AMERICAN SCHOLAR

In Horrigan’s novel, a gay academic reflects on past and present relationships.

In New York City, professor and author James Fitzgerald has just had a successful reading from his latest novel, American Scholar. Then the sister of Gregory Lenda, a long-ago ex—to whom James dedicated his book—shows up, throwing him off-kilter and into reminiscence. The narrative alternates between James’ reflective roaming across the city in present-day 2016 and his forays into academia and gay culture in 1987. Eighties-era James, who goes by “Jimmy,” meets the charismatic Gregory at a gay men’s study group; the two quickly develop a strong connection and start dating. The naïve Jimmy struggles to navigate Gregory’s history of mental illness, his own feelings about sex, and his dissertation on (real-life) early-20th-century critic F.O. Matthiessen, a closeted gay man. In the present, James reflects on tension with his husband, Fran; visits his younger boyfriend, Snyder; and stops by Gregory’s old house in midtown Manhattan. The book has a pensive, dreamlike quality to it; the flashbacks will feel natural to anyone who’s taken similar long evening walks. But there’s also a captivating intensity throughout, from Gregory’s dark, urgent personality to the no-punches-pulled depiction of the effects of HIV and AIDS on the gay community in the late ’80s. James’ other relationships are well limned, including those with college friends and fellow study-group members. Both Horrigan and his protagonist are literature professors with Columbia doctorates, and this sometimes breeds dry, academic passages. Still, it’s intriguing to follow Jimmy’s fascination with Matthiessen, whose life serves as a historical parallel to aspects of Jimmy and Gregory’s relationship. Above all, readers will recognize the ache of the absence of a great love: After considering Virginia Woolf’s assertion that life is “a procession of shadows,” James thinks, “He wanted to speak about ghosts. Shades. Shadows. Hauntings. (Was that just another way of saying, he wanted to write about Gregory?)”

A haunting, complex look at love, gay history, and the passage of time.