Great Gay Novels Recommended by the Director of "The History of Sound"

"In Oliver Hermanus's new film, "The History of Sound," two young men at the New England Conservatory of Music meet in a bar, when one of them (Josh O'Connor) plays a folk song the other (Paul Mescal) instantly recognizes. The two fall into bed, and then love, almost at once-but World War I soon intervenes, sending one to the front and the other back to the countryside where he was born."

"I read "Death in Venice" when I was in my twenties, living in Paris-I had the very Parisian experience of sitting in a café reading it-and it loosely inspired my second film, which is about a sexually repressed middle-aged character. I called my film "Beauty" because that is the commodity that is most treasured in the book. I was fuelled by the book, but I was almost upset by it, too, because I interpreted it as a very misguided, varnished book about lust."

Oliver Hermanus's film "The History of Sound" follows two young men who meet at the New England Conservatory, fall in love quickly, and are then separated by World War I. Queer love and romance recur across Hermanus's work, including the project "Mary & George." Hermanus selects novels by queer writers who often hid their sexuality as inspirations. He read "Death in Venice" in his twenties in Paris and loosely based his second film on it, naming that film "Beauty." He interprets "Death in Venice" as coding desire into beauty and presenting lust in a varnished, misguided way. The Merchant Ivory adaptation of "Maurice" was the first queer film he watched.

Read at The New Yorker