Prototype Issue
Santa Monica Canyon
By Matthew McKelligon
(page 1 of 1)Call it a contemporary conundrum, but it seems to be just as difficult to find a gay novel shrouded in a hot-pink book jacket as it is to find a high-flying rainbow flag in hipster-homosexual Silver Lake nowadays.
Yet with Gregory Hinton’s latest “gay” installment to hit the shelves, the executive-producer-cum-novelist beats the genre over the head with an utterly banal look at gay life in LA.
The story centers upon a 30-year-old poet of Adonis proportion, complete with architect-chic tossled hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Long the fixture of his boyfriend, Edward, who has been springboarded to A-list celebrity status to their relationship’s occasional detriment, Mark whiles away the bulk of his existence on the shores of Will Rogers Beach.
There, he makes the acquaintance of John, a critically acclaimed yet creatively stunted artist in need of an attractive male sitter for a series of portraits. Once Edward takes off on short notice for the entire summer to shoot a film, Mark consents to John’s proposition in order to gift one of the portraits to Edward and give their 10-year relationship a much needed jumpstart. As such, Mark seeks poetic solace in John and moves in with him for the entire summer in order to be more productive.
Yet as the two artists scratch each other’s backs creatively, a deep bond develops between the two, allowing for both to come to terms with their lives, their loves and their relationship with art.
Hinton, an HIV-postive and openly gay producer of films such as “Circuit” and “It’s My Party”, has been known to say that the gay novel is in decline. Fewer books in the genre are being published and it is precisely this reality that keeps this installment off-target. He has created a novel stubbornly dominated by gaydom, allowing little room for the reality of a gay character within the greater context of a more fluid and diverse LA.
Scenes are overly scripted to the point that one assumes camera angles are being implied. Plots are engineered to the second and collide with each other through the stereotypical tertiary character at a bookstore that catches himself and claims that “[he’s] said too much”.
In so doing, Hinton provides the dramatic master-mindedness of a primetime screenplay, though without the necessary emotional connection to its characters, making for an often laborious read.
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