Dec 01, 2006  |  By: Eve Tushnet  | COMMENTS     

Christopher Bram’s newest novel, “Exiles in America,” returns to some of the same ground covered by “Father of Frankenstein,” the author’s fictionalized look at the life of gay film director James Whale that was adapted for the screen as “Gods and Monsters” and starred gay actor Ian McKellen as Whale.

“Exiles” involves a gay artist’s ambivalent desire for a man who is perhaps less “straight” than he initially appears. Beyond that, though, “Exiles” pulls together questions of national identity, religious belief, family roles and artistic vocation: all the partial selves we try to reconcile.

“Exiles” opens when Iranian expatriate Abbas Rohani begins a stint as artist-in-residence at the college where frustrated painter Daniel Wexler teaches. Wexler shares an “open marriage” with psychoanalyst Zack Knowles, and Rohani and his wife Elena have an arrangement of their own, which is complicated by their two children. As the United States lurches toward war in Iraq, Zack and Daniel become entangled in the Rohanis’ lives.

Bram doesn’t rely on lush prose. He can turn a lovely phrase — “Life in couples usually writes white upon the page, except in times of crisis” — but his style is declarative and direct.

A perfect example is when Abbas is recovering from a harrowing run-in with the FBI.

“Then [the FBI agents] came back, grinning like hyenas,” writes Bram. “‘We believe you,’ they said. ‘You are telling the truth. We were only testing you. We are sorry to upset you. But we need the stress to tell for certain if people are lying or not.’ … But I realized, no, [the agent] was only sorry. In that stupid, maudlin, American way. ‘Sorry we beat you up. Sorry we humiliated you. But it was for a good cause, so do not take it personally. You must forgive us.’”

There’s nothing elegiac and lyrical about the sentiment, but given the severity of the situation, the no-frills writing approach provides a stronger punch.

All of the characters are complexly drawn, bucking stereotypes and simple storylines. Elena is compelling, and the two children are lovable and distinctive — characters that could have become plot furniture instead have full personalities and inner lives. The Rohanis’ marriage holds together through melodramatic public fights and intense parental concern while Daniel and Zack attempt patience, trust, openness and what Zack wryly calls “being adult about adultery.”

BUT BRAM SEEMS to do more than create compelling characters. The bluntness with which he lays out his questions — what makes a marriage? what prompts patriotism, or religious devotion? — recalls the similarly explicit style of Graham Greene, the prolific 20th century English writer who also used his characters to explore matters of morality.

Underlying all of Bram’s questions is the issue of absolute commitments, for which all lesser loyalties may be sacrificed. Bram is writing about the severity of the Ten Commandments’ “Thou shalt have no other gods before me;” about “my country right or wrong;” and the old wedding-band motto “all I refuse, and thee I choose.”

And he seems against it all. Or at least he appears to find it incomprehensible, this ferocious desire to give oneself completely to an identity, a lover or a god.

This unfortunately cripples the novel. Bram can write an “open marriage” brilliantly, but when his characters choose sides, they become caricatures (like the patriotic FBI agents) or sinister opacities (like Abbas’s devout Muslim brother).

And so the novel is strangely static. In refusing to sacrifice, his main protagonists also refuse to change. Bram seems to recognize this problem, falling back on an unsatisfying shift in point of view and a defensive breaking of the fourth wall in the novel’s final pages.

As the gay community debates the meanings and boundaries of marriage, and the value of religious commitment, Bram has created characters ideally suited to illustrating these concerns. Poignantly, neither he nor his characters transcend our divisions.