex as a man in this lifetime. But sex is surely an expression of personality. As I get to know my characters, I get a sense of how they might behave between the sheets, and that, surely is more important than the mechanics? Providing, of course, that the mechanics are physically possible.
Sadly, audiobooks are out of my price range, assuming I could find a voice actor with the correct Welsh accents (Daniel’s north Walian is quite different to Mal’s south Wales Valleys). Maybe one day! I’m currently writing a couple of books under a different pen name featuring female detectives. I’m wondering whether to record them myself…