An Enigmatic Record of Queer Survival
George Whitmore '68 published his novel Nebraska in 1987, two years before his own death from AIDS-related complications. Hailed as a landmark piece of gay literature, The Nation offered a refreshed review of the novel as its fortieth anniversary nears.
Reports The Nation:
"The writer George Whitmore grew up in Denver and spent his adult years in New York City, but he was fluent in the alienated poetry of regions like Nebraska. As a gay man who came of age in the 1950s and ’60s, he likely empathized with such marginal territories and the searchers who staked a claim there. In the winter of 1987, he published his third (and final) novel, Nebraska. It was slim, at just over 150 pages, and diverged sharply from the two satires of queer urbanism that had preceded it. The cover—featuring an illustration of a drab outbuilding bisected by utility poles—promised a work of rural naturalism: a simpler Wright Morris, a gentler James Purdy. Instead, Nebraska plays out with the closeness of a family chamber drama, even as it doubles as an oblique allegory of AIDS."