The following interview with Nicolas Shumway took place on December 31, 2023. The interviewer is Dale Rice. Rice spent thirty-five years as a professional journalist, including work as an education writer, lifestyle editor, city hall reporter, state capital bureau chief, business editor, restaurant food critic, and lifestyle editor. He currently teaches journalism at Texas A&M University.
NS Dale, I’m flattered by your interest in my novel and look forward to this interview. Where do we start?
DR I'd like to start out with a general question. Since books are categorized in so many different ways how would you categorize your book?
NS It is a novel, but it is a novel framed as the memoir of a seventy-something gay man named Joshua Chastain. In the opening scene, Joshua is diagnosed with incurable cancer but with the possibility of several more years of life given proper treatment. Encouraged by a close friend who is fascinated by Joshua’s Mormon background, Joshua decides to write the story of his coming out and coming of age. In some sense, the novel has two leading characters—Josh the teenager and Josh the older man who wants to connect with the young man he used to be. The book ends with an epilogue in which the voice of the older man returns. In recalling his younger years, “old Josh” develops considerable fondness for young Josh. He ends these ruminations by saying “If I met the young Josh today, I might find him arrogant and a little full of himself. But I think I would like him and hope that he would like me.”
DR Whenever anyone sees something in the form of a memoir, one of the questions that pops into their mind is, well, how much of this is reflective of the author's life? How much of it is totally fiction?
NS The novel is most certainly not my autobiography. Nonetheless, it includes episodes and characters drawn from my experiences and from the experiences of other gay Mormons and ex-Mormons whom I have known. And of course much of it is simply made up. For those reasons I call it a novelized memoir because that’s what it is: a novel written as though it were a memoir.
DR I think a lot of times, both in memoir and novel, the readers look for the message that the author is sending. In this case, are you trying to send a message to your readers?
NS No. It definitely is not intended to be a book with a message. What inspired the book was my interest in the main character. Understanding both old Josh and young Josh is what propels the story. There is no message as such. Rather, it is the story of one young man’s experiences and the decisions he makes regarding his sexuality, his religion, his family, and his community. Of course, I suspect that anyone who grows up in a conservative religious environment, regardless of their particular tradition, will relate to Josh’s story. And Josh’s story might also be informative to people who do not have a religious background. But what guides the novel is Josh’s story. I’m not trying to send a message.
DR The book includes several sexual encounters that some readers might find controversial, such as a teenager having sex and actually developing intimate relationships with older men. How do you address that potential controversy?
NS With fears of being seriously misread. In his early teens, Joshua, like many pubescent males, regularly masturbates with some of his male classmates. His first full-fledged sexual experience, however, occurs when he is fifteen years old. His partner is a nineteen-year-old music student at Arizona State University who has offered to give Josh organ lessons. They develop a year-long friendship that includes both organ instruction and sex. After their first encounter, Josh is amazed that he feels no guilt. Rather, he is overwhelmed by gratitude for having met someone like him, a lovely man whom he met because of his attraction to other men. Later in life, as he learns to accept and rejoice in his sexuality, it helps him to remember that his reaction to this first complete sexual experience with another man was one of gratitude and not guilt. More controversial, perhaps, is his short but romantically powerful involvement with a twenty-something Roman Catholic priest. Given the ongoing scandal of clergymen who prey on the young, his relationship with the priest is potentially one of the most controversial episodes in the novel despite the fact that Josh, sixteen years old at the time, pursues the priest much more than the priest pursues him. His affair with the priest becomes a rich friendship that paradoxically includes both sex and discussions about religion. As with his organ teacher, Josh feels nothing but gratitude for this friendship. He never sees himself as a victim. Of course, readers can extrapolate whatever they want from Josh’s experiences, but no one should see them as a defense of adult predators.
DR Even though you said that this isn't a message novel, I can’t help but see the novel as something of an exemplary tale. It tells the story of a young man who feels like an outsider, experiences bouts of depression, and even considers suicide. Nonetheless, he eventually finds ways to accept himself and live a productive, authentic, and satisfying life. Am I totally wrong?
