#Corey my man I am still gonna watch ur show tho. Cuz I’m gay

[shojoboy]

Reading & enjoying Surrender On Demand is making me even more suspicious of the “fictionalized” novel by Julie Orringer. I don’t want to completely disregard historical novels fictionalizing real people, I’m sure there’s some good ones, but….when you have The Actual Guy’s comprehensive autobiography as a source material, and it’s also very entertaining with great characterizations of all the people he worked with….why write a novel about him? Like I get it when you have mysterious blanks to fill in…but not when the real story is so well documented! What did she think she had to add that was more valuable or interesting than Varian Fry’s own ACTUAL THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS?

I also feel uncomfortable with the whole “cishet woman rewrites a closeted gay man’s life story and gives him a fictional boy crush” thing. Like idc that she’s writing abt him being gay, I think it is nice to acknowledge that….but fully making up this relationship and imagining how he felt about something he was very, very private about…it feels like overstepping a boundary that she maybe shouldn’t.

It also feels different than if she had written a fictionalized version of a very iconic historical figure, like Joan of Arc….because figures like Joan are so iconic, well known and portrayed often, it’s very easy to recognize and accept that a fictional Joan is just that, fictional. But most people today don’t know who Varian Fry is. When you fictionalize a person like that, you run the risk of having your fake version be the only one people know - overtaking and erasing the real Fry and his real words and story.

IDK. I might be too harsh considering I haven’t read the novel but. I gotta say I still have no interest in it. When it comes to history where there’s available source documents, and actual historians compiling them, I’m perfectly satisfied with sticking to those.