Hot dawg! You are taking us on an intellectual journey!

Of course I am! Ye of little faith!

Thanks for reminding me about the Lear. I will read it. And no, I have never read Balzac, shamefully, although I have long admired Rodin’s interpretation of him.

@ Sarah Frantz:
I do want to read more m/m. I did read some of the Jamie Samms stories on line that you recommended which I really liked. Thank you!

@ Margie:
Thank you for that recommendation, and for visiting!

@ Tumperkin:
Ok, Lear it is.

PS. Hey, when are we going to post our reviews of Rosenthal? (I still have to write mine, of course. ahem.)

It is a scientific fact that in general, gay man-couples have sex more than heterosexual couples, and both groups have sex more than lesbian couples. However, I think this fact gets distorted and people start to think men (gay or straight) don’t also want/experience emotional closeness, comfort, etc. This stereotype is even worse for gay men since there is no woman in the relationship to “provide” the emotional aspect.

I’ve only read one Lanyon novella (not an Adrien English book). It was good. I’ve been meaning to read more for a while now.

Hot dawg! You are taking us on an intellectual journey!

Anyway, hey, so remember you were a bit reticent about reading James Lear’s Palace of Varieties? You should try it. And, have you ever read Balzac’s Lost Illusions? I have, and knowing that book made reading POV just so delightful! The central romance arc could’ve been stronger, but whoa, what a wonderful book. Smutty, yes, but in the most lighthearted and delightful way.

I can recommend some particularly brilliant m/m romances (most of which, yes, have a lot of sex, but that’s not the point of the story). If you want!

From the sound of it, though, in this novel the married man is having an affair. Although I can feel sympathetic towards someone who’s in the closet and gets married primarily because “he really wanted a child and the white picket fence,” that’s never going to be very fair to the wife if she entered into the relationship with the impression that she was physically desired by her husband-to-be. And (regardless of whether one is male or female) it’s not fair to have affairs one’s partner/spouse doesn’t know about and hasn’t consented to you having. I say it’s “not fair” because of both the emotional consequences (e.g. loss of trust, feelings of betrayal) and the risk that a person who’s having an affair could contract a STI and pass it on to their spouse.

“I have been conditioned never to see the “hero”, het or not, in bed with a partner and not interested in sex.”

That’s the “male sexual drive discourse” manifesting its insidious power! You touched on that in an earlier post here about the hero as a “runaway train” and I quoted one article which stated that

Zilbergeld (1978) identified the following themes: sex is a male performance; the man is responsible for orchestrating sex; a man always wants and is always ready to have sex; for a man, all physical contact must lead to sex.

I think this kind of thing is very common in the romance genre, and it’s a fantasy/stereotype about male sexuality. Like other stereotypes, I think it reflects cultural attitudes.

Even in het romance we tend to see more of the alphas with sexual superpowers.

Yes, I was thinking about this last night…maybe the lack of sexual interest between Adrien and Guy seemed strange to me for a minute not ONLY because of latent stereotypical assumptions on my part, but also because, reading romance, I have been conditioned never to see the “hero”, het or not, in bed with a partner and not interested in sex.

Wave wrote:

I recently posted a review of a very short book called Through the Closet Door by Rick R. Reed – here’s the link http://tinyurl.com/crwbku. I think it’s somewhat autobiographical and gives the reader a glimpse of what the “closeted” life is really like – not fun!

I will check it out. I absolutely do not think being closeted is fun, but yes, on some level I think I have made unfairly harsh judgments of some married gay men. I am not defending myself on that score. It’s an unfair judgment I need to uproot on every level.

It’s kind of tricky, though, when there are conflicting stereotypes. I’m a medievalist, and in the Middle Ages it was thought that women were sexually voracious, and that having sex benefitted women physically, but drained men. The Victorians, obviously, had rather different views.

Stereotypes reflect cultural attitudes, and there are some really, really horrible stereotypes out there (e.g. this one) which don’t reflect reality at all. As I mentioned in the last thread

there is quite a long tradition of sexual stereotyping of groups considered to be “Other.” I’m thinking of the stereotype of the exotic, sexualised Arab potentate with his penchant for keeping a vast harem of scantily clad harem-girls, the sexual stereotypes about black women and black men, and working-class women were also thought of as more coarse and sexual.

What I love about this author is that he creates an environment for his characters and I think his world building is some of the best especially in his action adventure books like Dangerous Ground. If I can recall, I think the reason Adrien and Jake ended their affair was because Jake got married in the middle of their affair – she was pregnant- and he wanted to give the marriage a chance because he really wanted a child and the white picket fence. Jake never accepted that he was gay and I believe that whole scenario played out in The Hell You Say which left a bad taste in the mouths of the fans, but in my view was the only way it could have ended, except for one very bad scene. I really think that to enjoy this series you have to read the books in order – only then will you have a true understanding of the characters.

Josh’s books never rise to the eroticism of many authors because his focus is always on the mysteries. The book before this one “The Hell You Say” caused untold furor and grief among the fanyons, with fans of the series calling for Jake’s head for what he did to Adrien. Jake the anti hero, is my favourite character in this series and while not a fanyon, I am a fan of the series.

On your other comment about married gay men –
My view has been that such men want to enjoy all the benefits of heterosexual male privilege and yet secretly enjoy the companionship and love of other gay men.
I recently posted a review of a very short book called Through the Closet Door by Rick R. Reed – here’s the link http://tinyurl.com/crwbku. I think it’s somewhat autobiographical and gives the reader a glimpse of what the “closeted” life is really like – not fun!

Well I had better go but it was nice to visit your blog.