NS Some might see Josh’s story as an exemplary tale simply because it portrays a young gay Mormon who emerges emotionally and religiously intact despite religious abuse and ex-gay therapy. But my primary goal was simply to tell the story of an intriguing character.
DR Are you concerned that some readers might be put off by the religious themes in the novel?
NS Religion is a funny business. For some people, people like me for example, religion guides many of their life choices. In contrast, other people see religion with indifference or annoyance. I hope readers in this latter group will realize that religion is an essential element of Josh’s character. He can be understood only by considering the substance and intensity of his religious feelings and the ways in which these change over the course of the novel. His challenge is to remain a person of faith while learning to accept and rejoice in the life God gave him, of which his sexuality is a major part. Partly because of his mother’s intense religiosity, Josh knows a great deal about Mormon doctrine and history, including the LDS Church’s cruel teachings about homosexuality. Bear in mind that the LDS Church has a particularly ugly history regarding queer people. And never was it uglier than in the 1960s and 1970s when Josh comes of age. Wikipedia has an excellent article documenting the history of the LDS Church’s abuse of homosexuals. Although Josh grapples with church homophobia within a Mormon context, gay people from other conservative religious traditions will undoubtedly resonate with his story. Conservative churches, with varying degrees of subtlety, communicate that a gay life is not worth living. As a result, large numbers of formerly religious gay people throw their lives away through substance abuse, unsafe sex, and suicide. Part of Josh’s salvation, to use a religious term, is his successful move from one kind of religion to another.
DR Let's switch gears for a minute and talk about writing. You have built an incredibly successful career in academic writing. So what was it like to tackle a work of fiction?
NS Telling Josh’s story was one of the most fascinating and intellectually engaging experiences of my life. As a literature teacher, I was always concerned with what authors do, which means that I was on the outside looking in. The experience of telling Josh’s story reversed this process since I was writing something for outsiders to look at. What most surprised me was how real Josh became to me, to such a degree that at times I felt that he was leading me as much as I was imagining him. He acquired a personality, and as an author I had to be attentive to the internal logic of that personality and his circumstances. What experiences might explain who he is? What was it like to be a gay teenager embedded in Mormon society during the 1960s and early 1970s? What was ex-gay therapy like for him? What kinds of people does he encounter? How does he understand his life, his religion, his sexuality, and his affections? Throughout this process, I was in dialogue with my character, and it often seemed that my character was telling me what to do.
DR How about the other characters in the book?
NS There are all kinds. I'll start with the bad ones. Josh is molested by an older man when he is five years old. He later manages to fight off other potential rapists, one of whom is his scoutmaster. He endures the toxic ministrations of a Mormon therapist who tries to cure him. For a few weeks, he lives with a deeply conflicted, semi-closeted Vietnam vet who can be both loving and abusive. And for a while he supports himself as a prostitute. So there are nasty people and nasty moments in the book. But there are also kind people, including some of his Mormon Sunday-School teachers and his piano teacher. A particularly important character is the local librarian, now widowed, who tells Josh what it had been like for her to have a gay husband. While Josh has a fraught relationship with his mother, his father tries to understand him and never ceases to love him. At the end of the book, in the epilogue, the older man reflecting on his life, comments on the fact that throughout his life he has been supported by a number of saintly people to whom he owes a great deal. His saints, so to speak.
DR When you were at work on an academic topic, whether it was an article or a book, you probably had a clear audience for that work in mind. And then when you shift to fiction and you begin thinking, okay, stylistically, how do I deal with this? What did you think about your audience?
NS I would first note that one’s audience might be a surprise. I wrote my first book on Argentina for a North American academic audience. Much to my amazement, it has gained a huge audience in Argentina and was just reissued to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of its first edition in Spanish. Of course, you are right; writers often wonder who will read their work. I suspect that readers of my novel will largely be Mormons, particularly gay Mormons, or friends and families of gay Mormons. But I also think the novel will draw gay people who have grown up in other religious traditions since LDS teachings regarding queer people are virtually identical to what other conservative churches teach. I also hope the book will appeal to people, gay or straight, who are simply interested in a good coming-out and coming-of-age story about a unique and fascinating individual.