JD is unusual in the panoply of gay literature.
That is Mark Merlis' doing. It is not only the devices he employs to tell his story centered around Jonathon Ascher, a long-forgotten but once-relevant cultural hero—it is the narrative itself.
Martha, Ascher's long-surviving widow, is asked permission to open her husband's archives for a professor interested in telling Ascher's biography. What ensues is the story of a non-traditional U.S. family in the 1960s told by the remains of Ascher's journal and the memories of widow in dialogue with one another. Merlis told Windy City Times that he loosely based Ascher on the real-life poet and prose artist Paul Goodman, who was prominent in the 1950s and 1960s.
Merlis spoke about the use of the journal as a mechanism for Ascher's distinctive voice. He said, "The journal allows him to be more frank, not only with the reader but with his wife, Martha, who is actually reading these you see. The dialogue develops then between Ascher's journals and Martha over 40 years later."
Adding to the dynamic of Ascher and his wife is their son, Mickey. Merlis added, "There is a tension between Martha and her husband that is always present; whether they are to raise him in a 'normal' way or whether they are going to bring him up with a belief in their abstract principles of the '60s."
One of the overwhelming themes of JD is redemption. Martha spends a great deal of time making sure that she does not allow Ascher to taker her through the journals and dead like he did when he was alive.
JD also exposes one common experience for gay men of a certain age during the pre-Stonewall Era. Ascher ( who is nearly 60 ) is, in the mid-'60s, is very clearly a self-hating gay man, and it informs his life in every way. At every party and in every social interaction, Ascher's self-loathing permeates the book, as if Merlis soaked the manuscript in it beforehand. He is not a likable character.
Merlis responded to that, saying, "I am not asking the reader to be his roommate. This is not the kind of novel where the reader is presented with protagonists and antagonists who they are supposed to like or cheer for all of the time. I take my cues from Tolstoy or Elliot in writing maybe deeper characters. We need to see to the heart of people, perhaps even though we would hate or despise. Even from people like this we can learn from."
JD is an acronym for "juvenile delinquent," and is the title of Jonathon Ascher's magnum opus that made him briefly famous. Merlis described it as a "manifesto of sorts," adding, "JD was a non-fiction book. It was meant to resemble Growing Up Absurd."
It is meant to be a guidebook for growing -up to become one's own man and one's own person in a world where that is becoming increasingly impossible to do, Merlis said. Of course, JD is not the only piece of writing that Ascher produces in his lifetime. There is also a collection of poems that is mentioned. It is in that collection of poems that Ascher's homosexuality is ultimately revealed to the public. JD takes many twists and turns—some very unexpected. The book is a small cross-section of LGBT life during a tumultuous time in American history.
Merlis admitted that the book was only autobiographical in the sense that "all fiction is somewhat autobiographical. Some things I experienced first hand others are very clearly a part of my imagination." He also admitted, "JD is cathartic in the way that all books you write are, but you aren't really sure how until you actually write it."
Merlis grew up on the East Coast, spending most of his childhood and teen years in and around Baltimore. "Even in JD I set part of the book in Baltimore for this reason. It's part of me," he said. Merlis also said that he knew he was gay but definitely did not want to be gay. "We had no gay role models," he said. "There was a famous documentary made in the '60s showing the homosexual as this sick and shadowy figure. Who wanted to be that man?"
He began writing as a teen and never really stopped, saying, "I have novels and writing from that time. Of course, that early work is in a drawer and will never see the light of day." Merlis, when posed with the question of when he came out, answered in a way reflecting both his own personal history and his background in American studies: "Coming out did not mean coming out as a homosexual to straight people. It meant coming out to other gay men. It meant being introduced to the homosexual social network and admitting to other gay men that you too were like them. It was a play on the popularity of society 'coming out balls' for young women and their cotillions."
Merlis never actually answered when he finally came out but—given that he admitted to "putting his toe in the water" at one point in his life followed by shedding the "last resistance to a normal life"—one can only assume that Merlis, unlike the protagonist in JD, came to healthy terms with his sexuality. One can only hope that this will mean more groundbreaking work from Merlis introducing a new generation of both LGBT society and its heterosexual counterparts to the ever-expanding and complex history of the struggle for gay and lesbian equality.
