Australian Queer Book Blog: Fairyland
“Coming out into the clear December sunshine, they saw, as if it had been arranged for them, a tableau by a fountain: a young boy and girl were kissing. “See that?” asked Rat. “That is what is known as real life. We are the dream.”
Seaton Daly is introduced to the reader as a man who is going to die. We don’t know his story, details about his murder are given sans context, but we know that he is shot down by someone he considered a friend on a New York Street. He leaves a cab, greets his killer, and watches her draw the gun from her handbag. There’s a pre-mortem one-liner: “There’ll be no more of your harmful love, Seaton.” Then, bang. Seaton is shot, and falls “sideways into nothing.” (2013 6 Elliott) Why? Fairyland makes us think that that’s the question it will answer, but really it’s periphery.
Fairyland was Sumner Locke Elliott’s last book, and also the one with which he acknowledged that he was gay after spending decades as an internationally acclaimed Australian author. Published in 1990 (Seven years before anti-sodomy laws were fully repealed), Elliott died the year after. He was 73. It’d odd, then, that the book ends with Seaton dying decades younger, and a choice that could be tempting to feed into the narrative of ‘dead queers.’ Gay men die, like anybody else, but there’s an overwhelming amount of fiction that tells us that it’s while they’re young, and it’s tragic. Mainstream belief says, prior to societal tolerance, they took themselves out, which is the narrative we get again and again from mass culture. Either, that, or they get married and live in secrecy.
Gay self-destruction, though, is a prolific narrative because it’s convenient. It means gays are shucked out of this mortal coil in a way that tacks responsibility onto them. The social body purges itself of the disease, in the pathological terms used to describe homosexuals living in the era Fairyland depicts, which is the 30s and 40s. Earlier on, God visited judgment on the wicked, or Satan brought in his own. It’s a rhetoric that came back during the AIDS crisis. The pull towards the unmarked grave is maybe the ultimate queer stereotype.
But before death, gays live. They have lives filled with chaos, friendship, enmity, love, hatred, joy, despair, acts of undiluted charity and moments of greed. How? That question is why I’m reading narratives about queer people in my country, particularly from the past. History often offers dead-ends, because queer men are fudged over and queer women are doubly obscured by history. There’s propaganda in old papers about debaucherous parties attended by decadents, but not much else. For nuance, and for a sense of what it was like, fiction is often the key. Kudos to Text Publishing for bringing this particular example back to life in 2013, as part of its Text Classics series.
Fairyland starts off with a meandering and pretty dreary evocation of a childhood depicting Seaton growing up in Sydney while being raised by a distant cousin. This part is the table dressing that could’ve been edited out, because it’s when Seaton hits adolescence and he becomes remarkable does Fairyland get interesting. First, there’s his knowledge of otherness from an early age, a standard trope in queer fiction, but written with imagination: “Although at twelve he was not yet able to digest the significance of this, he had become quietly aware, perhaps ashamed, of his knowledge of growing secret antlers, possibly wings. That among these people he was a changeling.” (44) The figure of the otherworldly being hiding in plain sight is one that comes up again and again in Fairyland: While its title refers to a park in Sydney, it is also about America, where Seaton imagines he can find other gay people, and live in safety. Australia, on the other hand, is the land of the “deplorably mundane,” (206) hostile to Daly as both an artist and a gay man.
