Bertram Cope's Year is a 1919 novel by Henry Blake Fuller, sometimes called the first American homosexual novel.Roger Austen calls Imre: A Memorandum the first, but it was published privately in Italy in 1906.
Publication and reception Fuller completed work on the novel in May 1918. After failing to interest several New York publishing houses, Fuller placed the novel with his friend Ralph Fletcher Seymour who ran a small publishing house in Chicago, Alderbrink Press, that usually published art books. It appeared in October 1919.John Pilkington, Henry Blake Fuller (NY: Twayne Publishers 1970), 151 The novel is sometimes described as "self-published."Steven R. Serafin and Alfred Bendixen, eds., The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature (1999), 414; Jan Pinkerton, Randolph H. Hudson, eds., Encyclopedia of the Chicago Literary Renaissance (Facts on File, 2004), 30
The novel received little attention from literary periodicals when it first appeared and was poorly understood; sales were slight. New Outlook printed a short notice that concluded: "The study of this weak but agreeable man is subtle but far from exciting."New Outlook, vol. 124 (January 21, 1920), 119, available online, accessed September 9, 2011 The American Library Association's Booklist described it as "A story of superficial social university life in a suburb of Chicago, with live enough people and a sense of humor hovering near the surface."A.L.A. Booklist, Volume 16 (January 1920), 133 available online, accessed September 9, 2011
H. L. Mencken, writing in the Smart Set described Cope as beset with three female suitors and "somewhat heavily patronized" by Randolph. Cope fails to benefit from the efforts of Mrs. Phillips and Randolph and "even forgets to be grateful....It is simply beyond him to imagine that he needs help....A very fair piece of writing as novels go. A bit sly and pizzicato; even a bit distinguished. If you know the later novels of E. F. Benson, you know the tone of it." Mencken noted how different the novel was from some of Fuller's earlier work, novels that "launched realism in America." In the author of Bertram Cope's Year he found "a pleasant style, an adept technique, the manner of a gentleman." It concluded: "It is surely something to be an American novelist, and yet write like a gentleman."H.L. Mencken, "The Flood of Fiction," in The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness, vol. 61 (January 1920), 141, available online, accessed September 9, 2011
London's The Bookman included the novel in a section of short reviews under the heading "Good Novels of Several Kinds." After summarizing the plot as the tale of a young academic who is the object of the "pathetically burning interest" of an older woman and an older man, the latter "the sort of wistful elderly parasite to be found in any college community," the review recommended it for certain readers: "The kind of novel which must be enjoyed not for its matter so much as for its quality, its richness of texture and subtlety of atmosphere. It has distinction, is as finely wrought in its way as a Howells novel or a Cable. It would be extremely irritating to the customer looking for a rattling good tale."The Bookman, vol. 51, no. 3 (May 1920), 344, available online, accessed September 9, 2011
A few years later, in 1924, John Chipman Farrar, early in his illustrious publishing career, was enthusiastic:John Chipman Farrar, The Literary Spotlight (NY: George H. Doran, 1924), 153, available online, accessed September 9, 2011
Carl Van Vechten wrote in 1926 that the subject, "generally taboo in English literature," could only be addressed when handled in the style Fuller adopted, "so skilful, so delicate, so studiously restrained, which he termed "ironic comedy":Carl Van Vechten, Excavations: A Book of Advocacies (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), 139-40
Roger Austen's 1977 survey of American gay literature faulted Fuller for a lack of candor due to his "pose that all of these gay or semi-gay relationships were something that he himself knew nothing about."Roger Austen, Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977),30. In a tendentious and political reading, Austen complains that the characters and their motivations are not overt and specified, even as he imagines the work to be set in 1870. He makes several mistakes in summarizing the plot, including statements that Arthur shows affection to Cope only in privacy and that the novel ends with Bertram leaving to join Arthur in the East. He ignores the narrator's voice and says the novel presents Cope through Randolph's eyes. Austen, 28-9 By contrast, Andrew Solomon's evaluation accompanying the novel's republication in 1998 praises the novel for depicting "normative homosexuality--discreet, occasional, often unfulfilled, neither delirious nor unbearable," breaking with the traditional depictions of the homosexual as either shameful or theatrical. He cited the novel's "exquisite understatement" and Fuller's "beautifully balanced irony on the subject closest to his heart." In his view, "The novel treads gently around the edge of the erotic" and allows its homosexual characters to "move with moderate ease in a largely straight world." Cope and Arthur enjoy "the minor and comic troubles of essentially rather pleasurable and straightforward male domesticity."Andrew Solomon, "Afterword," in Henry Blake Fuller, Bertram Cope's Year (NY: Turtle Point Press, 1998), 289-300
Upon its republication in 1998, it received enthusiastic reviews.New York Times: Joel Cannaroe, "Seen Types of Ambiguity," August 9, 1998, accessed September 3, 2011 Other modern assessments and characterizations vary from "daring"James Gifford, ed., Glances Backward: An Anthology of American Homosexual Writing, 1830-1920 (Broadview Press, 2007), 150 to "rather campy."David Bergman, "Endowed by their Creator: Queer America Literature," in Paul Lauter, ed., A Companion to American Literature and Culture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 616
