The Dreamers in Queereaders

Jul 21, 2009 Jesse rated it really liked it

Shelves: queer-lit, read-in-2024, film-and-lit-connections, contemporary, brit-and-irish-lit, 2000-s

I've long held affection for Adair's sexy, cinema-saturated short novel, though revisiting it now now I found it functions more than anything as an aide-mémoire to a younger version of myself. In the 15+ years since my first read I've encountered a lot of literature that Adair is drawing from both overtly & impicitly, which made the depiction of transgressive sexuality feel not just a bit hollow, but sometimes downright silly. It rather reminded me of softcore film adaptations that use Sade or T I've long held affection for Adair's sexy, cinema-saturated short novel, though revisiting it now now I found it functions more than anything as an aide-mémoire to a younger version of myself. In the 15+ years since my first read I've encountered a lot of literature that Adair is drawing from both overtly & impicitly, which made the depiction of transgressive sexuality feel not just a bit hollow, but sometimes downright silly. It rather reminded me of softcore film adaptations that use Sade or The Story of O as a justification to show copulation & lots of flesh but dispense with the deeper implications of sex, desire, & power those texts grapple with. Even Cocteau, though nowhere near as explicit, ultimately gets to something more kinky & feral, even depraved.

What does hold up, however, is the celebration of cinema, & the intensity of the pious cinephile life. The opening pages, nestled within the storied Cinémathèque Française of the 1960's, is tour-de-force, & gets at the religious fervor & ecstasy film can inspire in a way I still have never really encountered elsewhere. And the trio of American innocent abroad Matthew + the worldly twins Théo & Isabelle are tremendously appealing. Meanwhile, Adair's prose vacillates between feeling both overwritten & underwritten, sometimes within the span of a single page.

But even if I won't hold it up in such high regard now, it's still a fun, quick read that I quite enjoyed & will likely return to again at some point. It's been even longer since I've Bertolucci's adaptation, & now I'm curious how it will hold up.

If they chose to sit so close to the screen, it was because they couldn't tolerate not receiving a film's images first, before they had to clear the hurdles of each succeeding row, from spectator to spectator, from eye to eye, until, defiled, second-hand, reduced to the dimensions of a postage-stamp and ignored by the double-backed love-makers in the last row of all, they returned with relief to their source, the projectionist's cabin. ...more

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Sep 15, 2008 Jesse rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: film-and-lit-connections, french-lit, 1980-s

The first incarnation of what would become Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial film The Dreamers, for which Adair wrote the screenplay and then later reworked into a novel of the same name. So basically this was my third experience with this story--I've both watched the film and read the novel several times--and The Holy Innocents is certainly the least of the three, and there's no getting around the fact that in a lot of ways this feels like the first draft of the story. Its best moments (namel ...more

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Oct 21, 2007 Tosh rated it liked it

Shelves: books-bought

"The Deamers" is an interesting novel in that it takes place in Paris during the May student uprising as well as compulsive film going on the side. Therefore already in theory a great dinner dish, but there is something flat about the book that I can't put my finger on. I should have loved this book - because it touches all the subjects I am interested in - film passion, revolt, sexuality, but instead, I sort of yawned. Maybe me, more than the book.

What I do remember is I bought this book in Lon ...more

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Mar 01, 2009 tan rated it really liked it

Que reste-t-il des billets doux
Des mois d'avril, des rendez-vous?
Un souvenir qui me poursuit ...
... qui me poursuit ...
... qui me poursuit ...
... qui me poursuit ... ...more

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