Description:
Whitmore's semi-autobiographical novel about a young boy and his uncle is a provocative yet essential narrative of queer repression in postwar America
First published in 1987 by Grove Press and long out of print, Nebraska is a classic underground novel by the gay writer and activist George Whitmore. Craig Mullen, a young boy in Nebraska, gets hit by a car on the way to buy groceries. After having his leg amputated, he is bedridden, lonely, bored and addicted to painkillers. His rare interactions with kids his own age, specifically with a neighbor boy who often spends the night, awaken his feelings to further explore. When Craig's uncle moves into the family home, a world of hope, pain, mystery and despair descends upon the Mullen family, giving the reader glimpses into how gay lives were secretly lived and horrifically extinguished in 1950s rural America. With an unforeseen ending that can only be described with the delicately complicated touch of Whitmore's enigmatic prose, Nebraska will stay in your mind long after finishing it.
George Whitmore (1945-89) was an American playwright, novelist and poet. He was a member of a literary group known as the Violet Quill, whose seven authors are regarded as the strongest voices of the gay male experience in the post-Stonewall era.
Review Quotes: Nebraska's' depiction of small-town queerness before gay liberation is the kind of story always in danger of erasure. But unlike many contemporary gay narratives, Nebraska is ruthless and unsentimental, set in a period when gay sex was criminalized and had to remain underground lest it lead to arrest or forced institutionalization. (In the 1950s, psychiatrists classified homosexuality as a 'sociopathic personality disturbance.') There are no affirmations here, no pride, just a stoic resolve to continue living.--Jeremy Lybarger "The Nation"