UNIVERSIDAD VERACRUZANA

FACULTAD DE IDIOMAS Licenciatura en Lengua Inglesa

A Mundane Beastlike Creature: A Vision of Homoeroticism and the Notion of Chacal in Harold Brodkeys Profane Friendship
Tesis Que para acreditar la Experiencia Recepcional
Presenta:

RUSSELL MANZO VZQUEZ

Para optar el grado de:

LICENCIADO EN LENGUA INGLESA

Directores:

Dra. Adriana Menass Temple Mtra. Paula M. Busseniers Elsen

Lector:

Mtro. Manuel de Jess Lara Ruiz

Xalapa, Veracruz

Junio 2013

TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER 1: HISTORICAL ASPECTS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE OF XX CENTURY................................................................................................................................. 7 1.1 Geopolitical factors: its influence on Literature after Second World War .......................... 8 1.2 Significant spreading of contemporary American literature .............................................. 11 CHAPTER 2: HOMOEROTICISM: A LITERARY CONTEXT ........................................... 15 2.1 Eroticism in literature ........................................................................................................ 16 2.2 Homoeroticism: an overview ............................................................................................. 18 2.3 Homoerotic culture ............................................................................................................ 20 2.4 Importance of homoeroticism in literature ........................................................................ 21 CHAPTER 3: PROFANE FRIENDSHIP: A HOMOEROTIC VISION ................................. 25 3.1 Harold Brodkey: The influence of life in writing .............................................................. 26 3.2 Profane Friendship: A Homoerotic Dilemma ................................................................... 29 3.3 Why the remarkable figure of a chacal is the main factor in a Profane Friendship?........ 33 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................ 41 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................ 45

INTRODUCTION In this research, I will try to give a vision of the chacal attitude of one the main characters in a particular novel: Profane Friendship by Harold Brodkey1 through an overview of homoeroticism in American contemporary literature of the XX century. In doing so, in the first chapter I will look at the literary historical aspects of XX century American literature of that age, as it was one of the most remarkable periods of American literature that arises between the painful times of the two World Wars (1920-1939). I will also look at an explanation of the powerful boom that occurs when the United States of America is recognized as the worlds dominant power, after the 2nd World War. For literature, this era is known to be expressive and experimental in terms of style and technique. The feeling of clemency and hopelessness that writers were facing in those times is displayed in genres, epochs and tendencies in the writings of XX century. However, the literature created in this context accounts for the growing influence of North-American literature, which was already noteworthy since XIX century with outstanding names such as Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Stowe, Jack London and others, after the independence of The Thirteen Colonies2. For all this, these civil problems led to the development of modern and radical means of literary expressions. Finally, I will give a brief explanation of some geopolitical aspects after the Second World War as well. The second chapter consists of an overview of eroticism and homoeroticism and its importance in culture and literature as a background. Even though Modernist literature (XIX century) was not fully erotic and socially well known, there were some writers and/or
1Harold Brodkey is considered one of the most audacious, essential, acknowledged and hazardous American writers, and

novelists, and emblematic figure of The New Yorker magazine. Smith, Dinitia. The New York Times. Home Page. Web. 27 January, 1996. 14 August, 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/27/us/harold-brodkey-65-new-yorker-writer-andnovelist-dies-of-illness-hewrote-about.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm> 2 Adams, James Truslow. Revolutionary New England: 16911776. The Atlantic monthly press. Boston New England. (1923). E-book.

writings that talked about sensual love in a general manner; this expressive boom was essential for the development of ideologies to create new topics and free writing structures for the growth of a new path called postmodernist literature (XX century and beyond). These postmodernist writings were the essential key to widely accept, express and criticize social and political matters in writings, but also to consider a new aesthetic perception of the implication of eroticism in writing. This new erotic literary spoken and written language was the suitable perspective to describe and reveal the suggestibility of emotions, passions and desires that inhabit affective relationships that already existed in literature over the centuries. From this erotic angle we can assert that it was the emphasis on this erotic opening that gained admittance to another aspect strongly linked to eroticism: homoeroticism. Homoeroticism is the adoption and appreciation of same gender sex, and sensuality in life until death. By this I mean that in literature, as in everyday life, it has a more meaning than merely intercourse or steaming dreams (Libido). Resulting from the importance of this growth in homoerotic literature, the third chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the novel that may expound the basis for the understanding of the influence of the writer, as well as an explanation of a homoerotic dilemma with the homoerotic and little-known Mexican word chacal (a category of sexual male role) and the way it is associated precisely with one character of the novel. It is interesting how a Mexican term can be used in a foreign novel and be contextualized to explain the characters relationship from a homoerotic perspective. Furthermore, I am going to explain how striking the chacal is for homoerotic affairs of the two leading characters in the novel. I hope to show that the chacal can be seen, not merely as sexual desire but as something fully erotic. Also, I intend to show that the chacal is wrongly categorized as an uncompassionate and/or dishonest subject or human being. It has no sentimental label. Thus, I chose Profane Friendship because, apart from being a homosexual novel, it allows me to

express the homoerotic dilemma, as the novel is not a fully all-sexual appreciation leading to the wish to have sexual intercourse. In other words, the novel implies a strong transgression, as it refers to sexual and sensual attraction concerning members of the same sex. The term chacal refers to the division of boundaries and feelings of the being that we will see in the blood-friendship of the characters Onni and Nino.

CHAPTER 1: HISTORICAL ASPECTS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE OF XX CENTURY

You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is. William Faulkner

One of the most noteworthy characteristics of humankind is the inquiry, organization, assortment and research of bygone events. The perception of timely events permits us to determine, act and define our present and transform our future. With a poor conception of the past, we would not be able to evolve, or protect ourselves as human beings and cope with our future. Therefore, we must get to know our history to comprehend the existent reality and be prepared for times to come. More essential, these former aspects allow us to have a broader concept of the influence of the literary lives of some people in order to have a clear perspective of fundamental historical warfare for them. In the present study, I intend to explain and follow this line of thought. The purpose of this chapter is to review the most relevant events in literature and world history after the Second World War. I examine some historical aspects that affected the American literature of XX century, especially the geopolitical factors that influenced American literature after the Second World War, and the significant spreading of American literature after World War II. In our times, there are several modern authors, poets, and novelists who were influenced by earlier writers that, at the same time, were themselves influenced by the Second World War. Most of them expressed their feelings and passions throughout their writings.

1.1 Geopolitical factors: its influence on Literature after Second World War World War II is renowned as the most deadly war in history. It was the global military warfare that lasted between the years of 1939 and 1945. In this war were involved the majority of the nations of the world, either in an active or passive condition (forming the well-known alliances: Allies and the Axis). The Allies consisted of Poland, United Kingdom and France, and were later on joined by the British dominion (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc.). In 1941, the leaders of the British Commonwealth, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America held the leadership of this power. On the other hand, the Axis was the alliance of nations that fought in this war against the Allied forces as part of a revolutionary process aimed at breaking the hegemony of capitalism and defending civilization from communism. The Axis consisted of Germany, Hungary and Italy3. All the countries of the two alliances were particularly involved in a conflict where the nations of the world faced each other in a devastating unprecedented struggle and, in fact, the war was in many ways a result of the disputes of the First World War that had been left unsettled after a difficult interruption of twenty years. The comrades of each alliance placed their absolute financial, industrial and scientific developments at the service of the war. As an aftermath, this assertion brought about the mass death of civilians and militaries, including the mass genocide of approximately six million Jews4 and the use of nuclear weapons (Sommerville 5). Additionally, this warfare had a shocking but boundless impact not only on social, economic, scientific and industrial aspects, but on arts as well. Within universal literature, American writing was styled, modified and produced by the history of the nation that was passing through these difficult times.
3Sommerville, Donald. The Complete Illustrated History of World War Two: An Authoritative Account of the Deadliest

Conflict in Human History with Analysis of Decisive Encounters and Landmark Engagements. Lorenz Books. U.S.A. (2008): 5. E-book. 4 Snyder, Timothy Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. London. (2010). Impress.

