Blackouts by Justin Torres

Nene - as he is called - and Juan Gay are spending together Gay´s last days in a place called The Palace, a place hard to define both as a place and localization. An intergenerational dialogue between two queer men Blackouts by Justin Torres is exceptional for more than one reason. 

Their topics of conversation are delineated or referred to a forgotten research inspired by Jan Gay, a lesbian activist, but also dancer, translator and ethnographer, who in the 1930s conducted hundreds of interviews with queers, mostly women. The study further inspired the 1941-published work Sex Variants: A Study of Sexual Variants by the Committee for the Study of Sex largely diagnosing homosexuality as a pathological condition. The historical references, including fragments from the study who are introduced in the story with censorship-marked ´blackouts´. 

With the words left non-marked are created new texts, with new meanings. However, ´Nene´ has his own blackouts: ten years back he met Juan in a mental institution but he does not have memories of the encounter. His dialogue is also aimed at recovering those ´blackouts´.  Erasures however are part of the queer history - be in purely historical, literary or of any other kind. 

The historical and pathological information are completed by details from the author´s own biography: Gay and Nene, both do have a Puerto Rican heritage, as the author himself - on the father´s side. The fragments about ´Puerto Rican Syndrome´ do open another line of thought about medical ethnicization. 

The predominant part of the literary puzzle is however played by fiction, that integrates smoothly all the other pieces. The book is largely a work of complex intertextuality, for the ways in which is connects historical elements, images, poetry and science history in a purely fictional dialogue. 

The relationship between the two, with Juan the older, wiser partner, is a formative encounter for Nene who is not only trying to fill his memory ´blackouts´ but also gathers life wisdom and knowledge to fill the existential ´blackout´. It is a friendship that consolidates between the two, as well as a queer transmission of knowledge.

However, it leaves open to the reader the question about ´truth´ and ´false´. It is an extra effort the reader is expected to do for sorting out the data presented. The authorship is confusing and challenging: where is the author´s/Torres contribution and where the voices of the characters are heard?

In the end, it´s up to the reader to pick up its own interpretation(s) and lecture(s) of the book. Personally, I´ve felt the need to read more about the historical sources, but also gave me a lot of ideas about ideologization of science, while appreciating the precision of the prose. 

Blackouts, Torres´ second book was ten years in the making.

Rating: 5 stars