The Book of Casey Adair: from observing to living

10 Dec 2021.

by Drew Rowsome - photos supplied by author and publicist Vince Ciarlo

A writing teacher at Nearing once told us that she thought people misunderstood "write what you know." She believed that writers often interpreted the adage to mean write what you know about, when really it was suggesting that you write what you know is true, not factually, but emotionally.

In 1980, recent Nearing graduate Casey Adair travels to Madrid "to study how the theater has changed after Franco's death." And hopefully to do some acting while he is observing. While aware he is gay, he is naive and inexperienced. And a romantic. It is a world before texting and email, so he writes to, and receives letters from, his bff Poppy who is a privileged fellow student hailing from Toronto, and a former professor who taught Spanish with an emphasis on poetry. He also keeps a journal. These texts, supplemented by occasional newspaper excerpts, form the text of The Book of Casey Adair.

Our protagonist stays in a pension which he describes colourfully. His roommate, Gustavo, is a passionate revolutionary studying for his doctorate in political theory. There are several older men who live in the pension despite its disagreeable reliance on eggs for meals and the annoying lobby rat with an accordion, but also an architecture student, Octavio, who introduces Adair to Madrid's gay scene. And to actual gay sex. Madrid is magical as seen through Adair's eyes and author Ken Harvey has only to mention a screening of Pedro Almodovar's first films to place the reader exactly where they need to be. The references come thick and fast with an emphasis on the theatrical and the political. Adair is inspired by Gustavo, entranced by Octavio, and not quite nervy enough to emulate either. 

The first third of The Book of Casey Adair is carried by the ebullience of youth. The voices are all literate and somewhat indistinguishable, creating a distance that mirrors Adair's distance from life, but the crosscutting allows Harvey to withhold and impart information in a dramatic way. We learn more from what is not said or understood than from what is stated. The characters all live in bubbles until Poppy, who lives in a very privileged bubble, bursts Adair's. A third of the way through, the timeline of The Book of Casey Adair timeshifts forward to 1984 and a radically different set of circumstances. To reveal plot details would spoil the power of what Harvey has in store, but the last two thirds develop a momentum that erases the bucolic innocence lost of the first third. Now the melodrama the characters feel is fed by reality instead of self-centredness. The references switch from Lorca's poetry to Kramer's anger.

Adair discovers just how messy life is and how crucial it is to at least test the waters in order to experience it fully. HIV raises its ugly head and Harvey captures the horror and confusion of the early days of the plague. In one brutal but telling passage, Adair returns to the Madrid gay bar where he had first found freedom to lust and love, and finds it still glittering but with poison at its core. Adair struggles with the closet he keeps being forced into, and suddenly activism takes on a whole new meaning. The seeds planted in the first third of the book, all resurface and take on a new, deep resonance. Everyone's bubble melts and Adair's progression to becoming a particpant in his own life, and the world beyond his own, is rivetingly depicted. Events - the Toronto bathhouse raids and the theatrical activism of the Fruit Cocktail troupe being prime examples - that happen at a distance slowly loom and pull Adair's life into focus.

Yes, there is a romance but it is bittersweet. Detours that felt like errant threads - fatherhood, love, Toronto landmarks, Shakespeare vs passionate zarzuela, fag hagdom, theatrical in-jokes - coalesce to become a tapestry. There are a lot of apt aphorisms, one-liners, and several sections that fleetingly express the frustration of '80s gay life. That impotent combination of 'gay liberation' and awkward attempts at what we would now call 'woke.' Because of the structure, we still see much at a remove, through another character's narrow gaze, but as the narrative gains momentum, the grace notes gain strength to land with an emotional wallop. Any book dealing with AIDS has the difficult task of conveying the horror and ravages without overwhelming, and Harvey uses the slight remove to accentuate both. Adair's disassociation does not allow us to do the same. The Book of Casey Adair ends somewhat abruptly, tying up loose ends quickly but with a whisper of hope. Adair says early on that he was erratic about keeping journals but with luck there are ones, and letters, that will take another volume into the '90s and beyond. There is a realism about The Book of Casey Adair that may or may not be autobiographical for Harvey, but it is potently emotionally true.

The Book of Casey Adair is published by the University of Wisconsin Press