Seaton’s early sexual exploits are written with a great tenderness, a depiction of a familiar crossing point of tenderness and fear. Elliot’s lyricism is always magnetic, depicting Seaton’s pain in a way that cuts through time and evokes him. It’s realistic, though. It doesn’t melt into melodrama. Seasoned in between the sad affairs are real moments of joy and excitement: “Take off your wet jacket,” Buck said and took off his. There was nothing in the least presupposed in the way things happened — Buck’s knee just happened to graze Seaton’s and the next moment they were in a tight embrace, not entirely realistic. There was no affectionate talk, no murmuring of sweet words as they were somehow precipitated onto the large bed under the window and into undressing in an agreement of pretended surprise.” (81) There’s fatalism here, but also satisfaction. Of course, we know Seaton’s loves are doomed because we’ve read the start, and Seaton knows they’re doomed because of his time period: “How long would it last? Would it be snatched away from him or might it go in, might they be long-lasting mates? A dreadful word but all they have to describe each other in public. One would never be permitted to say ‘this is my lover, my love.’” (84)
Seaton finds success in writing for radio, and manages to thrive in its complex web of divas and traitors. He writes a children’s program, Fairyfish, about an underwater kingdom, and comes to make it ascend into, of all things, political satire: “The show had begun to attract an adult audience in such a mass that Station 2XY, confronted with unexpected mail, some singing praise, some indignant, in an unprecedented decision moved the serial from six to seven in the evening. What had become lost to the juvenile listeners became grist to the grown-ups. A housewife in the dairy section of the grocery had been overheard by Seaton to say that, my dear, she was caught, captured nightly by the darn fish fairies and could not even start the dinner until it was over.” (129) Of course, no true lasting satisfaction can be found, and always hindering Seaton in his escapades is conformity of a specifically Australian kind, taking shape in “the crippling restraints of Australian censorship, which forbade even the word ‘damn’ on the air, and which resulted in such circumlocutions as aghast characters having to say, “My goodness, Monica’s hanged herself.” (129) In contrast, is faraway New York, where Daly dreams of escaping to: “In New York there were bars and even some restaurants that catered to such outcasts as they and very often, he had been told, there were sprinklings of handsome businessmen at these bars, even married men, hoping to meet a sympathetic stranger.” (130)
In between his fantasies of flying to New York and the action itself, however, is a series of affairs and one-off dalliances, as Seaton’s double life takes him into Sydney’s gay underbelly, whether it’s manifested in gay beats or with ostensibly straight men who see Seaton for what he is and act on their hidden desires. Certain landmarks which I myself am familiar with pop up, such as Wynyard Station, which apparently, was a popular beat. There’s ambivalence towards other men, whose bodies suggest both violence and sexual possibility: “Leaning against the wall near him, thin as tin, gaunt, the sun of years burned into the deep-lined flesh of the face, unshaven under the wide-brimmed dirty hat, a jackaroo perhaps, boundary rider from out west probably, cattle or sheep country, the ultimate in manhood, the shearer, maybe, who, drunk, would knock your head off in the country out over a slight disagreement because his type lives in actions not words, the epitome of raw, brazen, outdoor paddocks Australia. …To be acknowledged secretly by such a protagonist of manhood was both horrifying and rapturous.” (145) Elliott’s take on the closeted Australia alpha male is pitying, and here the novel steps away from its sardonic humour: “Nearly knocked off his feet in the cool dimness of the laundry room by Arnold’s plundering of him, his swimsuit ripped off him, hands reaching for him; there was nothing reticent about Arnold, no fragility or graciousness, it was like being let down into a pit with a frivolous gladiator; in a sense they fought and Arnold won, which was perhaps the lie Arnold maintained to justify such an aberration.” (190)
One of Elliott’s more renowned works was the play Rusty Bugles, which came close to being banned due to obscene language and made human the plight of the conscripted soldier. It was inspired by his time as a conscript clerk who never left a country, which makes it into an episode where Seaton spends time in the military, and finally finding a sense of peace amongst his comrades. It comes at the cost of being wiped of his identity: “you couldn’t tell Seaton from the others; he had a slouching male walk like a wrestler leaving the ring in triumph. Only his deep blue eyes occasionally registered a very for help.” (224) Of course, nothing still can last in this novel, and after an affair with someone in higher command, Seaton’s military days come to an end.
It’s here that the comparably short Part Two comes about: Seaton flies to the titular fairyland of New York, finds the queer people there, has a play produced, and once again falls in love with a closeted man. This, before the gunshot that started the narrative. It’s an ultimately bleak vision of a life, but not one total in its despair. One of the more heartbreaking passages close to the end gives us an insight into Seaton’s apparently self-destructive nature: “All my life I’ve hung on to one important compensation for what I am. I’ve just loved and not expected love back because I wanted to just to love and that’s saved me and made up for what people call the sin of it.” (300) Shortly after, of course, is the final affair, which is the one that turns out to be fatal. As we knew would happen all along, Seaton dies, suddenly and violently. He’s a tragic hero, only his hamartia is his inability to conform. He instead spends his life making successively more desperate attempts to find love where his love is forbidden. The drama we get as an audience and the passion and beauty in the writing are why it’s the first novel I’ve read for this blog that I can recommend for reasons beyond the historical interest factor. It’s a heartbreaking story, and one sadder than that of the man who fictionalised his life, but it’s also not just about the sad gay man who dies at the hands of hatred — it’s also got plenty of profound things to say about what happens before that.
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This piece is part of my Queer Australian Book Blog, where I read old queer Australian books (It used to be just fiction, but I’m open) and discuss it. If you’ve enjoyed this post, please chuck me a clap or fifty, as well as follow.
References
- Elliot, Sumner Locke. Fairyland. Text Publishing Company. Melbourne, Australia. 2013. Print.Australian Queer Book Blog: Fairyland
