Our literary reviewer, Gene Hayworth.In this issue, he reviews Phil Michal Thomas' Panels
Gene Hayworth grew up in North Carolina and attended undergraduate school at UNC - Greensboro. He worked for 10 years as a layout artist, technical writer, computer specialist and training instructor before returning to school at the University of Rochester, where he received a Masters degree in English with a concentration in creative writing, and an MLS from Syracuse University. He moved to Colorado in 1995 and worked at CARL Corporation for several years, and in the summer of 1999 he worked for CARL in Singapore, which resulted in the publication of an article about his experiences titled "Singapore Libraries Usher in a New Era," in Computers in Libraries, 20:6 (Nov./Dec. 2000). He is an avid reader and has written several book reviews for Colorado Libraries. In February 2003 he prepared an exhibit at the Fales Library, NYU, on the Gay American novelist and playwright Coleman Dowell. His critical study of Dowell appeared in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Fall, 2002. Currently he works as a reference librarian for the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries.
Panelsby Phil Michal Thomas
Baltimore: Publishamerica, 2004
Paper, 294 pages
ISBN 1-4137-3741-2
Since the onset of AIDS in the early 80s, a wide variety of writers have created exceptional narratives that address the effect the disease has had on the gay and lesbian community, or examined its tragic consequences on individuals and families. Plays such as Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart" (1985) and William Hoffman's "As Is" (1985) were among the first literary texts to explore these issues. Shortly after that the novels of Alice Hoffman (At Risk, 1988), Christopher Coe (Such Times, 1993), Rebecca Brown (The Gifts of the Body, 1994), Felice Picano (Like People in History, 1995) Allan Gurganus (Plays Well with Others, 1997), and even Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein (2001) offer reflections on the poignant effects of the disease.
The new novel by Phil Michal Thomas, Panels, continues this tradition but has little in common with its predecessors. The novel is narrated for the most part by Michal Cameron, a 38 year old gay African American living in Nashville. Michal has had a series of imperfect relationships and a wide variety of gay friends that include Sebastian, Bradley, David, Gregory, Seth, Richard, Daniel, and Edward. These men spin in and out of the narrative, circling in a daze around Michal and the one major female character, Cleo Castleman, who serves as a kind of confessor for them and ultimately provides the narrative for the novel’s ending. The many characters in the book testify to the sheer number of individuals many of us have lost in our lives, and ultimately they are symbolic of the panels of the book’s title—the panels of the AIDS quilt.
Unfortunately, the book is riddled with typographical and grammatical errors. Thoughts and logic are disconnected, like this quote from the back cover:
For outsiders looking in, the world of AIDS holds remarkable faces of death. To insiders, it provides a cruel acknowledgement of devastating mirroring images and Panels is a novel about a few Southern baby boomers.
Throughout the book there are sentences like these:
You guys have gone from being like too rabid rabbits to being…. (32)
Was living with me been nothing but a complete lie? (34)
He knew damn well I’m wasn’t sleeping with anyone… (34)
It is this inconsistent writing that eventually makes the reader feel Thomas didn’t care enough to edit the manuscript before publication and makes it difficult to continue reading. And that is unfortunate, for the characters are heartfelt and likeable and will probably remind most readers of individuals who have played important roles in their lives. The lives and deaths of those individuals should be treated respectfully, and though that is the book’s ambition, it doesn’t quite succeed.