The war had an enormous influence on American writing, as did many of the other events of mid and late twentieth-century in America. There was no stronger and concise way to picture an atrocious period than in literature, and in spite of the horrific events it can be said that it brought about a second flowering for writing. Thus the literature produced after the war was the most thorough manner of manifestation of the deepest phenomena of consciousness. For instance, for Alfonso Reyes in Obras completas de Alfonso Reyes: XV el deslinde y apuntes para la teora literaria, literature has that same connotation as he stresses that literature and history go through a parallel line as an effect of the sensations and experiences caused by war-effects:

La literatura, al igual que todo testimonio humano y ningn almacn de hechos ms abundantes , contiene noticias sobre conocimientos, nociones, los datos histricos de cada poca, as como contiene los indicios ms preciosos sobre nuestras moradas interiores. (72)

Due to the conflict, the social and cultural turbulence spread its true effects all over; for this reason and despite the atrocities that occurred, American literature certainly accomplished a new wisdom and a rich variety of writings since the years of 1930. Literature was able to find new nuances, new stimuli, and a new path to communicate the war-barbarity. These features were reflected in a particular mix of political, aesthetic, philosophical, intellectual and even linguistic context (Maniquis 225). Striking works by several foremost figures from those decades were published after 1945. Eminent writers such as Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemmingway, and Katherine Potter engraved memorable fiction related to their pre- and post-war perception. This new generation of writers was not taken seriously until the decade of the sixties. By this time, the critical literary vision of some authors, such as Norman Mailer, James Jones, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal or Tennesse Williams, was now taken seriously, despite the fact that much of their works were not socially published or even
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publicly shown. For example, T.S. Eliot and Frost Wallace Stevens toughly examined their society in their poetry (Perales & Garca 104). As Perales and Garca say in their Introduccin al estudio de la literatura Qu es literatura?, writing gradually changed as it was acquiring its own characteristics, which were already notable in XIX century (with authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, David Thoreau and Walt Whitman), after the independence of the Thirteen Colonies5. The same authors expound how this calamity impacted their own literary and social perspective:

Las consecuencias de la II Guerra Mundial dieron origen a una serie de temticas literarias que van desde la exploracin interna del sujeto hasta llegar a verdaderos juicios histricos de naciones enteras. (96)

Likewise, this new generation was created because of the conflict, altering its ethnic, regional and/or social character from the preceding one. This new generation of young writers was characterized by being immigrants, many of them Jews, African Americans and women, who, with the intensification of feminism, were a new voice to be heard as well. Even though the social climate was conservative, even conformist, a dissimilar sexualorientated group of writers, homosexuals and bisexuals, were announced. A clear example of these new speak-up voices was Allen Ginsberg who was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation6 in the 1950s that opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression. This new American literature was full of attempts of social, political and erotic evasion and escapes as well as other types of that traumatic struggle. (Maniquis 227).

5Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole, A Companion to the American Revolution. Black Well Companions to American History.

Black Well Publishing. Unite Kingdom, (2004): 63. E-book. 6 The literature Network. Web. (2000). 10 September, 2012 <http://www.online-literature.com/periods/beat.php>

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1.2 Significant spreading of contemporary American literature The most significant period in which American writing spread was in XX century. The literature produced between the 1930s and 2000 is literature mostly regarding World War II and due to a powerful literary boom, the literature of the United States is renowned as the worlds dominant. It is important to mention that, in this period, there is a transitional stage between the modernist and postmodernist periods (flowering from roughly 1900s to 1940s and 1960s to 1990s). In his book Modernism, Childs claims that modernism is a visceral reaction against Victorian culture and aesthetics, but also a self-conscious disruption with outdated styles of poetry and verse, just to express the new sensibilities of their time. Actually, the authors of this time experimented with literary forms and expressions. They started using self-reflecting philosophical thinking, and modernist works attempt to allow for changing thoughts or philosophies of authenticity developed by Darwin, Mach, Freud, Einstein, Nietzsche and others (4). Evolving from modernism, Anderson in Los orgenes de la postmodernidad defines the term of postmodernism as it is implemented and often used to describe evident features of post-World War II art. Additionally, it is a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in modernist literature. Postmodernism was applied to a whole perspective of movements, many in art, music, and literature, that reacted against the capitalist phase called modernism. Although this term is applied to different intellectual tendencies, they all share the idea that the modern project7 failed trying to renovate radically the traditional patterns of art and culture, thinking and social life as well. Additionally, this postmodernist period is the entrance for numerous young writers between the 1950s and 1960s, collectively known as the Beats, and including poets like Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and novelists Jack Kerouac and Ken Kessey who altered
7Anderson, Perry. Los orgenes de la posmodernidad. Anagrama. Madrid. (2000). E-book.

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American literature by experimenting with form and context (Rangno 9). A clear example of contemporary writer is J.D. Salinger in Catcher in The Rye; the novel is about the story of Holden Caufield, a well-meaning adolescent who is unable to live up to the outward promise of the 1950s affluence and the conformity in life (Rangno 4). Here is a short fragment of his work and a flawless example of writing of that epoch:

I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another fuck you on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldnt come off. Its hopeless anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldnt rub out even half the fuck you signs in the world. Its impossible. (202)

In this fragment of the novel, Salinger plays with the identity of sadness and solitude of the character and some kind of painful nightmare when referring to the reader to become his own imagination. He is able to transmit Holdens thoughts, which are capable of showing what he is authentically feeling; this is the line of literature that identifies postmodernist writings, something that modern literature was not able to comprehend. Another literary feature of postmodernism is the influence of sexuality and eroticism (same-sex) poetry, as in the case of Allen Ginsberg (1981) where he mentions this little fragment of his poem in Old Love Story:

Some think the love of boys is wicked in the world, forlorn character corrupting, worthy mankind's scorn or eyes that weep and breasts that ache for lovely youth have no mouth to speak for mankind's general truth []8

8 Ginsberg, Allen. "Old Love Story", White Shroud Poems: 1980-1985. Harper and Row. (1986). Impress.

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Nonetheless, it is clear in Ginsbergs writing that homoerotic connotation refers to the homosexual act of two subjects and the general disapproval of society. The poem breaks with the triviality of social, cultural and writing forms and expressions. However, postmodern literature is tough to define and there is little agreement on the precise characteristics, scope, and importance of it (Lewis 2002). Concerning this difficulty, Habermas says:

El tiempo dir con certeza en qu momento dejamos de ser hombres de la modernidad y transitamos a otro estadio que ya se ha bautizado como postmodernidad, nombre que no aclara con precisin la etapa que corre actualmente, pero si refleja su sentido de incertidumbre, pues por una parte, en estricto sentido etimolgico, la postmodernidad sera una etapa ulterior a la modernidad, algo que est ms all de sta pero que sigue unida a la raz que la gener, y, por otra parte, para algunos intelectuales el trmino postmoderno implica una clara separacin de una etapa y otra e, incluso, una marcada contraposicin con la poca moderna (87).

The term and the idea of postmodernism suppose some kind of familiarity with the term of modernism. This familiarity was not born in the middle of a so-called cultural center but a distant boundary: Neither belongs to Europe nor the United States of America but to Latin America 9 (Anderson 9). Considering this wider vision, it is important to take a transitional position, there is no strong and concise definition yet about XX century literature, whereas postmodernism can be defined as an artistic movement, typically modern, characterized by its exasperation of the ending of modern age (Aza 236). Thus, postmodernism was an entry to set up some writing trends and influences of sexual identities, and it is certain that contemporary literature reflects the complexity, the unrest, the sexuality, the eroticism and the multiculturalism of our current society, emphasizing the marginal and

El trmino modernismo como denominacin de un movimiento esttico fue acuado por un poeta nicaragense (Rubn Daro) que escriba en un peridico guatemalteco sobre un encuentro literario que haba tenido lugar en Per Perry Anderson. Los orgenes de la posmodernidad. Anagrama. Madrid. (2000). E-book.

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excluded aspects, giving literary force to gender, such as homosexuals, that were a very rejected and ignored group. Now that the historical aspects of contemporary literature have been briefly explained, for the purpose of this present work and before continuing into the following section, it is important that the reader recognize not only the different stages that XX century literature went through before this colossal warfare, and some foremost authors who departed this literary upheaval, but be able to distinguish the dissimilarity and growth concerning Modernism and Postmodernism as well.

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CHAPTER 2: HOMOEROTICISM: A LITERARY CONTEXT

Erotismo y poesa: el primero es una metfora de la sexualidad, la segunda una erotizacin del lenguaje. Octavio Paz

Along human history, in a very general analysis, it is easy to comprehend the word eroticism as something generally understood to refer to a state of sexual stimulation or anticipation of a persistent sexual desire. Moreover, coupled with this, there exists another way of cultural expression called homoeroticism, which is sometimes misread as a firmly homosexual encouraged act when actually it has an even more valuable significance; it is the attraction of the request itself presented in pleasure: desire, excitation or orgasm. The purpose of the present study, besides its literary inspiration, follows the same homoerotic conception of the novel. Profane Friendship by Harold Brodkey is a novel that, beyond many other features, shows these erotic aspects in an outstanding relationship between two friends that will experiment this carnal and overwhelming contemplation of pleasure throughout their lives. The previous chapter has presented the history of American literature of XX century as a result of the most atrocious but remarkable consequences that the Second World War brought about. Thus, it assumes a broad view of the evolution to contextualize postmodernist literature in different stages (from roughly 1900s to 1990s). The following chapter deals with eroticism as a different perception to describe carnal relationships among humankind. From here on, I will go into homoeroticism as an overview and as a cultural expression that demonstrates that male subjects are not necessarily oriented towards homosexuality or heterosexuality.

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2.1 Eroticism in literature Sexuality has been an essential component in structuring the gender identity of men and women alike. It is mainly related to or conceived as an erotic component of a given society. The word erotic comes from Latin eroticus, as this comes from Greek erotiks, which refers to sensual love and love of poetry. Also, the Greek word derives from the name of Eros, Cupid for the Romans, the god of love (Soca 2006). Therefore, sexuality and eroticism are introduced when considering the flesh as something desirable, but also, the demonstrations of its magnificence or blooming. Eroticism is seen as an attraction of the response to physical desire or eminent arousal (Younger 80). According to Carlos Ceia in Literatura ertica, literature exists this remarkable subgenre that has had an exceptional influence on readers. Erotic literature is a literary subgenre where written texts are related, directly or indirectly, to gender, sex, and obviously eroticism. On some occasions, it can be close to pornographic literature, whether there are explicit sexual scenes or not, although it is normally considered erotic as well. Therefore, erotic literature is similar to police novels, west novels or pink novels, a literary subgenre with its corresponding writing rules, which result unavoidable:

El erotismo en la literatura est libre de constricciones y normas, no tiene sujeciones de ningn tipo. Es producto de la atmsfera o de un momento o momentos determinados de la accin [] A menudo, surge, no es buscado. O se encuentra tan ntimamente entrelazado al resto de la obra que, en lo afrodisiaco, siempre reverberan otras dimensiones. (Morales 51)

Following the same idea, erotic acts are considered as derangements; no law, material or moral, determines them. Eroticism is a gradual, accidental or incidental, product of natural combinations. Some cannot be discarded and others approved as its purpose is ephemeral

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(Paz 43). By this I mean that eroticism socializes and transforms itself because of human relationships and fantasy. This fantasy can be described as an orgasmic tension where the presence of the other person disappears, resulting in a complexity of unrealities, sensations and personal relations, which can be found in all kinds of art, including in literature. Thus, the same author in La llama doble mentions the relation between eroticism and poetry. The first one is called bodily poetic and the second one is verbally erotic:

El erotismo es sexualidad transfigurada: metfora. El agente que mueve lo mismo al acto ertico que al potico es la imaginacin. Es la potencia que transfigura al sexo en ceremonia y rito, el lenguaje en ritmo y metfora [] El erotismo es una metfora de la sexualidad animal. Qu dice esa metfora? Como todas las metforas, designa algo que est ms all de la realidad que la origina, algo nuevo y distinto de los trminos que la componen. (10)

Following the same line, in Las palabras y los das, Paz insists that erotic acts are instinctive when man realizes that the functions of his literary-desirable labor come naturally. Eroticism is seen in history as it is seen in animal sexuality:

La distancia engendra la imaginacin ertica. El erotismo es imaginario: es un disparo de la imaginacin frente al mundo exterior. El disparo es el hombre mismo, al alcance de su imagen, al alcance de s [] El erotismo es la experiencia de la vida plena puesto que se nos aparece como un todo palpable y en el que penetramos tambin como una totalidad; representa, imita, y se inventa; inventa, y se imita. (142)

In this line of experience, there are several postmodernist authors and novels that describe love, sex and eroticism. Such is the case of Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer10, which is a novel published for the first time in Paris in 1934, because of the censorship in the
10Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer. HarperCollins Publishers. New York, United States of America. (1961): E-book.

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United States up to 1961, after several trials. It is responsible for is notorious sexuality and free speech that we now take for granted in literature. In the novel there are several passages where the female sexual organ is referred to in detailed and vulgar language (Sova 260). Despite the fact that his work was valued as a moral atrocity by distinctive writers such as T.S. Eliot, George Orwell or Lawrence because of its explicit content, it was a masterpiece (Decker 2007). This is precisely what I found in Profane Friendship: issues and experiences where each paragraph brings sexuality and eroticism strongly into the novel.

2.2 Homoeroticism: an overview The word homosexual or homosexualism is a conception or representation of homogenital sexual practices considered pathologic, perverse and/or abstracted. Most authors prefer the word homoeroticism because of the clarity of this term, as it describes the plurality of practices and derives from same-oriented sex. Homoeroticism rejects the idea of sickness, abnormality or perversion. Also, it neglects the possibility of a common organic or psychiatric homosexual substance in all men with homoerotic tendencies (Lewes 188). On the other hand, when the noun homosexual is used in our ordinary language, we end up being hostages of our own habits. The frequent use of the term makes us believe that there really exists a kind of specific humankind. Even more, we tend to believe that the peculiarity presented by this type of term is a permanent property of the nature of certain men, independently of the descriptions that are visible and plausible in our own linguistic habits. By this I mean, it is a type of attribute of certain human beings that remain responsible for this vocabulary and the so-called intervention of the term homosexual in their own lives. Homosexuality is constantly identified by them because of their sexual preferences (Costa: 22). Homoeroticism differs slightly from homosexualism in the fact that
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homoerotic subjects try to separate their sexual conceptions, involving criticism through enunciation. Homoeroticism makes a whole conception of some sexual or so-called distorted practices, but also expresses a force of erotic action to be related physically and/or emotionally in different ways with same-sex people. In the same line, Cornejo (2009) affirms that:

[..] No obstante, el uso del vocablo homoerotismo escogido por su mayor neutralidad moral si lo comparamos con el trmino homosexualidad debe ser visto como tctica argumentativa y no como proposicin conceptual con pretensiones de validez universal. Mejor an, el empleo del trmino homoerotismo pretende distanciar al interlocutor de la nocin de homosexualidad, pues una cierta familiaridad entre ambos trminos podra interpretarse como una nueva revalidacin moral del homosexualismo. (147)

As Cornejo mentions in the previous paragraph, the concept of homoeroticism differs from the concept of homosexuality, as the first one refers specifically to a mere argumentative and symbolic value referring to an ephemeral desire, whereas the second one implies a more permanent term with social values related to a state of sexual identity or genre. It is a more ancient concept than the 20th century idea of homosexuality (Flood 307). In this way, the use of the word homoeroticism alludes and refers to love and desire between certain same-sex people, specially manifested in visual arts and literature in different kinds of erotic attractions or physical relationships. Homoeroticism is defined as cultural manifestation related to a homosexual identity (Younger 80). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, homoeroticism11 means, pertaining to or characterized by a tendency for erotic emotions to be centered on a person of the same sex; or pertaining to a homo-erotic
11

Oxford Dictionaries. Web. (2013). <http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/homoerotic?q=homoerotic>

December,

2012.

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person. Therefore, in arts, homoeroticism is created by and for the homosexual community, but also for the heterosexual community, and refers to visual art as sensuality of nudity, as well as psycho-affective or erotic relationships between people of same sex.

2.3 Homoerotic culture It is important to mention that sexuality has often been tied to societal interpretations of man or woman to create social order and hierarchy and to give credibility to what is normal or common. Thus, according to Herdt in Same Sex Different Cultures (Exploring Gay & Lesbian Lives) in each of these areas those who disrupt the social order are typically considered as political revolutionaries or religious heretics whose common judgment changes the public status. Nonetheless, most of the people living within the cultural traditions do not think of themselves in such terms:

Anthropology has shown that people who erotically desire the same gender sufficiently to organize their social lives around this desire come in all genders, colors, political and religious creeds, and nationalities. (3)

Moreover, the same author in Gay and Lesbian Youth assumes that there has been an unprecedented growth in recent history of the gay and lesbian community that has transformed our culture and created a new consciousness or idiosyncrasy (2). Considering the preceding background, we can affirm that cultural approval of the term homoeroticism does not prove that all subjects must be either homosexuals or heterosexuals. It tries to demonstrate that most of us can behave homosexually or heterosexually. However, it does

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not mean that we are not able to distinguish among real homosexuals and occasional homosexuals:
Lo que interesa no es la esencia de la atraccin: s, el objeto que define su cualidad. Cuando se habla de una atraccin homosexual se est queriendo decir que estamos frente a una atraccin por una persona del mismo sexo. Sin embargo, nuevamente aqu reaparece la simplificacin de la respuesta que se toca con serias objeciones del lenguaje. El problema se plantea cuando intentamos definir lo que se entiende por mismo sexo, pues para un sujeto puede ser la atraccin por los genitales u otras partes fsicas de otro hombre: en cambio, para otro mismo sexo es el objeto de amor. (Cornejo 150

By this the author means, that mismo sexo same sex homoerotic desire is no guarantee of an identity of all real homosexuals. The term homoerotic is defined as a cultural manifestation that expresses the sensual love between same-sex members, and carries all the literary weight of modern classifications about love and desire that barely existed in other times. This manifestation is strongly notable in writing, in the novels, poetry, tales, and letters from XVIII to XX century (Flood 307).

2.4 Importance of homoeroticism in literature Since the late XV century, there has been a remarkable tradition of homoeroticism in poetry. One of the most prominent examples of this homoerotic work are the sonnets12 by William Shakespeare. Even though some critics have tried to preserve the credibility for being a non-erotic literary work, no critic has disputed that the sonnets of William Shakespeare have some implicit references to homoerotic love. The sonnets deal with themes
12 William Shakespeare: The Complete Works by Linda Alchin. Home page. Web. (2013) 12 February, 2013.

<http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-sonnets.htm>

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such as love, time, beauty and immortality, but there are other homoerotic historical literary works that contain poems by major poets such as Abu Nuwas, Walt Whitman, Federico Garca Lorca, W.H. Auden, Fernando Pessoa and Allen Ginsberg (Daugherty 45). Walt Whitmans I Sing the Body Electric presents a homoerotic work. The level of concern, attentiveness and the obvious love is remarkable in each line of the poem:

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[] I knew a man he was a common farmer he was the father of five sons and in them were the fathers of sons and in them were the fathers of sons. This man was a wonderful vigor and calmness and beauty person, The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, These I used to go and visit him to see [] When he when with his five sons and many-grand sons to hunt or fish You would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang, You would wish long and long to be with him you would wish to sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other []13

Although the poem is not sexually same-sex implicated, there is a strong connotation of eroticism and belonging. The poems of Whitman are well known for celebrating male bodies and friendships. Homoeroticism, as I mentioned before, is not substantial to love, it can even be presented in separate ways as in this writing. Another example of an outstanding writer and poet was Federico Garcia Lorca who in his famous poem Oda a Walt Whitman alludes to a passionate mediation to homoeroticism in a society and constitutes a great poetical recognition to Whitmans erotic-body language:
13 Lehman, David. The Best American Erotic Poems from 1800 to the Present. Scribner & Poetry. New York, United states

of America. (2008): Impress.

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[] Ni un solo momento, viejo hermoso Walt Whitman, he dejado de ver tu barba llena de mariposas, ni tus hombros de pana gastados por la luna, ni tus muslos de Apolo virginal, ni tu voz como una columna de ceniza; anciano hermoso como la niebla que gemas igual que un pjaro con el sexo atravesado por una aguja, enemigo del stiro, enemigo de la vida y amante de los cuerpos bajo la burda tela. Ni un solo momento, hermosura viril que en montes de carbn, anuncios y ferrocarriles, soabas ser un ro y dormir como un ro con aquel camarada que pondra en tu pecho un pequeo dolor de ignorante leopardo.

Ni un slo momento, Adn de sangre, macho, hombre solo en el mar, viejo hermoso Walt Whitman, porque por las azoteas, agrupados en los bares, saliendo en racimos de las alcantarillas, temblando entre las piernas de los chauffeurs o girando en las plataformas del ajenjo, 23

los maricas, Walt Whitman, te soaban[]14

This poem is a compliment to the existence and manifestation of feelings, particularly love, without complexities, and marks a strong homoerotic tendency when talking about the physical and emotional descriptions about Whitman as a person and an expressive human being. In the same line, according to Giraldo in Fin del siglo XX: por un nuevo lenguaje (1960-1996), the closer we get to XX century we are able to witness that arts start wandering on the spirit through expressions that manifest the spirit of our times:

Los escritores dan testimonio de la prdida del centro y la prevalencia del vaco, los escritores reflejan, caleidoscpicamente, la realidad del mundo y de la literatura en movimiento inestable e inclasificable de sus expresiones: la convivencia de tonos, la arbitrariedad de gestos, el nfasis en lo ertico y lo ldico, la burla, la irreverencia [] lo selecto y lo kitsch [] dan muestra del mosaico en el que estamos inmersos (36).

Although Giraldo emphasizes eroticism, we can deduce that homoeroticism has followed the same conventional line throughout history, presenting distinguished contemporary authors such as Carlos Monsivis and some other young writers such as Luis Zapata Quiroz, who is considered the most prolific Mexican writer of homosexual literature, and Tryno Maldonado. Henceforth, Profane Friendship by Harold Brodkey is a clear

example of postmodernist homoerotic literature where all these features I have mentioned before are strongly present in the novel.

14

The Center for Programs in Contemporary Literature. Web. <http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Lorca-Garcia_oda-a-walt-whitman.html>

(2013).

September,

2012.

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CHAPTER 3: PROFANE FRIENDSHIP: A HOMOEROTIC VISION

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. C. S. Lewis

Most of the time, to have a wider perception of the history of literature, you have to learn about the past in order to define the present and act consciously in view of imminent future events. For many, the most emblematic century for literature is the XX, as it contextualizes a broader vision of the different stages that postmodernism was passing through after the difficult and massive consequences of the Second World War. An upsurge of contemporary writers, poets, and novelists came about and influenced the change of facts that led to express their worldview throughout writing. This is the century of the rise of libido, sexuality, drugs, alcohol, madness, and disinhibition that found their way into literature. In this study, I decided to follow the line of eroticism, specifically homoeroticism, as this innovative feature is barely known in society and culture, and is occasionally misread as a definitely homosexual act when actually it may be read as something more significant. The previous chapter has presented different conceptions of eroticism and how homoeroticism emerged. Thus, it is clear that homoeroticism is more than a conceptualization of sexual practices, but is more linked to the meaning and perception of how we identify libido, sexuality and sensual love. This final chapter deals with homoeroticism in Harold Brodkeys work: Profane Friendship. Venice is the scenario of a friendship, of a love; it is a work that portrays a different Venice after the Second World War; this fact will be the reason for two unknown fellows, Niles OHara and Giangiacomo Gallieni, to face a series of certain homoerotic relationships, acting beyond their age, bringing vices into their lives. Hence, I will explain the concept of the chacal, which is Mexican slang, basically to refer to a kind of men who are sexually or
25

emotionally immersed in a homoerotic context. But what relation or link is there between homoeroticism and the concept of chacal? This interpretation is more than a homosexual perspective, as I found this term suitable for the novel to describe Onni (Giangiacomo), even though the story is contextually and socially different as the story is developed in Rome. This is a way to reaffirm that Onni acts like a chacal when he shows his enjoyments, passions and actions. Moreover, I suggest that the term chacal, in the homoerotic context of the novel, involves most of the feelings, sexually, erotically and hedonistically speaking.

3.1 Harold Brodkey: The influence of life in writing Harold Brodkey was born 1930 in Alton, Illinois. Smith in the article Harold Brodkey, 65, New Yorker Writer And Novelist, Dies of Illness He Wrote About, describes Harold Brodkey1516 (1930-1996) as a novelist, short-story teller and essayist known for his failure to publish his books. He eventually did it with some complications. Brodkey dedicated most of his lifetime to writing the monumental work The Runaway Soul. After finishing it and before his death, he finished a second novel, Profane Friendship, which is the literary will of an essential writer. He attended Harvard University and soon began publishing stories in magazines. His first collection contains passion in marriage, using incidents from his personal life. He called these stories First Love and Other Sorrows (1957)17. He died from AIDS at the age of 65.

15 Smith, Dinitia. The New York

Times. Home Page. Web. 27 January, 1996. 14 August, 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/27/us/harold-brodkey-65-new-yorker-writer-and-novelist-dies-of-illness-hewroteabout.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm> 16 Linville, James. Harold Brodkey, The Art of Fiction N. 126. The Paris Review. Web. 6 September, 2012. <http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2128/the-art-of-fiction-no-126-harold-brodkey> 17 Updike, John. The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Houghton Mifflin Company. United States of America. (1999): 790 pp. E-book.

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According to the web page of the Encyclopedia Britannica, his full name was Harold Roy Brodkey; however, his original name was Aaron Roy Weintraub. Brodkey was an emblematic writer of the staff of The New Yorker, as he was a charismatic and stormy figure in literary circles. The critic Harold Bloom18 called him an American Proust as he was unparalleled in American prose fiction since the death of William Faulkner. In 1993, Mr. Brodkey announced in the pages of The New Yorker, in an article titled "To My Readers,"19 that he had AIDS as a result of a few homosexual relationships, which he said "took place largely in the 1960's." Around the time of the publication of his first book, he and his wife, the novelist Ellen Brodkey, divorced and Mr. Brodkey experimented what he called not a homosexual period but a binary sexual phase. Hence, AIDS was the martyrdom for the rest of his life. Brodkey always expressed his feelings through what he called clemency, but this incarnate feeling is expressed in his works as a way of tenderness and compassion for life and for what he was living. In the same line, Wood (1994) explains how this clemency impacted on his writing:

THE word "clemency" echoes through Harold Brodkey's new novel like lost music, or like the fantasy of a kindness that cannot quite exist. Clemency is not pity or mercy, and not exactly pardon. It is mildness, as the dictionary says, but mildness where ferocity would have been more likely. What sort of world wants clemency in this way? [] His remarkable recent article in The New Yorker -- the second on his having AIDS -- suggests something else: that love is an experiment into which many so-called crimes and much else might disappear. (The New York Times web page)

18 Harold Bloom is a literary critic and author of many books, including The Western Canon: The Books and School of the
Ages, Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, etc. Yale University. Home Page. Web. (2013). 12 April, 2013. <http://english.yale.edu/faculty-staff/harold-bloom> 19 Brodkey, Harold. To My Readers. The New Yorker. 21 June, 1993. 5 September, 2012. <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1993/06/21/1993_06_21_080_TNY_CARDS_000363740>

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Clemency, then, is that ferocity and wildness that characterizes Brodkeys writing, like a lyric made a whole concept of music that implies that his writing was full of love with a kind of yearning for living. Mr. Brodkey has made his true mark by taking language and narrative into cornices of human emotion that have been underestimated by other writers. The accuracy of his writing is the only purpose for his literature: the style of essential mysteries with a whole sense made of own-lived words. It is clear that this novel in particular presents this clemency he talked about, as he is willing to linger a little bit longer with each character, reach out and look for something, a deeper sense or an essence, such as the fluidities of love and passion, but also the use of atypical characters who are not archetypical of a friendship or a love that most books or novels always attempt; that feeling of yearning and exasperation for not being alone or contemplating solitude as well. Moreover, Brodkey introduces homoeroticism in an acute way explaining that the novel should not be compared to our own lives and that the perception from writer to writer may be different as it is not a love novel:

I apologize for the narrative I am offering. It attempts a portrayal of the true nature of love in one example which might not be a true example of love and one that anyway I am not competent to portray, being a criminally interested party [] The world is, as usual, crapulous with politics and with famines and violence as I write this. This must be folded into the sentiment. To write without sentiment or lying seems impossible [] And I may chance my mind about the characters who are hardly typical or archetypical and who are certainly not archetypes of love, and I may try to make them archetypes after all, mere puppets of mine and yours, and not the people we compare our own lives to. And they were not lovers, after all [] (Brodkey 3,4)

Brodkey opens his heart and makes us aware of the kind of narrative we are about to read. He has an ambition to show the complex world of emotional lives. As most of his novels, this one is not scenic, not illustrative, not literal, and not linear. What is extraordinary
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is the inner heart of friendships in all of its impulses and nuances.

3.2 Profane Friendship: A Homoerotic Dilemma In the brief biographical overview I have presented, Brodkey appears as the product of the 1980s literary culture, which made admirable progression and earned reputation for every work. Its dangerous to be as good a writer as I am, he assumed in an interview in the New York Magazine (Smith 1996). The story line of the novel Profane Friendship is traced through a strong relationship between two boys, one Italian and the other an American, grown up in Venice. The action takes place during the 30s, during World War II, as their friendship seems to be affected by this social and political crisis. But later on, they meet again in the 1940s. They are sexually curious, weirdly inexpert. Giangiacomo, the Italian guy, always called Onni by his friend, is an immature, but real-life wise boy who becomes a famous movie star. In the novel he is described as a companion in terms of emotions and companionship, intimately stoic, A largely object of admiration (Brodkey 40). On the other hand, Nino, the American guy and son of an expatriate writer, is more puritanical and well behaved, who becomes a successful writer (Wood 1994). Even though Profane Friendship is a gay-categorized story, the novel insists on a tight focus on the intense bond of the two characters. Sexuality and eroticism is noteworthy in the whole context of the narrative, as eroticism is an action of sex and body. But bear in mind that body and sex live in a certain social order; by this I mean that everything that becomes culturally well-known can be usable and vulnerable for a given purpose. Hence, sex and body can be seen as cultural phenomena:

29

Sexo y cuerpo no existen ya ms que como producto cultural. Desde el momento en que el erotismo es fenmeno cultural, se convierte en imaginativa, cambiante, no finalista y, no lo olvidemos, explotable. (Manrique 1996)

