The post in which I gush about Stephen McCauley

Saints and Sinners Literary Festival organizer Paul J. Willis and writer Stephen McCauley

Timothy and I were asked to induct Stephen McCauley into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, Stephen had to leave the festival to take care of personal business before the closing ceremonies on Sunday. Though we regretted his absence, we were lucky enough to attend his Master Class on creating unforgettable characters. Not only did he give us useful exercises to learn about and build our characters, but he also talked about the values of creating in the company of other writers, certainly a subject dear to the hearts of two writers who have worked as a team.

When I was initially approached to induct him, I nervously asked, Why me? and was told it was because I’m such an outspoken fan of his work. This is true. Later, when Timothy and I asked Stephen for biographical information and told him how we love his novels, in the most charming, self-effacing way, he was happy about the possibility that we wanted to focus on his work rather than on him. It’s so lovely to meet an author whose writing I admire who also exceeds all my expectations for who he might be as a person. I’m so happy to have had the opportunity to meet him, and I would have loved to have stood next to Timothy and made this induction.

Without further fanfare, this is what we’d planned to say about Stephen McCauley and his work. It would probably have been over-long, but we didn’t care, and we were told by our Saints and Sinners contacts that we were free to gush.

Timothy: Stephen McCauley grew up outside of Boston, attended the University of Vermont and studied for a year in France. After graduating, he worked at hotels, kindergartens, ice cream stands, and health food stores. He also taught yoga, cleaned houses, and worked as a travel agent. After enrolling in the writing program at Columbia University, he began working on The Object of My Affection.

When I was a questioning teenager in rural New England, long before Al Gore invented the Internet, I had to actively search for queer culture. The books that I found at that time were brilliant but were also written with heavy hands. During a jaunt to Boston, I found The Object of My Affection displayed prominently on the shelves of a GLBT bookstore. The very first page—when George, uncomfortable with the fact that his friend, Nina, walked into their apartment and announced that she’s pregnant, apologizes and says, “We’re out of catsup” made me giggle. That, and the fact that Mr. McCauley had a fantastic head of hair in his author photo compelled me to purchase the book immediately. Normally the books I read have dog-eared pages, the corners flipped down every few chapters to mark where I stopped reading. My pages in my copy of The Object of My Affection remain unfolded, because it’s a book I never want to put down no matter how many times I revisit it. I always think of McCauley’s characters as realistic and easy to relate to. As a teenager, I could easily see myself growing to be someone like George: restless, unsure, and searching for comfort. I related to him so much that I immediately broke up with my girlfriend at the time.

Becky: In addition to writing, Stephen has taught and lectured at Brandeis University, Harvard, Wellesley, and the University of Massachusetts. Having gotten a glimpse of his teaching skill in his master class on Friday, it’s not surprising that he’s won several teaching awards in the United States, as well as awards for his novels in France. He’s been a writer in residence at writers’ colonies in New York, Illinois, Vermont, and Massachusetts.

Unlike Timothy, I was never a young gay man, but I was an avid reader whose first introduction in the 1990s to what is termed “gay fiction” were post-Stonewall novels dealing with an emerging urban gay culture, and most particularly, novels addressing the AIDS epidemic. I appreciated all those amazing books, but it wasn’t until I read my first Stephen McCauley novel, The Easy Way Out, that I discovered a masterful literary world that more closely resembled the one I knew: unapologetically gay men whose lives were defined less by their sexual orientation than by how they negotiated their way through a sometimes maddening mixture of family, friends, and coworkers. I had to adore a narrator who endured his best friend and business partner using his desk to pull dead skin off her feet while chain-smoking—which is not a commentary on Timothy—except maybe the chain-smoking.

McCauley’s richly textured characters from The Object of My Affection and The Easy Way Out, along with those from his later novels, The Man of the House, True Enough, and Alternatives to Sex, became friends I can visit any time I open one of his novels. I’m delighted to join with Timothy in inducting their creator, Stephen McCauley, into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame.