In A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture, Will Fellows explores the connection between gay men and the inclination to rescue, restore, and preserve. Fellows examines this part of gay men's lives through profiles of early and contemporary preservationists throughout the country. In doing so, he discovers that these restorers share several common traits, including romanticism and domophilia, a term the author coined to describe a love of domesticity.
Windy City Times: What inspired you to write this book?
Will Fellows: It was an outgrowth of my first book, Farm Boys, where I collected life stories of gay men who grew up in farm families. I was struck by the significant number of men who were involved in family and local history as well as house restoration. I became intrigued because I saw this inclination as an interesting window to certain aspects of gay men's lives that extended beyond sexual orientation. So I did this book to take a more thoughtful look at other facets of gay men's lives.
WCT: Is that part of the reason that you distinguish 'gay' from 'homosexual' in this book?
WF: Yes. I made that distinction because I found that problems arise when you try to attach the label 'gay' to someone who lived long ago. The question that is asked then is 'How do you know about that person's sexual orientation?' So it occurred to me that I should make a distinction there. This book isn't about people's sex lives; there are larger, more intricate patterns that we can observe presently and that we can apply the gay label to those who fit those same patterns. These traits can be psychological, emotional, vocational, or avocational. However, I do believe that most ( if not all ) of these men were same sex-oriented.
WCT: You listed traits that preservationists share, including domophilia—which almost sounds illegal. [ Fellows laughs. ] Could you describe them?
WF: What I really wanted to do by presenting these traits was to give the reader a field guide of sorts [ regarding ] the preservationists. Domophilia is a term I came up with. One thing I noticed about these men was a love of the home—a love of things domestic. There wasn't a word that described this, so 'domophilia' seemed like a legitimate term. A cultural geographer I read came up with 'topophilia' to describe a love of a particular landscape—so domophilia seemed right.
Related to domophilia is aestheticism—a strong, artistic inclination. This trait, like domophilia, seemed to emerge in these men when they were children. In some cases, their artistic talent was encouraged; in others, it was repressed or discouraged, but emerged later.
Another recurring trait is connection- and continuity-mindedness. This refers to a desire to know where you came from. Sometimes this involves just wanting to be part of a multigenerational flow—and it's not necessarily related to relatives. It can happen if someone is totally new to a community and has no connection besides the house; he may try to find out who previous occupants were, for example.
The fourth theme is romanticism. By that, I mean an emotional, imaginative relationship to the past. It's kind of the affective thing that drives the other traits.
The last trait is gender atypicality. It's an overarching [ characteristic ] that explains the other four. By gender atypicality, I mean that this penchant for restoring is formed by a blend of feminine and masculine sensibilities and traits. It was apparent from childhood in the men I talked with—often with their connections with grandmothers or other older females. There was this sensibility that led to a sharing of history. An article I recently read talked about the attraction that many gay men have to the TV series The Golden Girls. Betty White talked about how the show appealed to gay men because the women were like surrogate grandmothers—and I think that she's on the mark there.
I don't pretend to have a global understanding of these traits. Someone may come up with something else, but these were the ones that jumped out at me as being significant.
One reason I presented these themes is because people often would say to me that gay men preserve homes either because they have more money or because they don't have kids. However, a lot of the men I interviewed lived financially marginal lives to do what they do. Also, if childlessness drove them, you'd expect any childless individual or couple to do this.
WCT: How did you find these preservationists?
WF: It was a mixture of avenues. One of the first things I did was contact various gay men I knew and asked them to pass the information along. I also attended a national preservation conference because I wanted the book to have a national scope; that was a wonderful opportunity to meet gay men. I also went to other events, such as workshops that [ dealt with ] preservation. The other significant thing I did was go through magazines like Preservation, Old House Journal, and Old House Interiors; there are almost invariably a gay individual or couple that's featured there.
WCT: You divide the men and their projects into geographic areas.
WF: I was most energized when I worked on the chapter about New Orleans. Of course, there are gay men there—but why I was gratified was that I managed to get access to biographical material on long-dead people from gay preservationists. I was able to put together a [ long ] lineage, starting with the early 1900s to the present. There are also some very colorful characters there.
The other chapter that is the most personally meaningful for me is the one on Cooksville, Wisc.; it's not far from where I grew up. Again, I was able to put together a long chronology of gay preservationists in a community that currently has fewer than 200 residents. Here, you had gay men who knew each other and interacted with each other.
WCT: It was nice to see Chicago mentioned in the book.
WF: Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do as much on each city as I wanted. For example, there's a very rich history of gay contribution to urban revitalization in Chicago. The wonderful person I mentioned in connection with Chicago, Richard Nickel, was an amazing preservationist pioneer. He was a devotee of Louis Sullivan, who had a lot of buildings in Chicago. He [ ultimately ] worked with other people to try to stop the demolition of the Sullivan buildings.
The most important thing for me [ for people to get from the book ] is that there is more to being gay than simply sexual orientation. That's a significant thing for some people; however, I don't want people to fall victim to the line that the only thing that separates gay and straight people is who they sleep with. In many respects, that's the least remarkable difference between them.
Will Fellows will appear Jan. 20 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Randolph, at 12:15 and at Ann Sather Restaurant, 929 W. Belmont, at 6:30 p.m.
