Blackouts

Justin Torres’s Blackouts is a striking novel that unfolds as one long, intimate conversation. The linear thread of dialogue carries the reader steadily through the text, even as it weaves in nonlinear stories, histories, and fragments. The result is a narrative that feels both experimental and grounded, keeping you engaged from beginning to end.“What is it that the dead eat? He asked me once. A riddle…”The novel offers an exceptional depiction of the LGBTQIA+ experience, blending memory with historical and medical contexts. It prompts readers to question preconceived notions of what is coded as “straight” or “heterosexual” in culture and how those codes are flipped or reclaimed to provide comfort for lives that have so often been erased or marginalized in literature.Even though much of the story centers around a deathbed conversation, Blackouts is not a tale of loss. Instead, it is a meditation on acceptance, a closing of chapters, and above all, a homage to love and freedom in all its forms.With its unexpected turns, lyrical voice, and emotional resonance, Torres delivers a book and audiobook that elegantly captures the essence of living one truth in a world that would rather diagnose. Blackouts is a challenging, beautiful, and deeply human story well beyond its final page.

Great literature.

This is my first exposure to erasure poetry, which I had never even heard of until now. Chunks of an existing text—in this case, a real study of homosexuals from the 1930s called Sex Variants—are blacked out, so that the visible text forms something new. Photos abound in this book, including those of the erasure poetry, which were definitely above my pay grade. Suffice it to say that the non-traditional format of this book rendered it too cerebral for me. Basically, an unnamed gay narrator is trading stories with an elderly gay man named Juan, who is dying. These two men met in a mental institution, and now they are swapping stories, sometimes describing events as if describing a movie—a clever way to set the scene more vividly. The book is a mixture of fact and fiction and may be semi-autobiographical, but one of my chief beefs is that I found it difficult to decipher who was talking—Juan or the narrator, whom Juan calls “nene.” There are pages and pages of dialog with no identification as to who is saying what, except that occasionally the speaker addresses Juan or nene, so that we know that the other character is speaking. There is some fascinating history here, particularly with regard to homosexuality as a mental health condition, but if this book was a test, I failed.

This novel is so unique and compelling. The story structure, and redacted documents add to the reader's revelation in a poetic way. Extremely enjoyable to read, and a fresh presentation of queer intimacy.

Torres uses a “found footage” approach to demonstrate the surreal experience of the enterprising homosexual who attempts to understand his community’s historical relationship with society. Building off a real survey from the 40s about sexual “variants,” the reader is confronted with a world that uses people to discredit themselves. A variation of the inhuman, people who must reject their identity in order to find a shadow of acceptance. The disorientation is almost suffocating. I ding the novel mainly because once he has created this unique insight, it feels as if he is unsure how to end things. By the end, our unreliable narrator becomes even more confused and the ending feels weak after such a strong setup. Still a good way to put yourself in the shoes of another.