Better Angel

Description

While Forman Brown is better known for his work as a puppeteer and a notable figure behind Turnabout Theater, he also published what would become the first homosexual novel which presented the theme in a good light. In his novel, Brown tapped into themes such as coming of age, spirituality and discovering one’s sexuality.

Better Angel was published in 1933 under the pseudonym Richard Meeker. He claimed to have used a pseudonym in order to protect his career and his parents. The title of the novel is a reference to Sonnet 144 by Shakespeare (“the better angel is a man right fair”), a poem which has been considered in modern times to contain homosexual subtext.

This novel is a Bildungsroman, in which readers can follow the journey and maturing of the main protagonist Kurt Gray. The name is a play on the writer’s own name. The story follows Gray from his adolescent years in Michigan to adulthood and his progress as a composer and musician.

Gray has a troubled and isolated adolescence, where he spends a lot of time reading books. He also starts reading the Bible and has a spiritual revelation. In solitude, Gray also struggles with gender dislocation and develops an interest in amateur theatricals. His spiritual revelation which had been triggered by reading Onan, Sodom, Lot and David also suggest hidden knowledge, a subtle reference to him discovering his own sexuality.

Gray has his first same sex experiences during his college years in Michigan. In the novel, Kurt has love affairs with Derry as well as with another man. Brown said that he based the novel on his own autobiography, and that Tony was fellow actor Alexander Kirkland, and Derry was his lifelong lover Harry Burnett.

The importance of this early American novel exploring homosexuality has been described as an important literary work, which not only deals with sexual discovery, but also coming of age and the psychological and moral development of a young man.
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