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A review by millennial_dandy
The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
5.0
Even within reviews of 'The Persian Boy' there seems to be no consensus of just what it is. Ostensibly, this is queer historical fiction, but it's not really 'our voices' (despite Mary Renault herself being a queer woman who was an active albeit controversial member of the South African queer community), so does it really belong in the queer literary canon? Those that think not have dismissed it as prototypical slash-fiction despite the acknowledgement that she was a respected amateur classicist and, by their admission, a talented writer (this of course raises the question of just where the line is between 'slash' and 'literature' when it comes to women writing mlm stories).
The 'slash' accusation seems to stem from the fact that our protagonist, Bagoas, was first a sex slave of King Darius and then a lover of Alexander's, whom he obviously idolizes in Renault's telling of his story. Personally, I don't feel that this interpretation can come of a good faith reading of the text, nor am I comfortable dismissing something as a lonely woman's sexy fantasy on the grounds that the protagonist is a sex worker; that interpretation rather misses the point.
Indeed, I think Renault handles Bagoas's story with an immense amount of care. She did not gloss over how he came to be gelded and sold into sex slavery as a child or any of the abuses he suffered as he was passed around, but she didn't dwell on it either, letting it form the background of the tapestry of his character. His entire outlook and sense of self is shaped by that abuse in a way we the reader can easily understand and which he lacks the introspection to see in himself.
"I offered him no art that night, or no more than had become my nature," (375) he says of one of his last nights with Alexander.
This inability for Bagoas to separate himself from the training he was subjected to is in and of itself, tragic. He is taught that he's only a 'sexy lampshade'--able to observe the goings on of the men he serves, to recognize their subtle wants, reduced to living through them because he has been robbed of agency and even, to a degree, the ability to have an inner world of his own that extends beyond thoughts of those he belongs to. Even his jealousy of Hephaestion is an extension of this.*
(*Side Note: let it not be said that Bagoas coming up with an elaborate scheme to poison Hephaestion and then realizing that's stupid on the very next page isn't the most accurate portrayal of the teenage thought process ever penned.)
Bagoas comments throughout the novel that Alexander could never turn away from love, but one has to wonder if that isn't projection. And that leads to one of the elements of the novel that makes it so interesting to think about: 'am I supposed to believe this?'
Bagoas presents himself as a reliable narrator simply documenting Alexander 'as he really was.' But even by his own admission, his recollections differ from other scholars'. He dismisses those other accounts as 'unfair' and 'incorrect', but it's enough to make one wonder. He also often qualifies many of his memories with 'I think' and 'I'm sure'; another clever way for Renault to cast reasonable doubt on his objectivity.
The real question is: does it matter? Some of Renault's contemporary critics accused her of romanticizing Alexander the Great in both 'The Persian Boy' and her non-fiction biography of him. I can't speak to the biography, but by making Bagoas our POV character in 'The Persian Boy' and making him and not Alexander the titular character, it seems safe to assume that it isn't meant to be objective. I have no doubt that the historical trappings were accurate of the cultures she describes and that the timeline of Alexander the Great's exploits as a leader and a warrior were accurate to knowledge of them at the time, but I didn't feel like I was meant to walk away with a clear or accurate understanding of who he was as a person or even how those he conquered felt about him; just who Bagoas (and by extension Renault) needed him to be.
This, naturally, raises the question: why did Renault need Alexander to be, essentially, a superhero?
'The Persian Boy's' Alexander the Great is indeed 'great' in every sense of the word; he's an unmatched soldier and military commander who wins over everyone in his path. Everyone, according to Bagoas, loves him, and those that don't are immediately revealed to be jealous or in some other way, wicked. Alexander is a generous friend and fair ruler who wants to be accepted by those he has conquered. He's curious about the world and wages war not because he enjoys being king of a sprawling empire (this being just a biproduct), but due to his own wanderlust. And of course, he's incredibly hot.
His singular flaw is that he's short. Alright, and I suppose his naivety and inevitable heartbreak when those he trusts betray him.
Why Bagoas needs a hero is obvious: after experiencing so much of the wickedness of men, getting one chance at freedom and finding himself incapable of surviving on his own, he needs Alexander to be a good person to reconcile choosing servitude. And by all accounts, Alexander is not cruel to him, and does on occasion confide in him. But they aren't really lovers and never will be. This, of course, not being Alexander's fault, but Hephaestion's for having gotten to him first (as Bagoas sees it).
In other words: this is more an exploration of the parasocial fan/celebrity relationship than it is anything else, and Renault does an excellent job humanizing those (especially teenagers) who use idolatry as a coping mechanism; something that is often brushed aside as silly. But is it really so silly to pretend that there are heroes in a world where we're seemingly so often bombarded with villains? I'll leave that to the book clubs to parse out.
