Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
 | |
| Author | Andrea Lawlor |
|---|---|
| Genre | |
| Set in | United States, 1993 |
| Published |
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| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 388[1] |
| ISBN | 0-525-56618-X |
| Website | https://www.anderlawlor.com/paul |
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a novel by American writer Andrea Lawlor. It was published in 2017 by Rescue Press. The picaresque novel, which took the author 15 years to write, follows a protagonist who can shapeshift as he uses this ability to change his gender expression while roaming the United States.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is Andrea Lawlor's debut novel. The text exhibits postmodern influences. The book received positive reviews.
Background
Writer Andrea Lawlor was involved with queer activism as an undergraduate in the 1990s, founding the first lesbian and gay group at Fordham University.[2] They began writing Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl in San Francisco when they were 30 years old. They had just quit a corporate job and began exploring creative writing while working at a bookstore. They wrote the initial draft of the first section of Paul for a writing workshop held in someone's living room.[3] The concept was influenced by Orlando: A Biography, which Lawlor read in high school "because it was on a list of books with something queer in them".[4] Metamorphoses[5] and Wild Seed were additional influences.[2]
Lawlor later enrolled in a creative writing graduate program taught by Samuel R. Delany at Temple University, and turned in the draft; Delany encouraged them to continue working on the story.[3] Lawlor completed the first draft of the novel while in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Massachusetts. They worked on the novel while enrolled in graduate classes, teaching, working, and caring for a baby with their partner.[3] The novel took 15 years to complete.[4]
According to Lawlor, the draft was initially rejected by various publishers because they didn't think it had enough plot or conflict. Lawlor refused to make protagonist Paul learn a lesson in the text, believing that conventional plot structure would make the novel unrealistic.[3]
Lawlor is close friends with Jordy Rosenberg, author of the queer novel Confessions of the Fox; Rosenberg lives with Lawlor's family.[4]
Rescue Press publication
Rescue Press published Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl with an initial run of 500 copies[3] in November 2017.[1] It was Lawlor's debut novel.[2] Despite the limited initial printing, the novel was reviewed in the "Briefly Noted" section of The New Yorker, which Lawlor said prompted widespread interest in the book as well as potential film rights. (The book was optioned by Ryan Murphy.) Lawlor was subsequently able to begin working with literary agent PJ Mark, who negotiated a deal for broader publication with Vintage Books.[3]
Vintage Books re-publication
Vintage Books reprinted Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl in 2019.[4] According to Lawlor, half of the profits from the reprint go to Rescue Press in perpetuity.[3] Picador published Paul in Britain.[5]
Content
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is set in 1993,[5] and its content is heavily influenced by the queer culture of the 1990s. The novel's protagonist, 23-year-old[2] Paul Polydoris, is a student and bartender who discovers that he is secretly capable of shapeshifting. He uses this ability to change his gender expression, sometimes for sexual purposes, while adventuring across the United States.[3][4] Settings include the punk subculture of Iowa City, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, Provincetown, Massachusetts in the off-season,[4] and a leather bar backroom in Chicago. All these settings are in places the author has lived.[2]
Paul Polydoris conceives of himself as Paul and uses the masculine pronoun for himself throughout the narrative, although his gender identity is never explicit to him or the reader. He is characterized, and characterizes himself, as a flâneur who is gratified by wearing performative outfits and seeking out various sexual experiences; he is able to "make himself be attracted to anyone". At the beginning of the novel, Paul is studying film studies in Iowa City. He experiments with being a bottom at a leather bar while traveling to Chicago, and becomes a femme lesbian in a committed relationship while in Provincetown, but these identities are only temporary for him.[6]: 157 His ethnicity is similarly ambiguous, although less under his control.[6]: 157
The narrative is a picaresque novel[2][6]: 155 [7]: 497 interspersed with short fables and devices from postmodern literature such as footnotes and pastiche are present in the text.[4] Magic realism is also incorporated.[6]: 159 Lawlor has described the novel as "thinly veiled autobiography" but also stated that "at the end of the day, I'm not Paul and Paul is not me".[8]
Reception
Awards
Lawlor received a Whiting Award for Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.[3] The book was a finalist for the Firecracker Awards[9] and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Literature in 2018.[10]
