Flannelwood

April 22, 2019
Luczak (Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life) performs a delicate balancing act in this romantic elegy, taking inspiration from the tone and plot of Djuna Barnes’s groundbreaking 1936 novel Nightwood while still crafting an original and modern, but somewhat unsatisfying story about learning to love and to let go. When failed poet and full-time barista Bill Badamore meets James Alan at the annual OctoBear Dance at the local VFW, he is overwhelmed. James, a surly and secretive amputee, seems to be everything that Bill has ever wanted in a lover, and their chemistry is incendiary. But after a tumultuous six months together, James abruptly ends their relationship. Lost and forlorn, Bill recalls his life, his failed romance with the troubled James, and his discovery of true love with a courageous playwright in the wake of heartbreak. Luczak explores a number of significant themes in these rambling ruminations, including living with disability and finding one’s true self within a repressive masculine culture. Unfortunately, the utter devotion to emulating Barnes’s style often leaves the prose feeling belabored, and some of the book’s impact is lost beneath the waves of references, quotes, and digressions. This experiment is not unsuccessful, but only fans of interwar modernist queer literature are likely to really dig it.