A 2004 description of its theme says that when the novel appeared "its gay theme,...although never fully specified, was recognizable. Today...the theme seems positively advertised."Jan Pinkerton, Randolph H. Hudson, eds., Encyclopedia of the Chicago Literary Renaissance (Facts on File, 2004), 30
A definitive critical edition of the novel appeared in 2010, and reprints for the first time a recently discovered passage of several handwritten pages that Fuller intended to add to the novel shortly after its initial publication. This indispensable edition supersedes that of Turtle Point Press because it includes helpful annotations and a series of appendices that include Fuller's letters, diary entries, book reviews, and other writings that contain homosexual themes. The introduction by Joseph Dimuro, a UCLA English professor, situates the novel within the corpus of Fuller's other work, discusses its place in an emerging gay culture, and offers revisionary readings of the novel's modern significance.Joseph Dimuro, ed., Henry Blake Fuller, Bertram Cope's Year (Broadview Press, 2010)
Summary The story is set in the presentRoger Austen writes that the novel is set in 1870. Roger Austen, Playing the Game (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977), 27. The text provides no dates or references to contemporary events, but says of Churchton: "in 1840 it had consisted merely of a log tavern on the Green Bay road, and the first white child born within its limits had died but recently," which suggests the early 20th century. The "avenue lighted with electric globes," Mrs. Phillips' electric bulbs, and Cope's electric toaster make the 1870s impossible. Nor could films be mentioned (several times) earlier than 1915. on the campus of a university in fictional Churchton, Illinois, modeled on Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where Bertram Cope, an attractive young English instructor, is spending a year completing his thesis. While he has a certain sophistication, he is socially unaware, easily impressed by the wealthy and their comforts. Lacking confidence, Cope is too careful and self-conscious as he tries to find his place in local society. Cope becomes the elusive object of desire, either social or sexual or some combination of the two, for an older woman, two older men, and three young women. Cope's primary emotional attachment is to his college chum Arthur Lemoyne, who comes to live with him. Their relationship appears to end after Lemoyne, acting the female part in a play, makes a physical advance backstage that offends another male student.
Themes Fuller never uses the word "homosexual." The narrator is as discreet as the characters. Cope is called "no squire of dames".(10) He comments on social dancing:(61-2)
Cope muses on the roles men and women are expected to play:(87)
There are two unmistakable references to homosexuality. Cope and Arthur, now living together in a single room, celebrate the end of Cope's engagement to Amy. As they return from an evening stroll, Arthur puts his arm around Cope's shoulder: "and Urania, through the whole width of her starry firmament, looked down kindly upon a happier household."(232) Uranian was the term adopted in the Victorian era for comradely love and, ultimately, male homosexuality. When the couple attend an evening at Mrs. Phillips, Joe Foster is disgusted at the way one keeps putting his hand on the other's shoulder and he makes the sexual component explicit by comparing it to the inappropriate behavior of a newlywed couple who forget themselves in public and must be reprimanded for bringing "the manners of the bed-chamber into the drawing-room."(221)
Many passages are open to multiple readings. For example, after Cope swims vigorously and Randolph joins him to bob in the water, the narrator says: "Ceremonially, at least, the rite was complete." Something implied but unspecified did not occur. Cope later recalls his day: "He had had a good swim, if but a brief one, with a companion who had been willing, even if not bold." The action that Randolph was willing but not bold enough to undertake is not specified.More obscurely, Cope coats himself in sand, and Randolph adds sand to a spot that Cope has missed on his shoulder. "Thanks," said Cope: "the right thing done for Polynices." In Greek mythology, Antigone defies Creon's ban and performs burial rites for her brother Polynices. Randolph plays the role of Antigone, the dutiful sister who risks punishment in showing her devotion to her brother. Hortense, once she realizes Cope has no interest in her or the other girls, warns him against Arthur, revealing that she sees the relationship Cope maintains with Arthur as an alternative, in some sense equivalent, to a heterosexual engagement. In an age when literary convention respected intense male relationships, she labels this one "that preposterous friendship." Of a fourteen-year-old boy who has provided entertaining companionship, Joe muses: "If I had had a boy, I should have wanted him just like Dick."
Other references are oblique and may simply serve to keep the subject in the reader's awareness. Cope calls tea with three girls "an afternoon in Lesbos."(30) Usage of words like "gay," "queer," "drag," and "closet" may or may not be coded references to homosexuality as well.Perhaps also the use of the word French, when Cope writes of Randolph's offer of an evening at the theater: "He suggested it rather shyly; à tâtons, I will say--though French is not my business." The phrase "à tâtons" means with prudence or care.