There aren’t a lot of records of true gay love stories, the farther back you go, the fewer. And far back includes living memory. While browsing the stacks of the Doe Library at UC Berkeley, I came across A Union Like Ours, Scott Bane’s new biography of two men and their marriage-in-all-but-name. F. O. Matthiessen sounded vaguely familiar. He was famous in mid-century, a well-known and somewhat radical academic. He seems to be credited with the founding of American Studies, American history and literature as a worthy discipline, a change from the up-to-then taken for granted Europeward raptured gaze. The other man in A Union Like Ours is Russell Cheney, a painter who achieved his greatest recognition as a regional painter, of Maine mainly.
Frank (the F. of F. O.) and Russell met on a transAtlantic crossing, and quickly fell in love. They built a life together, which lasted twenty years. When Russell died of a heart attack in the house they shared, Frank was stricken. Says author Bane about Frank’s decision to remain:
Matthiessen acknowledged that being in the house was painful, but he opted to stay there instead of going away because, as he described to a friend, his pain was the closest thing he had to love.
Pain is a powerful sensation. I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer numbness, but philosophically I get it.
source:
A Union Like Ours: the love story of F. O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney
by Scott Bane
2022. Bright Leaf / University of Massachusetts Press, Boston MA
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