Sherry Chandler

Maybe thirty years ago, when I was still pretending to be a literary scholar, I came across an essay by Leslie Fiedler entitled “Come Back to the Raft Ag’n, Huck Honey.” The theme, as you may infer, was homoeroticism in Huckleberry Finn. The article, first published in 1948, provoked a good deal of huffing in the academy, if I remember correctly.

When I found it a quarter of a century later, I thought it was a hoot.

Any culture that produces as many buddy tales as ours has, well…

Now we have “Brokeback Mountain.” But it’s old news, fellas.

So here’s a fun article from the Washington Post online, “Out in the West: Reexamining A Genre Saddled With Subtext” by Stephen Hunter:

In fact, what’s remarkable about “Brokeback Mountain” is merely that for possibly the first time, homoeroticism is the text, not the subtext. But it’s not like homosexuality has been unknown in the western. Like any art form, the oater represents not only the conscious of its creators, but also their subconscious. Ideas — particularly forbidden ones among heterosexuals, like male beauty and grace, male love, male bonding and really tight blue jeans — creep in and haunt the edges of the most mundane and straightforward macho tales about horseback he-men. Gay subtexts in westerns have been nothing special and everything ordinary for decades.

Beautiful men in tight blue jeans. Us girls like ‘em too. Read the whole article. It’ll bring a smile.