![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() One of the book's sly jokes is the fact that Jack, who piques the sexual interest of men and women wherever he goes, falls for the self-conscious, guarded, awkwardly but forcefully heterosexual Will. As a favor to a friend, Jack recommends Will, an aspiring Southern novelist, for a job at the magazine, and when Will is hired, the two begin a brotherly, furtive friendship - one that finally sparks Jack's sexual self-awareness. Without financial or moral support from his father, Jack moves to Manhattan and meanders into a job at a literary magazine, while exploring downtown bohemian culture. Like many of White's books, "Jack Holmes and His Friend" has notes of autobiographical influence, including Jack's Midwestern upbringing and his education at the University of Michigan, where, to his father's chagrin, he studies ancient Chinese art. But the book is far less politically minded than the premise might suggest White fixes his lens closely on the pair, and the relationship's strange unevenness, ebbing and flowing from decade to decade, provides a feeling of authenticity and nuance to its investigation of gay-straight male friendship. ![]()
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