In Perfect (a)Synchrony : Queer Style in The Line of Beauty

Abstract

This chapter investigates queer style and temporality in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, a seminal gay work in contemporary British literature that has been extensively discussed for its intertextual entanglements with the life and oeuvre of Henry James. Building on previous queer readings of James’s own stylistic asynchrony, this paper examines Hollinghurst’s similarly asynchronous style and argues that the Jamesian resonances in The Line of Beauty allow for a subtle blurring between queer relationality and anti-relationality and a reassessment of the contested notion of identity within queer theory. While Hollinghurst’s style conveys a narrative conscience ‘out of sync’ with its environment, this ‘out-of-sync’-ness reveals a queer space of aesthetic self-affirmation for the protagonist Nick. Hollinghurst facilitates Nick’s self-affirmation by narratively appropriating the temporality of classical music. In The Line of Beauty, the temporal synchrony of musical performance makes aesthetically manifest Nick’s social asynchrony as a homosexual man living in Thatcherite London. Against the socio-political conservatism of the novel’s setting, Hollinghurst’s musical poetics ultimately offer a poignant reconsideration of queer belonging through various forms of temporality, both aesthetic and social.