As to Renault herself, we can't really know what prompted her to slant the story this way as we were in Bagoas's head, not hers. However, if we allow ourselves to enter the realm of indulgent speculation, and we consider the state of queer rights at the time Renault was writing, it's not so hard to imagine that she and the community at large were hungry for a hero.
The gay rights movement was just kicking off when 'The Persian Boy' was published in 1972 and prior to that, and certainly during the span of her writing career (1930s- 1970s), being queer was very, very often vilified both in fiction and in reality. There were no publicly queer people in positions of power, and even in the few positive fictional portrayals, queerness was always framed as a tragedy, something isolating, something that dominated a person's life, became their defining feature.
And so, I can imagine the catharsis of reaching back in time to (to my knowledge) an undisputedly queer historical figure who was everything society said a queer person could not be: a warrior, a military leader, someone at the center of history rather than its periphery. Here was someone who could go toe-to-toe with every bully, every gay basher, every homophobic Bible thumper. Someone whose army could break the chains of oppression. Someone who didn't have to be relegated to 'Alexander the Queer.'
Now, in the year of our lord 2021, a lot of us in the vaguely defined 'West' are lucky. Perhaps we're even moving beyond the need for superheroes. But a lot of people in 1972 probably did need that. Hell, a lot of people still need that now.
Facts are important when we talk about history. So is nuance. And morally grey characters and all their complexities can reflect a more 'real' and arguably more interesting image of humanness than perfection can--even the Greeks understood that. But if you've only ever seen yourself portrayed as a villain, I reckon it's fair to at least get to see yourself as a hero.
So what is 'The Persian Boy' and who is it for? It's certainly not slash-fiction; as a connoisseur of that sub-genre I can assure you Renault's 'fade out as the bedroom door swings shut' method of writing sex scenes utterly precludes it. Is it part of the queer literary canon? Sure, why not. Mary Renault was a queer woman writing queer stories that were/are beloved by queer people. And for what it's worth, people at the time thought she was actually a gay man writing under a pseudonym.
Is it good historical fiction? The research is there, the attention to detail is there, the nuanced discussion of intercultural conflict and religion is there, there are language barriers that have to be overcome, everything appears to be in its geographical place, and people die left and right of fevers and exposure. There are one or two points that could be called 'mystical,' but considering the cultures we're talking about it all pretty well tracks to my lay-satisfaction.
If any of that interests you, if you, like Bonnie Tyler, find yourself holding out for a hero who's strong and fast and larger than life, give 'The Persian Boy' a read.
The 'slash' accusation seems to stem from the fact that our protagonist, Bagoas, was first a sex slave of King Darius and then a lover of Alexander's, whom he obviously idolizes in Renault's telling of his story. Personally, I don't feel that this interpretation can come of a good faith reading of the text, nor am I comfortable dismissing something as a lonely woman's sexy fantasy on the grounds that the protagonist is a sex worker; that interpretation rather misses the point.
Indeed, I think Renault handles Bagoas's story with an immense amount of care. She did not gloss over how he came to be gelded and sold into sex slavery as a child or any of the abuses he suffered as he was passed around, but she didn't dwell on it either, letting it form the background of the tapestry of his character. His entire outlook and sense of self is shaped by that abuse in a way we the reader can easily understand and which he lacks the introspection to see in himself.
"I offered him no art that night, or no more than had become my nature," (375) he says of one of his last nights with Alexander.
This inability for Bagoas to separate himself from the training he was subjected to is in and of itself, tragic. He is taught that he's only a 'sexy lampshade'--able to observe the goings on of the men he serves, to recognize their subtle wants, reduced to living through them because he has been robbed of agency and even, to a degree, the ability to have an inner world of his own that extends beyond thoughts of those he belongs to. Even his jealousy of Hephaestion is an extension of this.*
(*Side Note: let it not be said that Bagoas coming up with an elaborate scheme to poison Hephaestion and then realizing that's stupid on the very next page isn't the most accurate portrayal of the teenage thought process ever penned.)
Bagoas comments throughout the novel that Alexander could never turn away from love, but one has to wonder if that isn't projection. And that leads to one of the elements of the novel that makes it so interesting to think about: 'am I supposed to believe this?'
Bagoas presents himself as a reliable narrator simply documenting Alexander 'as he really was.' But even by his own admission, his recollections differ from other scholars'. He dismisses those other accounts as 'unfair' and 'incorrect', but it's enough to make one wonder. He also often qualifies many of his memories with 'I think' and 'I'm sure'; another clever way for Renault to cast reasonable doubt on his objectivity.