Nevertheless, there are those who see, in a psychological sense, eroticism as a subjective, ideal and configurative form of love, in contraposition to the sexual theme, which would be the material, physical and passional. Naturally, homoeroticism is referred to when eroticism is implied. Homoerotism points at a whole concept of sexual practices, but also expresses eroticism as a force of desire to be related physically and/or emotionally in different ways with same-sex people. There is a part of the novel where Onni and Nino, when children, explore their bodies as a lack of Ninos life experience in the real world. Onni knew a great deal about being a child, in Venice, and around this knowledge spread the otherwise unknown rest of the world. This kind of obscenity, such as prostitution and masturbation can be seen, sometimes, as an example of homoeroticism. Obscenity can be seen as any statement or act that offends or insults the morality and/or integrity of people in our times. According to Brodkey, it is sexually and desirably exploitable as well:

Obscenity: we showed each other our bodies in our underwear. We showed each other our bare behinds, our pepees. We went to the bathroom in each others company. We then, each other broke separately, broke the others confidence. (Brodkey 43)

This obscenity will be the essential key for the development of a series of erotic and sensual events that will provoke and awake a special communication between the characters. As a consequence, homoeroticism as eroticism is the individual potentiality to produce and communicate a special way of pleasure: yearning, excitement and orgasm in same-sex gender (Barrios 43). In different ways, both of these themes are liberally expressed in the novel.

30

From Ninos childhood, the value of childhood is significant and the effect of it that creates bonds between them. For Nino, Onni was his only mate in terms of sentiments and comradeships. Onni was the dominant voice and object of admiration and physically restless. Homoeroticism is not always implicated as something sexual but ephemeral and imaginative when after a national wrestling competition, they used to go home and watch some pornography as a distraction or excitement, which was some kind of representation of the real world. Nino venerates the knowledge of Onni when he starts eluding the action of kiss:

He theorized that it was interesting to kiss when you were grown up because your mouth hurt from talking and smoking. Of course, we experimented kissing. We kissed each other. Outside of pecks on the cheek, it did not make conscious sense to me. I went Ugh in English and ran giddily around the room and down the stairs and along the calli. (Brodkey 46)

In my opinion, there are thoughts and concepts that are not necessarily substantial to the word love as we can see in this paragraph. What is important is to point out the meticulous and erotic way children can express without any kind of inference to sexual performance. Although we live in a world where love, sex and relationships occupy the first place in the hearts and minds of every person. Then, their friendship is corrupted by the fascist era, up to their return to Venice in 1946. In this fragment of the novel the emotional fighting over who desires who becomes an emotional chaos of lost affections:

Giangiacomo zestfully, deftly in a sort of display of Italian- sexual-despair, playacting I mean, unbuttons his shirt and shows one of the pinecones, and he sighs and turns his head to one side. We have crossed into the flagrantly dishonorable space that lies between play and sexual trespass [] Onni is a seduction in a seductive culture in a permitted privacy [] I was erected most of that year anyway. (Brodkey: 112)

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Therefore, Brodkey fairly documents the circumstances, frequently in the way two people who do not show any affection of love, but nevertheless, create a homoerotic passion because of the intensity of the access to yearning-excitation- pleasure that represents the freedom of tension before orgasm. There is another case of homoeroticism in the novel where the characters are in the Walled Garden of Onnis aunt, as Onni tries to seduce, play and sexually trespass the privacy of the garden, doing things:

He brushed his pinecone breast against me. Behind the rough Wood of the pinecones is the weight and heat of his adolescent body, which seemed to be slablike, repellent, supple-and-hard-fleshed, supplely hard. Bonelessly fleshly, fleshily real [] `Nino is a dirty, dirty boy. You want to jerk off, Dirty Boy? Jerk off, Sporcaccione, for La Puttana MADRE [] His will affected me like an erection, like my erection, but my erection was just there, without affect [] (Brodkey 114, 115)

In this excerpt of the novel, the pinecone has two connotations: the first one is just the mere seed-producing structure of a pine tree; the second one is allusive to his rough and robust chest, as they lay down resting in curiosity. It is clear then, that homoeroticism, as eroticism, is the human faculty to create and share in a peculiar way of sexual indulgence (excitation, craving and orgasm). It is of course, a phenomenon that possesses biological bases and proceeds from a wide psych-socio-cultural construction (Rogers 63,81). The reason for calling attention to homoeroticism rather than homosexualism is because homosexualism, a well-known term, is a behavior regarded as a sin or a crime, but homoeroticism is a larger term: a homoerotic act reflects the instability of the categories created by the polarization of men either homosexual or heterosexual. It is that possibility to be whoever you want in the act you want, which can be viewed in the chacal personality of Onni. That is the reason I tried to link these terms (homoeroticism and chacalismo) to infer that in literature, any feature of writing is possible when there is passion (Flood 307). I would
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describe the novel itself, as an agonizingly, overpowering, arrogant, absolutely inscrutable poem made prose.

3.3 Why the remarkable figure of a chacal is the main factor in a Profane Friendship? I would like to claim that this novel is a clear homoerotic example of contemporary literature. Therefore, as we have seen along this research, sexuality has been a vital constituent in structuring the gender identity of men, even though homoeroticism alienates the possibility of its association with gender, condition, deviation or perversion, as it is more an inspirational and sometimes an artistic term. It neglects the idea that there is something as a homosexual substance, organic or physic, common to all men with homoerotic tendencies. By this I mean, homoeroticism is a fantasy that refers to all mens sexual behavior that is not necessarily homosexual or has a gay interest in other men: it is the whole context of appreciation of their bodies, language, charisma, physiognomy, personality, masculine attitude, etcetera which is only permissible in some contexts. As I said before, the male body has increasingly become a desirable object to male human eyes. Referring to this point, Cornejo in Equvocos del lenguaje: homoerotismo en lugar de homosexualidad explains that, el trmino no posee una forma sustantivada que indique identidad, como en el caso del homo-sexualismo (143). The word homosexual is a term that confirms and lies in the nature of homoerotic tendencies. It is wrongly trying to denominate all homoerotic attractions by using the term homosexualism. In order to follow the line of homoeroticism I would like to focus on an emblematic figure that I found not only attractive but also amazingly enclosed in the social context we are living nowadays, which characterizes the work Profane

33

Friendship: The chacal20. The chacal is a word used in a Mexican background; it is used to describe, metaphorically, the conduct of a very masculine and self-confident male, as there is a similarity between a chacal and the behavior of Giangiacomo Gallieni (Onni) in the novel. A strange term to name a specific group of males: Thats a hot chacal! What a piece of chacal! I want to be with a chacal! So, what is a chacal? In gay slang, a chacal21 refers to a proletarian youth, who embodies working-class eroticism, gestures alluring of erotic decipherment, a body that has been sculptured by the rhythms of life, hard work, military trainings. Monsivis in The Mexico City Reader gives a wide description of what is inferred by a chacal not as a visual product but as artistically physical labor:

Even when no ones looking at him, the chacal acts as if everyone wanted him. He struts through the room, assimilating the lust of others, pausing the field lewd vibes, or walking as though he needed extra space for a body swathed in the desires it arouses [] As for the chacal, he never looks, so as not to give away his gaze for free, but he allows himself to be ogled for the sake of his self-esteem. (Monsivis 180)

