William Benemann had clear intent when writing his most recent novel, Men in Eden: William Drummond Stewart and Same-sex Desire in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade. Answering the call of Jim Wilke's Frontiers magazine article suggesting the topic, Benemann set to "restore William Drummond Stewart to his place at the table," (2). Though Benemann doubts any intentional misrepresentation of Stewart's sexual history, he believes that most historians simply did not consider the possibility that he was anything other than heterosexual. Men in Eden “explores the role… (of gay men) in... a nineteenth-century mercantile setting,” investigating the draw that such an isolated, yet traditionally masculine, environment might have held (4).
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Though Altowan and Edward Warren are primary sources, they are told through a lens of Stewart’s bad writing and fictionalization (which Benemann admits). Much more trustworthy are the multitudes of personal letters Benemann draws upon, such as those between Stewart and his friends William Sublette and Robert Campbell. The use of these primary sources reveals many prevailing attitudes at the time (and lacking literacy all around). The secondary sources that Benemann most conspicuously draws upon are the (though scarce) pre existing books regarding Stewart’s life, such as Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVeto, or Gallery of Dudes by Marshall Sprague. Most notably is Scotsman in Buckskin by Mae Reed Porter and Odessa Davenport. Benemann spends the introduction to the piece contextualizing these works within their respective timeframes, accounting for the lack of any prior books specifically accounting for Stewart’s homosexuality. This is necessary to justify some of his more fantastical reaches, though it doesn’t entirely justify the essentialism of the …show more content…
I fully agree with both of these statements. Boag also notes the “limits of the sources,” which result in an “imaginative biography” (Boag, 205). How much of this statement is sarcastic, I am unsure. Regardless, I agree that it is “imaginative” in both senses. Something else she notes is that “readers may quibble with Benemann’s employment of the later-developed terms homosexual and gay,” but I believe Benemann sufficiently justified his use of those terms throughout the book. Benemann remarks that authors and historians regarding gay history must “grapple with the ghost of Michel Foucault,” who established the theory of homosexuality as a social construct (Benemann, 4). This posits that before the invention of the word itself, individuals did not consider themselves homosexual or heterosexual in nature, but rather viewed their sexual history as a series of independent actions. Benemman and I both take umbrage with this concept. There is evidence all the way back through the eighteenth century of extensive “establishment(s) of… ‘queer space’,” and “markers of the development of a group identity,” amongst those participating in what would now be deemed homosexual behavior (Benemann, 5). Even if individuals didn’t have a name for the way their sexuality impacted their
The best window …show more content…
Though Altowan and Edward Warren are primary sources, they are told through a lens of Stewart’s bad writing and fictionalization (which Benemann admits). Much more trustworthy are the multitudes of personal letters Benemann draws upon, such as those between Stewart and his friends William Sublette and Robert Campbell. The use of these primary sources reveals many prevailing attitudes at the time (and lacking literacy all around). The secondary sources that Benemann most conspicuously draws upon are the (though scarce) pre existing books regarding Stewart’s life, such as Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVeto, or Gallery of Dudes by Marshall Sprague. Most notably is Scotsman in Buckskin by Mae Reed Porter and Odessa Davenport. Benemann spends the introduction to the piece contextualizing these works within their respective timeframes, accounting for the lack of any prior books specifically accounting for Stewart’s homosexuality. This is necessary to justify some of his more fantastical reaches, though it doesn’t entirely justify the essentialism of the …show more content…
I fully agree with both of these statements. Boag also notes the “limits of the sources,” which result in an “imaginative biography” (Boag, 205). How much of this statement is sarcastic, I am unsure. Regardless, I agree that it is “imaginative” in both senses. Something else she notes is that “readers may quibble with Benemann’s employment of the later-developed terms homosexual and gay,” but I believe Benemann sufficiently justified his use of those terms throughout the book. Benemann remarks that authors and historians regarding gay history must “grapple with the ghost of Michel Foucault,” who established the theory of homosexuality as a social construct (Benemann, 4). This posits that before the invention of the word itself, individuals did not consider themselves homosexual or heterosexual in nature, but rather viewed their sexual history as a series of independent actions. Benemman and I both take umbrage with this concept. There is evidence all the way back through the eighteenth century of extensive “establishment(s) of… ‘queer space’,” and “markers of the development of a group identity,” amongst those participating in what would now be deemed homosexual behavior (Benemann, 5). Even if individuals didn’t have a name for the way their sexuality impacted their