David Blaize was brilliant. For a book where one of the main thrusts is the suppression of beastliness, there is an awful lot of love and not a little group nudity.
I've seen bits of this book quoted in a serious analysis of how the ethos of the British public school influenced the young men who volunteered in WW1. Like Horace Vachell's The Hill ("A Romance of Friendship, but nevertheless fine, wholesome and thoroughly manly", we are assured by the publishers!), the homo-emotionalism is too strong to even think of being called subtext, even if it never openly amounts to homo-eroticism.
Vachell casts the relationship between his two lead characters in spiritual terms, in order to duck around this problem. From what I've read of it, David Blaize seems to be a great deal more brazen about what it is trying to hint. Have you read The Hill, and how do you think they compare?
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Date: 2006-10-01 08:10 pm (UTC)I've seen bits of this book quoted in a serious analysis of how the ethos of the British public school influenced the young men who volunteered in WW1. Like Horace Vachell's The Hill ("A Romance of Friendship, but nevertheless fine, wholesome and thoroughly manly", we are assured by the publishers!), the homo-emotionalism is too strong to even think of being called subtext, even if it never openly amounts to homo-eroticism.
Vachell casts the relationship between his two lead characters in spiritual terms, in order to duck around this problem. From what I've read of it, David Blaize seems to be a great deal more brazen about what it is trying to hint. Have you read The Hill, and how do you think they compare?