Henry Henry - Allen Bratton
Apr. 20th, 2024 11:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantomtomatoHenry Henry, by Allen Bratton, is modern queer litfic. It’s also an adaptation (of Shakespeare’s Henriad), or fanfic. Most importantly, it’s great.
I’m not overly-familiar with the original Shakespeare. I loved the novel without getting any specific references, and I’m sure it benefits from being read by someone who has that sort of love for the material which inspired it. But it holds up without, and the writing is that beautiful sort of prose which grounds a story in specific detail. It’s set in the recent past, mostly 2014, and documents its version of 2014 like historical fiction. I like the choice not to make it exactly contemporary with when it was written… there’s space for me to wonder what became of the characters during the past decade. Hal Lancaster (Henry V), our POV character, is around my age—did he kick his drug habit for good? Does he commit to his off-and-on relationship? Does he hold down a job? Get therapy, outlive his father, connect with any of his siblings? I don’t know, of course, but I enjoy having the room to speculate and the investment to hope.
My comments below are medium-spoilery. I hit the broad strokes of what happens but not specific events.
There was a conversation about Shakespearean fanfic, or the relative lack of, on FFA recently. A nonny was wondering at the relative smallness of those fandoms. Many of the responses pointed to the professional work based on Shakespeare, and how frequently we see adaptations, as reasons why there isn’t much fic.
So with the memory of that in mind, I spent the past few days reading this novel looking for whether and how it would work as fic. I think it would? I find myself wanting to say it’s not written as fic, but I don’t know exactly what I mean by that. The prose doesn’t match the usual that I see in fandom, I suppose. But it is the sort of prose I strive for in my fic, so that’s one strike against me. The sex scenes mostly don’t read as titillating, though some do… and they are graphic, even when short. Perhaps if Bratton had used the word ‘cock’ more? In the litfic adaptation of a classic category, it’s very low-plot—fic of this length would most usually do something more extravagant. There wasn’t even a death. But, again, if this is what I like to write in my own fic, is that truly outside the realm of fanfic?
I think this is inherently an introspective question for me. What makes something fic-like is a question I have wrestled with wrt my own writing since I began doing it, and it dredges up all sorts of spectres: OOC, canon compliance, things of that nature. Henry Henry, if it is fanfic, is the sort of fanfic I want to write—a story that eschews the idea that any particular part of the original is sacred, and whose goal is simply to create something new that is also good. This one happens to belong to the world of professional publishing and so is called an adaptation; I’m glad it exists, whatever its form.
For a novel with so much drug use, family strife, and even a shooting accident, nothing really happens during the year-and-change we follow Hal Lancaster. He loses some weight and gains it back, coinciding with using coke then going back off of it. He does get shot in the face, but even the drama of that initial scene quickly recedes behind the mundanity of outpatient surgery. Death looms over the novel, but it’s the deaths of the past generations: a grandfather, a mother, an uncle. They are long dead, and the one who might join them, Hal’s father Henry, resolutely does not. He deteriorates, maybe. He might have already been deteriorated when we met him. Hal’s never certain of the severity of any of his health crises. They are all terrible and inconsequential at the same time.
I loved this. I love when a story shuffles its characters around the board and they end up mostly back in the same places as they started because it makes me examine what impact their journeys have had, if anything. I think that Hal comes out of the novel changed. I think he has turned the corner on processing his childhood sexual abuse, I think he’s likely to use fewer drugs if not drink less, and I think he has something more hopeful happening with his romantic life than he did when we met him. But I also deeply appreciate that none of this is confirmed: we don’t get a glorious moment of death, of Hal outliving his father and assuming the title of Duke of Lancaster and either making it his own or at least carrying the weight of it. We don’t know how, if ever, it will happen. Hal could return to hard partying and die before his father in this modern AU. Or, on the romantic front, maybe Hal doesn’t end up with the man he’s seeing for most of the novel, and maybe he does bow to tradition and marry a woman of acceptable status in order to keep up appearances. I don’t know! I like that I don’t know. It reflects the uncertainty of his life. It would be tonally wrong to know.