Reviews
The Guardian praised Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl for its period accuracy as well as its well-written depictions of sex. The review argued that the book's "unapologetically queer" nature should not hinder its mainstream success, describing Lawlor's writing as "evocative and urgent".[5] Another mention of Paul in The Guardian characterized the novel as "a picaresque romp".[2]
Booklist reviewed Paul as "a coming-of-age fairy tale without the easy moral, a mix of comedy and tenderness and backroom sexual exploits", and praised the author's use of genre.[1] A starred review in Foreword Reviews described the book as "a hilarious, original, gender-fluid novel replete with 1990s cachet, sex, and queer identity" that "introduces hefty topics in a highly entertaining, fresh, and thought-provoking way", praising it as an impressive debut novel and "a new benchmark for gender-nonconforming literature".[11]
Maggie Nelson praised the sex scenes in Paul as "HOT".[2]
Academic analysis
A Feminist Formations article asserted that Paul's "gender processes" in the novel "complicate the nature/culture binary", which the article's author described as "a crucial project from a queer ecological/ecofeminist perspective, given that the culture/nature binary supports degradation of both the Earth and marginalized people".[6]: 155 The article compared the phenomenon of Paul's identity in the novel to concepts from the work of Gaston Bachelard (topophilia and The Poetics of Space)[6]: 156 and contrasted it with the work of Judith Butler (Gender Trouble).[6]: 158 It explores the presence of magical realism in the text, arguing that "the literary category of 'magical realism' that might otherwise contain the metamorphoses in this novel becomes inadequate since there is no stable ground of gender, no actual mundane, against which the 'magical' or the 'real' would be defined".[6]: 159 The article concludes that "in his ardent receptivity to life, [Paul] offers to the reader a vision of boundless appreciation for the liminal, magical naturecultures of queer spaces and subcultural movements in American history".[6]: 171
In Studies in the Novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl was included in a review of five contemporary novels by transgender authors.[7]: 492 The review noted the distinct avoidance of linear progressions in Paul, stating that "the novel invokes a wish for pluralizing and easily embodying genders—what it does away with is the notion that permanence and direction are suited to everyone" and that "not much progress occurs for Paul" in the course of the narrative.[7]: 498 It characterized the novel as picaresque for its "undermining of linearity and resolution [...] erratic and socially marginal protagonist [...] and the episodic nature of the narrative occasioned by repeated scene-fleeing", but argued against James Mandrell's description of the picaresque as inherently conservative, describing the use of the picaresque narrative form in Paul as "a recognition that there is value in remaining outside capitalist and heteronormative logics that would want to assimilate every dissident subject" and a reflection of the historical marginalization of queer people.[7]: 498–499
See also
References
- ^ a b c Winterroth, Andrea (November 1, 2017). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl". Booklist. pp. 31–32.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Needham, Alex (2019-04-05). "Andrea Lawlor: 'I feel that every good thing in my life has come from being queer'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Canfield, David (March 25, 2020). "Queer author Andrea Lawlor just won a Whiting Award. It's been a long, gratifying road". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
- ^ a b c d e f g Haldeman, Peter (2018-10-24). "The Coming of Age of Transgender Literature". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
- ^ a b c d Parkinson, Hannah Jane (2019-05-06). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor – urgent and evocative". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Belmont, Cynthia (2023). "Organic Transitioning and Queer Topophilia in Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl". Feminist Formations. 35 (2): 154–173. doi:10.1353/ff.2023.a907925. ISSN 2151-7371.
- ^ a b c d Pellegrini, Chiara (2023). "Temporalities Beyond Transition: Form, Genre, and Contemporary Trans Novels". Studies in the Novel. 55 (4): 492–508. doi:10.1353/sdn.2023.a913308. ISSN 1934-1512.
- ^ Anderson-Minshall, Jacob (July 29, 2019). "Writer Andrea Lawlor Is a Worthy Successor to Virginia Woolf". The Advocate. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
- ^ "2018 Firecracker Award Finalists Announced". Publishers Weekly. May 4, 2018. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
- ^ Boureau, Ella (2018-03-06). "30th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced". Lambda Literary. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
- ^ Carter, Monica (November 1, 2017). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl". Foreword Reviews. pp. 55–56.