At this point I would like to clarify that the role of chacal in the novel is strongly seen as a macho heterosexual who can keep his social status intact because of his masculine identity. This identity merely consists in not being penetrated as a woman during intercourse. In the same line, the same author in the article La noche popular: paseos, riesgos, jbilos, necesidades orgnicas, tensiones, especies antiguas y recientes, descargas anmicas en forma de coreografas, suggests another concept of the chacal, which I insist is, somehow,
20Violeta L. de la Rosa nos define al Chacal como un hombre de apariencia muy masculina y rasgos marcados, de

esos que andan escupiendo en la calle. La Rosas, Violeta L.Diccionario Guei Mnimo. Q-Eros. No. 12, Ao 1, septiembre del 2001. 14 March, 2013: 20. Article.
21 The mexican term may be related to the animal jackal as the Real Academia Espaola defines a chacal as a mamfero

carnvoro de la familia de los Cnidos, de un tamao medio entre el lobo y la zorra. Vive en las regiones templadas de Asia y frica. Es carroero y de costumbres gregarias. I deduce that the chacal follows the same idea as they normally hunt alone or in pair. Real Academia Espaola. Home Page. Web. (2013). 15 May, 2013. <http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=chacal>

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very much like Onnis way of being:

El chacal es la sensualidad proletaria, el gesto que los expertos en complacencias no descifran, el cuerpo que proviene del gimnasio de la vida, del trabajo duro [...] es la friega cotidiana y no el afn esttico que decide la esbeltez. El chacal tiene por hbito [...] sentirse ampliado, deseado as nadie lo contemple [...] El chacal no mira para no regalar su mirada, pero se deja mirar para ascender en su autoestima [] las camisetas entalladas, los jeans ajustados y convenientemente rotos, las gorras de bisbol, el perfeccionamiento de la mirada hostil o indiferente que sin embargo invita [...] de ningn modo el prostituido, en modo alguno el inaccesible [] (Monsivis: 60)

Therefore, the chacal in a common guy, is masculine, one that is not easy to identify, socially speaking. He keeps this masculine attitude with all his attributes and values. Regarding to this point, Bautista22 (2000) in his half-hour documentary video Amor Chacal (Jackal Love) proposes a related definition for this male species:

A chacal is a heterosexual who has sexual intercourse with men. Researchers describe chacales as naturally masculine-looking and acting. They belong to all social classes but they are specially linked to the social working class. (Bautista 189)

The line that brings this theme back to Profane Friendship is the link of the relationship between Niles OHara (Nino) and Giangiacomo Gallieni (Onni) whose tumultuous youthfulness will be displayed into sexual and erotic desires. OHara seems to be willing to follow Onnis ideas; ideas that were disrupted at times into nervous madness, not deeply, except for moments, and then deeply enough to be monstrous in a way. Sometimes
22Juan Carlos Bautista (Tonal, Chiapas) Catalogado como un chacalgo, nos muestra una amplia definicin social y

contextual del trmino en su pelcula Amor Chacal producido y dirigido por el mismo -filme que nos invita a conocer a los chacales de Alvarado, Veracruz. (59)

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this attitude was justified by several events during his childhood; such as having been raped in 1943 in a farm near Udine at some point during the war by a German colonel2324. However he realizes that his friend may be no more than something ephemeral. Onni acts as a chacal when he is getting naked in front of his friend or even tries to convince OHara to do certain things with the sole glimpse of his eyes:

And there he was, awake in the empty air of twilight in his room, a patch of yellow light on his face. He said ah and lit a cigarette. He looked like hell, dark rings around his eyes lifeless, colorless lips. [] The immanent emotion is here. My interest in him colors my inward sight. But whatever happens, you realize truly in a later light, a different light [] He has something irreversible, modest, basic, basically recurring clemency of attention about this time lag. Your moods, your feelings go up a hill, down hill. The thing about being of interest to him is that, well, there it is: it is a part of the world. (Brodkey 173)

So, homoeroticism and chacalismo follow the same line, as they are, at some point, labels for a form of sexuality. Perhaps they ought to be seen as the conventional product of strict heterosexual gender roles and relationships. By this I mean, these erotic terms may be freely used and employed whenever the circumstantial case may be best, as a reference to the unacknowledged forms of homosexuality or derivatives, where sexual interest is implicit or explicit, but nevertheless an interest in male relations (Flood 309). Furthermore, different connotations of chacalismo can be found throughout the novel, which merely refer to a homoerotic situation due to the circumstances. As this excerpt of the story, after having intercourse, Nino stays perplexed by the masculine and exhilarating nudity-image of Onni:

[] He is wittily and masculinely self-conscious in an Italian mannerIt is shocking, the painful

23 In the novel, it is said that the mother, in his youth, is still whoring him; he was not doing on his own yet. He

actually has a lunatic mother. (cf. 148)

24In the novel, Onni is sensitive to being a whore. He is still one, but more strongly, more adept, deeper-voiced, all the

time. He explains that odious suppleness of soul, of flesh, of sexual mood. (cf. 156)

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vulgarity of the beauty of the self-conscious young actor, the absent of any citizenship any longer in the republic of youthful fools and of male egos in abeyance even if only slightly [] In the shadows in his room, his face with its sharply excavated-from-darkness quality of good looks seemed to have inner staircases and to difficult to see; but its eyedness, the way he stared and hooded his eyes looked away indicated that he was very much the captain-owner of himself, of his room, of his feelings. (Brodkey 213, 222)

As we can see in this fragment, the chacal takes pleasure in exhibiting his body, when he takes off his shirt or wears tight underwear, when just smoking a simple cigarette provokes an exhorting and powerful desire to have this man in your arms. There is an inner beauty in our eyes difficult to describe, and the single presence of his sweat will be enough for erotic catharsis. Hence in Ninos look, masculine and angrily astute, there exists a romantic coincidence: Nino is romantic, rock bottom, as sexuality manifest constantly. Sometimes the personality of Nino can be defined as a killing innocence. He often feels invisible. Not real at all:

My innocence is a lure for someone who steals, abstracts, sucks out the reality of my being innocent. He uses people usefully. My innocence is a dare for someone corrupt this is a particularly Italian matter. Curiosity moves him [] If he were entirely ruthless, it would not be possible to know him. (Brodkey 156)

This innocence will be a burden for Ninos life during the love-process that he will suffer because of Onnis behavior. This innocent weakness will be the primary force of Onnis strength, as ignorance for a young man like Nino, like total darkness. In the novel there is a moment when Onni and Nino begin to share their female partners, but this only brings more misgivings to Nino about whether he is doing what he yearns for or just because of the mere risk on their physical integrity, as he explains in the following paragraph of the
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novel:

Here is an example: he unfastens my pants and he peels down my underpants in a darkened calle. I am bored but responsiveI am larger genitally than he is and he is playing a practical joke on me largely by being the aggressor toward my reluctance and he is using, of course, my susceptibility to flattery. This, too, is lovely; it has a beauty; but I say Stupid, this is stupid [] Jacking off, he comes quickly. Except for flicker of sightlessness, he watches me as he comes. Now that is a special thing: that sense of feelings and the slight sourness of the trickery dominanceand the isolationThere were too many feelingsand not enough. (Brodkey 195)

At this point it is clear that Onnis chacal attitude attempts to tie up a male bonding and friendship, but excluding all kinds of forms and gender categories of love and sexual interest between men. Later on, Nino realizes that Onni sees him in a different way, nothing related to love. He gets sick of Onnis behavior as he goes in an easy-going manner. He does not see him beside him, he will never be by his side, in that impersonal and universal way that Onni visualizes himself, his own rights, his Christian soul25 and sexuality as well:

Confession, with redemption possible: a love story. Well, I was refusing love. I often have, it seemsI am very odd sort of romantic. Of course you go on a feeling but not in the same way. Its mixed up with rage and contempt, impatience, with refusal: you compress the feeling, dilute it to balance the compression [] We are friends he says, a little falsely, a little truly. He cant let me go easily but he has driven me away. I also know that if I tried to go on his manner, when he turned and engaged with the situation and was truly present, I would not be able to manage it any more short of horror [] I did hate him (Brodkey 317)

25There is a dispute were they start talking about religion and how Onnis attitudes are not considered bestial but an

elegant dog. He is not quite sure of what religion to follow, but he infers that he had a God who does not have a name either. (Brodkey 305)