Reading this reminds me of the value of style and theme and character. Without a big third-act crisis (there’s a family wedding that might count, but only in the way that any drunken argument might count), the book relies more on its writing to keep you coming along. Chapter 30 is this for me. The narration shifts for just this one chapter, from a close 3rd person following Hal to second person (my favorite; no wonder this worked for me!) as another character narrates a story to Hal. For just this one chapter near the end we become the character we’ve been following and sit in his place for the course of a single evening. I can’t even say that the story we’re told in this chapter clears very much up. It doesn’t answer big questions or prompt radical change in Hal’s behavior. He remains drunk, unreliable, and wary of connections. Those are things too big to shift in the span of one evening or even one year. But it was emotionally cathartic to join with Hal for this stretch of a dozen pages, after all of the time we’d spent getting to know him and his problems, and then leaving that perspective for the remaining few chapters of the novel was the process of saying goodbye and trusting Hal to—to start going somewhere different. To exist without us watching him.
I’m putting this in purely for my own amusement. When I read In Memoriam last year, I noted what I considered a silly passage where the narrative justifies the physically larger character bottoming for the smaller one. It felt like an unfortunate post you’d see in fandom spaces, or a not-great paragraph in a fic. I stand by that judgment.
By contrast, Henry Henry makes no comment on having Hal, physically larger than his partner Percy, bottom during their penetrative sex. It comes up obliquely much later, after we’ve gotten many such sex scenes, at a high society party. One of the guests from their parents’ generation makes a homophobic joke which assumes that the smaller Percy must be the bottom, and Hal, absorbing the social awkwardness of the moment, jokes back in a way that confirms this (incorrect) assumption.
It’s an unpleasant encounter for both Hal and Percy, leaving the more-recently-out Percy unhappy, and in that context we get this lovely line:
That is how you acknowledge assumptions about top/bottom stereotypes, imo.
Overall I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys queer modern-day stories which deal with heavy topics (I have mentioned sexual abuse and drug use/addiction, but the book also involves a lot of religion and class issues). I haven’t gushed about how much I adore the main romantic relationship or the sibling relationship between Hal and his younger sister. There’s also a lot in here, perhaps predictably, for people who like to read about terrible fathers and the weight of familial expectations. It’s good, and it’s a lot to process—I think I will be continuing to process this one for months.
I’m not overly-familiar with the original Shakespeare. I loved the novel without getting any specific references, and I’m sure it benefits from being read by someone who has that sort of love for the material which inspired it. But it holds up without, and the writing is that beautiful sort of prose which grounds a story in specific detail. It’s set in the recent past, mostly 2014, and documents its version of 2014 like historical fiction. I like the choice not to make it exactly contemporary with when it was written… there’s space for me to wonder what became of the characters during the past decade. Hal Lancaster (Henry V), our POV character, is around my age—did he kick his drug habit for good? Does he commit to his off-and-on relationship? Does he hold down a job? Get therapy, outlive his father, connect with any of his siblings? I don’t know, of course, but I enjoy having the room to speculate and the investment to hope.
My comments below are medium-spoilery. I hit the broad strokes of what happens but not specific events.
Adaptations and Fanfic
There was a conversation about Shakespearean fanfic, or the relative lack of, on FFA recently. A nonny was wondering at the relative smallness of those fandoms. Many of the responses pointed to the professional work based on Shakespeare, and how frequently we see adaptations, as reasons why there isn’t much fic.
So with the memory of that in mind, I spent the past few days reading this novel looking for whether and how it would work as fic. I think it would? I find myself wanting to say it’s not written as fic, but I don’t know exactly what I mean by that. The prose doesn’t match the usual that I see in fandom, I suppose. But it is the sort of prose I strive for in my fic, so that’s one strike against me. The sex scenes mostly don’t read as titillating, though some do… and they are graphic, even when short. Perhaps if Bratton had used the word ‘cock’ more? In the litfic adaptation of a classic category, it’s very low-plot—fic of this length would most usually do something more extravagant. There wasn’t even a death. But, again, if this is what I like to write in my own fic, is that truly outside the realm of fanfic?
I think this is inherently an introspective question for me. What makes something fic-like is a question I have wrestled with wrt my own writing since I began doing it, and it dredges up all sorts of spectres: OOC, canon compliance, things of that nature. Henry Henry, if it is fanfic, is the sort of fanfic I want to write—a story that eschews the idea that any particular part of the original is sacred, and whose goal is simply to create something new that is also good. This one happens to belong to the world of professional publishing and so is called an adaptation; I’m glad it exists, whatever its form.
