Blackouts

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

Quotations and Intertextuality in Queer History-Making

Throughout Blackouts, Juan makes repeated, lengthy allusions to various writers. Most of these interlocutors bear some connection to non-hegemonic culture, as many are queer figures from history. For example, French poet Arthur Rimbaud had a famously tumultuous relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, and Tennessee Williams’s openness about his sexuality made him a controversial figure in America. Figures like American writer Carl Van Vechten opposed heteronormativity, patriarchy, and white supremacy in other ways, with him promoting Black artists during the Harlem Renaissance. English Writer D. H. Lawrence’s works were frequently censored and banned for their nonjudgmental view of human sexuality, including intimacy between men. Juan’s interlocution with these countercultural writers and artists demonstrates the possibility of building a queer library, of retracing queer histories, even when these histories have been forcibly erased. The novel does not obscure the difficulty of this work: Juan admits it has taken him a lifetime to collect his documentation and mental bibliography of queer history—but is nevertheless optimistic that Nene will continue to do so in his stead.

Overall, Juan’s frequent use of references—both direct quotes and otherwise—makes Blackouts, as NPR reviewer Maureen Corrigan phrases it, “the kind of artfully duplicitous novel which makes a reader grateful for Wikipedia” (“‘Blackouts’ Is an Ingenious Deathbed Conversation between Two Friends.” NPR, 16 Oct. 2023). The novel’s encouragement to parse conversations and research, to verify whether Juan’s references are historical or poetic turns of phrase, pulls the reader into the role of researcher, and thus queer historian. This is the very lesson that Juan seeks to teach Nene through storytelling-related advice. Intertextuality becomes a pedagogical tool that extends beyond the novel itself, inviting the reader to continue Jan Gay and Juan’s work as Nene does.

(In)Complete Narratives

Throughout the novel, Juan urges Nene to avoid non-chronological narratives and skipping ahead in storytelling, as doing so can omit important details. This advice initially seems to be for the sake of telling a complete story—however, in Part 4, Juan repeatedly interrupts Nene’s “film” with comments on technical elements and questions about “Sal” (Nene himself). This shift from narrative completion to concern is further developed when Juan presents his own “film” in Part 5, which begins as a film before he abandons the conceit. His film is styled as vignettes, a medium that embraces incomplete nonlinearity, instead focusing on “snapshots” to reveal a greater arc. He alternates between characters (Jan Gay and her co-researchers) and timelines in these “snapshots.” Juan concludes Jan’s story without a concrete ending: He trails off, urging Nene to speak instead. The remainder of Part 5 comprises Nene’s breakup with ex-boyfriend Liam, which, per Juan’s instruction, is told in reverse chronology. As Juan dies in Part 6, Nene takes up the role of storyteller and teacher, mirroring Juan’s requests for complete, linear storytelling in Parts 1-2 to honor him.

Juan proves incapable of following his own metric for storytelling, though this failure stems from his deteriorating mind as death approaches. His sense that he is experiencing more hallucinations than he can recall suggests all histories are in some way incomplete, but this doesn’t make seeking completion pointless. Like the redacted Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns study, all stories, no matter how fragmented, offer perspective. The novel’s varying formats suggest there is no one medium appropriate for compiling a lost history. Rather, multimedia is a counter-hegemonic force that resists structure, the way things “should” be according to a majority. Again, Nene honors structure to respect Juan, rather than someone else’s cold, rigid idea of professionalism; ultimately, he ends the novel with a memory, exhibiting the freedom to alternate between timelines as he pleases. Overall, the novel explores the positives and negatives of various media in trying to complete real and fictional stories.

Erotic Attachments

The novel centers queer identity, featuring two physically present gay characters—one who makes a living through sex work (Nene) and the other thinking little of sex due to medical trauma (Juan). The novel’s depiction of erotic attachments adheres to non-human objects, non-textual elements, and absence. Juan underwent years of treatments (implied to be violent), leaving him without the ability to achieve sexual arousal. He frames his loss of libido as a positive, a relief, before considering his identity as a gay man: “The release of the want of the want of release. Though, as it turns out, libido was the last defense I had [against nothingness]” (36). The novel thus frames sexual desire as not essential to queerness, but still asserts the horror of medical erasure—which often veils anti-gay violence with “professionalism.” This erasure also ties into Part 3’s discussion of “pseudosuicidal attempts” as a “failure” in masculinity due to anti-gay stereotypes. This idea perpetuates a harmful culture in which “real” men are defined by an absence of feelings—including the interplay of love and sex. When Sex Variants participant Salvatore N. voices heartbreak in Part 5, Dr. George W. Henry instead pushes him to talk about sex—ignoring its relationship with love for the sake of “science.” While eroticism can play a role in queerness, the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Eroticism can simply exist, without ties to love or underlying “problems” according to people like Dr. Henry.

The relationship between eroticism and nudity is also complicated by the inclusion of de-eroticized images from Sex Variants. These bodies, anonymized and presented scientifically, are not sexualized—despite the study’s intent to find the origin of sexual “variance” in the physicality of gay and lesbian participants. The desexualization of these figures plays into what Nene considers relegation to “the realm of the symbolic” (77), a form of dehumanization. By contrast, the novel’s more erotic images feature full or partial clothing, the figures’ sexuality being suggested rather than overt. This suggestion parallels the underground world known to Jan Gay and other queer figures, created due to the criminalization and medicalization of queerness in the outside world. Eroticism becomes coded, made invisible to hegemonic powers. The novel’s depiction of sex thus aligns with its ambiguity—framing desire as both central to and decentralized from queer identity and eroticism being both invested in and disconnected from the physicality of sex.