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The Celibate
Michael Arditti
Soho Press
How to order Loving Sander
Joseph Geraci
Gay Men's Press
How to order

Michael Arditti's first novel, Pagan's Father, published two years ago, was a subtle, moving story about a gay man who becomes the adoptive parent to a girl when her mother-- his best friend-- dies. Arditti paints a complex portrait of what happens when a gay man unexpectedly becomes a parent. When the girl's grandparents challenge the adoption in court, he shows as well the homophobia that popularly inflames the issue of gay people and children.

His new novel, The Celibate, (Soho Press cloth, 335 pages, $24) is a more ambitious work that also deals disarmingly with social and moral issues, and simultaneously challenges the accepted definition of "the gay novel." At first glance, The Celibate falls into the well-worn "coming out" genre. But the book might more accurately be described as a fictional record of a spiritual-- but not necessarily religious-- journey, with fascinating historical subtext and overtly sexual overtones.

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The Celibate tells, in the first person, the story of a priest who, after a nervous breakdown, begins to face his sexuality. As he comes out, he discovers how deeply rooted are his spiritual life and beliefs in his sexual desires. The priest starts exploring a life that includes friendships and sex with hustlers as well as experimentation with sadomasochism. Like the great spiritual autobiographies of St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, The Celibate understands that frank acknowledgment of sexual desire can be a rewarding-- and emotionally cohesive-- path to exploring a spiritual life. Arditti is interested in enlarging our concept of the spiritual quest. After he leaves the seminary, the The Celibate's narrator of takes a job guiding tourists around London's East End to be titillated by Jack the Ripper's crime scenes. With this amalgam of fervor and death Arditti shows the complexity of personal and national history. As the narrator discovers that there is more to his sexuality then he ever imagined, he is confronted with the reality and that sex's power can be as scary and dangerous as it is comforting.

The Celibate is a meditation on sex, violence, forgiveness, and faith. Arditti understands not only how sexuality and desire can lead to-- or away from-- personal and spiritual salvation, but how the historical and the political inform each other.

The vicissitudes of love and passion are complicated in the most accepted of relationships. When emotional ties occur over prohibited boundaries, complications multiply. Loving Sander (Gay Men's Press, paper, 160 pages, $12.95) is a short but complex and provoking, novel that details the increasingly intense relationship between a 10-year-old Dutch boy and an American art scholar living in Holland.

The narrator Will meets the young Sander through the boy's parents. After a close friendship and deep affection develops between man and boy, Sander's parents are in the midst of a painful breakup, and have many questions about their own lives as well as worrying about how their son wants to live his. Parents become uncomfortable with the relationship. As the tension escalates, Will, as well as Sander have to face difficult questions.

Loving Sander is neither explicit nor prurient, and its author, a former editor of The Catholic Worker, is more interested in the moral and ethical questions involved than shocking us. At a time when issues of sexuality and children, and the role of gay people as parents, teachers, role models, and mentors is being raised constantly, Loving Sander raises difficult questions, which it has the integrity to know are-- in a work of the imagination or in life-- not answered simply or without pain.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com