Nothing Ever Happens
For a novel with so much drug use, family strife, and even a shooting accident, nothing really happens during the year-and-change we follow Hal Lancaster. He loses some weight and gains it back, coinciding with using coke then going back off of it. He does get shot in the face, but even the drama of that initial scene quickly recedes behind the mundanity of outpatient surgery. Death looms over the novel, but it’s the deaths of the past generations: a grandfather, a mother, an uncle. They are long dead, and the one who might join them, Hal’s father Henry, resolutely does not. He deteriorates, maybe. He might have already been deteriorated when we met him. Hal’s never certain of the severity of any of his health crises. They are all terrible and inconsequential at the same time.
I loved this. I love when a story shuffles its characters around the board and they end up mostly back in the same places as they started because it makes me examine what impact their journeys have had, if anything. I think that Hal comes out of the novel changed. I think he has turned the corner on processing his childhood sexual abuse, I think he’s likely to use fewer drugs if not drink less, and I think he has something more hopeful happening with his romantic life than he did when we met him. But I also deeply appreciate that none of this is confirmed: we don’t get a glorious moment of death, of Hal outliving his father and assuming the title of Duke of Lancaster and either making it his own or at least carrying the weight of it. We don’t know how, if ever, it will happen. Hal could return to hard partying and die before his father in this modern AU. Or, on the romantic front, maybe Hal doesn’t end up with the man he’s seeing for most of the novel, and maybe he does bow to tradition and marry a woman of acceptable status in order to keep up appearances. I don’t know! I like that I don’t know. It reflects the uncertainty of his life. It would be tonally wrong to know.
Reading this reminds me of the value of style and theme and character. Without a big third-act crisis (there’s a family wedding that might count, but only in the way that any drunken argument might count), the book relies more on its writing to keep you coming along. Chapter 30 is this for me. The narration shifts for just this one chapter, from a close 3rd person following Hal to second person (my favorite; no wonder this worked for me!) as another character narrates a story to Hal. For just this one chapter near the end we become the character we’ve been following and sit in his place for the course of a single evening. I can’t even say that the story we’re told in this chapter clears very much up. It doesn’t answer big questions or prompt radical change in Hal’s behavior. He remains drunk, unreliable, and wary of connections. Those are things too big to shift in the span of one evening or even one year. But it was emotionally cathartic to join with Hal for this stretch of a dozen pages, after all of the time we’d spent getting to know him and his problems, and then leaving that perspective for the remaining few chapters of the novel was the process of saying goodbye and trusting Hal to—to start going somewhere different. To exist without us watching him.
A Short Note on Top/Bottom Roles
I’m putting this in purely for my own amusement. When I read In Memoriam last year, I noted what I considered a silly passage where the narrative justifies the physically larger character bottoming for the smaller one. It felt like an unfortunate post you’d see in fandom spaces, or a not-great paragraph in a fic. I stand by that judgment.
By contrast, Henry Henry makes no comment on having Hal, physically larger than his partner Percy, bottom during their penetrative sex. It comes up obliquely much later, after we’ve gotten many such sex scenes, at a high society party. One of the guests from their parents’ generation makes a homophobic joke which assumes that the smaller Percy must be the bottom, and Hal, absorbing the social awkwardness of the moment, jokes back in a way that confirms this (incorrect) assumption.
It was Hal's charge now to demonstrate graciousness, even though it would require him, in this circumstance, to undergo real humiliation, and to put Percy through it too. He only did it because Percy looked like he might be about to ask the man what he meant by that.
It’s an unpleasant encounter for both Hal and Percy, leaving the more-recently-out Percy unhappy, and in that context we get this lovely line:
Percy was upset for the rest of the night. Hal forgave him, for he was grieving the permanent and total loss of his masculinity.
That is how you acknowledge assumptions about top/bottom stereotypes, imo.
Overall I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys queer modern-day stories which deal with heavy topics (I have mentioned sexual abuse and drug use/addiction, but the book also involves a lot of religion and class issues). I haven’t gushed about how much I adore the main romantic relationship or the sibling relationship between Hal and his younger sister. There’s also a lot in here, perhaps predictably, for people who like to read about terrible fathers and the weight of familial expectations. It’s good, and it’s a lot to process—I think I will be continuing to process this one for months.
