More Than Shakespeare Slash: Q&A With Author Myrlin Hermes

Popshifter: What’s your perspective on more sexy or romantic reinterpretations of classic tales of platonic “bromance”? Do you see that becoming something more widespread and mainstream in the future? What do you think about “slash”?

Myrlin Hermes: Well, I think subtext and homosexuality are linked; throughout most of our culture’s history, all homosexual activity had to take place “under the radar,” on pain of imprisonment or even death. So you have things like the underground Molly-house clubs of 18th century London, or the elaborate “handkerchief code”—or even Larry Craig’s “wide stance” and toe-tapping—all ways of telegraphing one’s true desires through subtle signs, while maintaining deniability to outsiders.

“Slash” is about reading a gay subtext in a relationship that is presented on the surface as being an emotionally intimate, but non-sexual, friendship. But that’s exactly how gay relationships would have been presented as to an outside observer. I mean, homosexuality wasn’t invented by Oscar Wilde—someone must have been gay, even if they were under great pains to hide it.

So now we’re beginning to re-examine our assumptions about a lot of these “passionate friendships” in history—such as Emily Dickinson’s relationship with Susan Gilbert, or Abraham Lincoln’s with Joshua Speed—and consider that they may have in fact been romantic and sexual partnerships. And I think at least considering the possibility of homosexuality in fictional characters that have been presumed to be straight opens up new readings that may illuminate the work in unexpected ways.

But I also hope that we will begin to see more openly gay relationships and characters presented in fiction; and I suspect that as homosexuality becomes less taboo in our society and is no longer relegated to subtext and innuendo, so too will the suspicion that an overt “bromance” is hiding a secret romance between the lines. When that love dares to speak its name out loud, people won’t have to strain to hear it.

Author Myrlin A. Hermes

Popshifter: What was the hardest part or greatest challenge in writing Lunatic?

Myrlin Hermes: I think the hardest part was figuring out exactly what genre this book wanted to be. It’s historical, but not a “historical novel” in the traditional sense, where presenting a literal, accurate portrait of another time and place is at the forefront. It’s more playful than that, with its intertextual references and little meta winks at the reader. It’s a question, more than anything, of finding the right narrative voice.

Popshifter: What future projects do you have planned?

Myrlin Hermes: I’m currently working on a novel about Aphra Behn, the first woman in England to earn a living as a writer. And she was a fascinating character as well; born working-class, to a barber and a wetnurse, she was able to educate herself to become a spy, travel to South America and Continental Europe, and end up as a working writer, publishing poems and romances, and producing plays for the London stage. This was during the Restoration, when women were first allowed to act on stage; before then, it had been boys playing women’s roles, and then for several years under Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans there was no theater at all, or what was, was illegal and underground.

When Charles II was restored to the throne—bringing with him all the French fashions and habits he had picked up during his years in exile—it was a cultural revolution, like the 1960s, only on an even vaster scale. But in many ways, it was much like today: there was this new exciting drug, coffee, and coffeehouses sprung up everywhere, where people could go and read all the little broadsheets and newsletters made possible by innovations in the technology of the printing press. I think of that today when I see everyone sitting at the Starbucks with their laptops, reading blogs.

Popshifter: Tell me a random fun fact about yourself.

Myrlin Hermes: I used to work as an entertainer for children’s birthday parties, and I can make over one hundred different balloon animals! Actually, that’s a lie—I never counted—but I can make a lot. Dogs, cats, horses, pigs, monkeys, motorcycles, lions, tigers, bears—even the Starship Enterprise!

The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet was released in Feburary 2010 by Harper Perennial. For more on the novel, please visit Ms. Hermes’ website. Watch the book trailer here.

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