The real question is: does it matter? Some of Renault's contemporary critics accused her of romanticizing Alexander the Great in both 'The Persian Boy' and her non-fiction biography of him. I can't speak to the biography, but by making Bagoas our POV character in 'The Persian Boy' and making him and not Alexander the titular character, it seems safe to assume that it isn't meant to be objective. I have no doubt that the historical trappings were accurate of the cultures she describes and that the timeline of Alexander the Great's exploits as a leader and a warrior were accurate to knowledge of them at the time, but I didn't feel like I was meant to walk away with a clear or accurate understanding of who he was as a person or even how those he conquered felt about him; just who Bagoas (and by extension Renault) needed him to be.
This, naturally, raises the question: why did Renault need Alexander to be, essentially, a superhero?
'The Persian Boy's' Alexander the Great is indeed 'great' in every sense of the word; he's an unmatched soldier and military commander who wins over everyone in his path. Everyone, according to Bagoas, loves him, and those that don't are immediately revealed to be jealous or in some other way, wicked. Alexander is a generous friend and fair ruler who wants to be accepted by those he has conquered. He's curious about the world and wages war not because he enjoys being king of a sprawling empire (this being just a biproduct), but due to his own wanderlust. And of course, he's incredibly hot.
His singular flaw is that he's short. Alright, and I suppose his naivety and inevitable heartbreak when those he trusts betray him.
Why Bagoas needs a hero is obvious: after experiencing so much of the wickedness of men, getting one chance at freedom and finding himself incapable of surviving on his own, he needs Alexander to be a good person to reconcile choosing servitude. And by all accounts, Alexander is not cruel to him, and does on occasion confide in him. But they aren't really lovers and never will be. This, of course, not being Alexander's fault, but Hephaestion's for having gotten to him first (as Bagoas sees it).
In other words: this is more an exploration of the parasocial fan/celebrity relationship than it is anything else, and Renault does an excellent job humanizing those (especially teenagers) who use idolatry as a coping mechanism; something that is often brushed aside as silly. But is it really so silly to pretend that there are heroes in a world where we're seemingly so often bombarded with villains? I'll leave that to the book clubs to parse out.
As to Renault herself, we can't really know what prompted her to slant the story this way as we were in Bagoas's head, not hers. However, if we allow ourselves to enter the realm of indulgent speculation, and we consider the state of queer rights at the time Renault was writing, it's not so hard to imagine that she and the community at large were hungry for a hero.
The gay rights movement was just kicking off when 'The Persian Boy' was published in 1972 and prior to that, and certainly during the span of her writing career (1930s- 1970s), being queer was very, very often vilified both in fiction and in reality. There were no publicly queer people in positions of power, and even in the few positive fictional portrayals, queerness was always framed as a tragedy, something isolating, something that dominated a person's life, became their defining feature.
And so, I can imagine the catharsis of reaching back in time to (to my knowledge) an undisputedly queer historical figure who was everything society said a queer person could not be: a warrior, a military leader, someone at the center of history rather than its periphery. Here was someone who could go toe-to-toe with every bully, every gay basher, every homophobic Bible thumper. Someone whose army could break the chains of oppression. Someone who didn't have to be relegated to 'Alexander the Queer.'
Now, in the year of our lord 2021, a lot of us in the vaguely defined 'West' are lucky. Perhaps we're even moving beyond the need for superheroes. But a lot of people in 1972 probably did need that. Hell, a lot of people still need that now.
Facts are important when we talk about history. So is nuance. And morally grey characters and all their complexities can reflect a more 'real' and arguably more interesting image of humanness than perfection can--even the Greeks understood that. But if you've only ever seen yourself portrayed as a villain, I reckon it's fair to at least get to see yourself as a hero.
So what is 'The Persian Boy' and who is it for? It's certainly not slash-fiction; as a connoisseur of that sub-genre I can assure you Renault's 'fade out as the bedroom door swings shut' method of writing sex scenes utterly precludes it. Is it part of the queer literary canon? Sure, why not. Mary Renault was a queer woman writing queer stories that were/are beloved by queer people. And for what it's worth, people at the time thought she was actually a gay man writing under a pseudonym.
Is it good historical fiction? The research is there, the attention to detail is there, the nuanced discussion of intercultural conflict and religion is there, there are language barriers that have to be overcome, everything appears to be in its geographical place, and people die left and right of fevers and exposure. There are one or two points that could be called 'mystical,' but considering the cultures we're talking about it all pretty well tracks to my lay-satisfaction.
If any of that interests you, if you, like Bonnie Tyler, find yourself holding out for a hero who's strong and fast and larger than life, give 'The Persian Boy' a read.