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When love fails to manage the attitude or even fails to try and change the arrogance of one person, it can become a psychological and metaphorical demon for the rest of your life and that is what Nino was experimenting. According to the previous statement, we can see that the word profane comes when friendship is unable to deal with the fragile necessity of bullying around everything and the meaningless horror to fail in everything you do. According to the Oxford Dictionary the term Profane26 refers to a person or a behavior that is not respectful; irreverent; disrespectful. So is the chacals attitude of Onni the reason for a Profane Friendship? Can friendship make you a negative person? Can it kill you? Well, it is clear that Onnis arrogance is the liberation for a series of events that, sooner or later, will affect Ninos life, but also contribute to it. It is unknown the degree of harm that we are doing to our own lives, sharing drugs, sharing information about fucking, sharing political attitudes or creating a love bond between us and another person. Then we can deduce that a friendship becomes profane when there is a mixture or combination of love feelings. Love is felt simply as a range of possibilities of companionships and duties, a variation of having balls, or mere courage. As Brodkey says, Onnis courage was part of the act of creation of the moment (161). Henceforth, we can deduce that a love-companion is pure happiness, but happiness is strange, as is friendship. By this I mean, Nino perceives this courage or power because it is beyond his imagination, because of Onnis unsafe beauty Onni and because of the flow of eroticism they display; that fluid makes everything possible. Onni affirms that happiness is very unusual, as happiness is seen as a different emotional response to different people. Onnis vanity means that his will, not just from words, but the will itself, as well as his yearning, is the product of the sense of reason. He was unable to take advice. Therefore, thinking about success, love, drugs, would be his escape from the plain world he was living in. The chacal attitude of Onnis is the seduction from that immature
26 Oxford Dictionaries. Web. (2013) 14 April, 2013. <http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/profane>

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fragility to permit any pleasure. As Onni affirms Venice! My body, my mind and spirit veer in this mornings fever of remembering (322)that is a chacal, just a mere instance of pleasure. That multi-orgasmic, allegorically-speaking, sentimental melodrama.

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CONCLUSION
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. Friedrich Nietzsche

My first encounter with homoerotic novels was through Haruki Murakami with his masterpiece Sputnik Sweetheart. At that time I had the opportunity to read some other titles related to eroticism and homoeroticism as was the case of Temporada de Caza Para el Len Negro by Tryno Maldonado and Memoria de mis putas tristes by Gabriel Garca Mrquez. Both of the novels were very similar: incarnation of love, lust and excitation is in every single paragraph of these writings. After that, I started to read some articles related to the topic in The New Yorker and The New York Times. Suddenly, I took a glimpse at something that called my attention: an author was talking about the work of a superb writer but little known, named Harold Brodkey. I read a bibliographical article and a review of his work, and I was immediately taken by the tough and tender way he wrote, so full of passion. I admit that homosexual and homoerotic novels, poetry and essays have always attracted me, as they make you experience life and love through literature in a kind-hearted but merciless way. Homoerotic literature, since XV century, has sometimes been conceived and considered utopian and metaphorical beyond your own imagination and realistic matters. Hence I wanted to focus my work on this author, who I think deserves enormous attention because of his courage to face his struggle against AIDS and because he never gave up publishing his novels. But his work also points at a scarcely known feature: homoeroticism, thus trying to portray a scarcely known type of character that culturally has been gradually enhancing our lexicon: the chacal. As has been mentioned in Chapter 1, the history of literature shows a significant spreading of American writing in the XX century after World War II. This postwar was the
41

perfect moment to set up trends in writing, as most of the writers reflected about the different conditions they were living and feeling: sexuality, drugs, alcohol, society, decay, obscenity, etc. Somehow, eroticism and homoeroticism have always been present in literature in renowned authors such as William Shakespeare or Marquis de Sade, and other contemporary writers such as Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence, George Bataille, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Faulkner as well as erotic and homoerotic literature. This homoerotic literature has been gaining more popularity, as the development of the cultural and social masses are becoming more interested in these new contexts. When we start writing or reading about new ways of expressing love, new emotional pathways open in order to explore other angles, viewpoints and/or perspective about ourselves, as people and society. Besides all the reading I have done up to this point, I must say that when regarding Profane Friendship (beyond the various topics that can be taken into account), my first thought was that I was reading not the typical love story but a different understanding and idea of what can be seen as a common friendship. Most of us would think that this bond (love) exists only in the mutual affection between two or more people, but in the novel it is more than that: it is a suffocating and passionate, sometimes occasional, alliance. This alliance, conceives the inconstant feelings of the characters, as they are the center of all types of misunderstandings, resentments, suffering, and sensitivity between the main protagonists of the novel: Onni and Nino. The novel is a free-structured epistolary novel where Niles OHara (Nino), the son of an expatriate American novelist, interprets and tells the story from the bottom of his heart about the epical and carnal, complex on-again, off-again affair that he has with Giangiacomo Gallieni (Onni), his childhood friend, who now has become an adolescent. It is, indeed, a profane friendship as it is a remarkable description of a penetrating, agonizing and

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enduring relationship. Yet, Brodkey also knows how to capture the comic, romantic and ironic evocation of the exploration of human mindsets and passions. The way that Brodkey plays with decay and the behavior of Onni alludes to a human half-monster who does not care about life, not even his own. Omnipotence is a clear factor for all these series of mischievous events, as he believes that there is no infinite or divine authority that can stop him while Nino is by his side. Onni will try to seduce Nino in every opportunity to accomplish and fulfill his selfish sexual and sometimes emotional needs. He does not care about love, life or even Ninos friendship. But Nino will not realize this until he confronts his actions and the suffering and a certain wickedness brought forth by Onni, who will corrupt this ephemeral pact created between them. Along the narration there are several factors that induce Nino to do certain unimaginative actions, such as copulate with women without having any interest, just to receive a little attention, love or mere pleasure from his blood-friend Onni. The main purpose of the present work was to identify, attempt and disclose in Profane Friendship how homoeroticism can be used as a camouflage sexual phenomenon in favor of transferring forms or practices that are less sexually explicit. It is more than a misconception of a homosexual context, and within this fictional line, we can deduce how the homoerotic figure of the chacal fits perfectly into the novel (it is a different cultural and literary context though) to somehow capitalize the excitements, passions and actions that Onni displays. Onni is the type of guy who had faith in the power systems and vanity of the real world, careless of disgrace. He used to believe in himself, in the flattery, in the unashamed adulation, in complicity, in the willpower, in deceit, even in the unskillfulness of the others. The nemesis of Nino. The idea of proposing homoeroticism and to infer that the antagonist Onni can be seen and defined as a chacal is not different to the times we are facing (related to the fact that

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homoeroticism expressive and literary forms have widely spread). It sheds light over Harold Brodkeys Profane Friendship, and how this figure influences his writing, life and actions. The idea of categorizing Onni as a chacal points to some of the most relevant erotic aspects of masculinity. The male body, as it is seen as an archetype, has increasingly become an object of admiration, sexual desire and adoration. I think the center of this paper is the role of the chacal for a homoerotic relationship, independently of the social and cultural context of the characters,. Even though Profane Friendship is a contemporary American novel, I tried to associate both concepts, in some way different, but to a certain point socially intimate. I actually think there is still very much to write, read, research, do and say about homoeroticism and its relation to the figure of the chacal presented here, but I really hope to have made the point that homoeroticism can be studied, and that the notion of the chacal is erotically exploitable. To conclude, I would like to express that this research helped me improve my reading, writing, thinking, among other skills. The elaboration of this process has been a great experience as I see much of me in Brodkeys beliefs: the strength that moves him and makes him go against the circumstances to reach what he desires. Mostly, Brodkeys novels were not generously received by reviewers and in his private life he was exhausted and devastated. The great Harold Brodkey created in me a new person capable of interpreting and constructing my own idiosyncrasy and gave me the power to be braver in real life.

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