Wanderlust, Reinvention and Authenticity in “With Hawks and Angels” https://ift.tt/z8E03hb
With Hawks and Angels by Joel Lafayette Fletcher III is a book I was destined to read. Fletcher hails from my hometown and is a part of a family who could be considered local Lafayette royalty – other than the Mardi Gras king and queen, that is.
Having spent all my formative years around this city, I loved reading about the time before mine and how it shaped another person growing up in very different circumstances than my own. Fletcher lived as an out gay man in several different countries at a time when he could have been arrested or killed for it. This memoir beautifully depicts the struggle for authenticity and how it can bring more charm into one’s life. However, in true Southern humility, he defers the grace in his life to “hawks” that have brought him “good fortune,” and the “angels” which have watched over him.
Fletcher’s childhood home was populated with characters I’ve only read about or heard about through stories from elders. For instance, Archduke Otto von Habsburg, the last monarch of Hungary, was a guest in their home and played “The Blue Danube” on the family piano. Even the story of how he and his family came to live in the house includes some of the most nefarious political figures in Louisiana’s history – and that is saying a lot. However, very early in the book, Fletcher makes it clear his company was best kept by those seen as misfits.
He is keen on outlining people who showed him life outside of his very traditional family. This started early with his connection to his grandfather who, “well into old age…enjoyed standing on his head, walking on his hands, and doing somersaults, behavior my mother thought the neighbors would think odd. Though I seldom saw him, I was fond of him.” Even a deceased uncle Fletcher never got to know, who had the audacity to get divorced before marrying an “artistic type,” left an impression: “but when I was fully grown and my family members began to realize that I was gay, though most were supportive, I experienced from others disapproval and the shunning that was done to Will. I wish that I had known him.” The author’s voice arrives during certain moments to comment on issues of the time and differences from our current era. But he also notes where there have not been enough changes.
Readers are taken through Fletcher’s years in the Navy along the California coast, where he began to explore his sexual orientation. In searching for himself, he went looking all the way in Florence, Italy. We read through his “episodes” as he created a language school while steeping in European culture. Because there is so much packed into Fletcher’s life, the book is broken into episodic vignettes carefully selected around the themes or people who shaped these epochs. Timelines can cross in the “episodes,” leaving a reader feeling as dizzy as I’m sure these times were for Fletcher.
For example, his adventures took him to Paris during the sixties, where he connected with characters whose influence can still be felt today in both politics and art. Fletcher was frequently in the company of the artist Mary Guggenheim, often enough to have the unfortunate experience of sampling her cooking. No effusiveness was spared when recounting his interactions with Therese Bonney, an American photographer known for the images she captured during World War II. Fletcher’s time in Paris’ greatest restaurants and cafes eventually had him sharing space with Felix Yussupov, the prince who killed Rasputin. In fact, there are so many important figures he met, so many big lives he found himself adjacent to, that it is hard to believe it is a memoir and not fantasy fiction. Eventually he found himself back in Lafayette starting yet another chapter in his life. With his father deceased, there was much more room for acceptance and affirmation from his mother. Even so, Lafayette is still a small town, and some family members still held the homophobic legacy of his father.
Fletcher does a good job of reminding you who a person is when they reappear. The “episodes” are tight and mostly self-contained, making it easy to read through two or three and put the book down without losing anything when you pick it back up. The memories he shares are vivid and often very funny. Between generous descriptions of European cities, flats inhabited, meals ingested and company entertained, this is the perfect book to take on a trip.
This book is not without its tragedy. Fletcher is explicit about racism he witnessed and homophobia he experienced. When reading interactions with family members who not only rejected him, but worked to see his downfall, I felt that awful, chest-caving heaviness most of us try to avoid. What I was left wanting to know was how Fletcher kept himself afloat through the pain. He records his reactions sparingly, though he does not spare compassion for others. I would love to have seen more of Fletcher’s personality amidst all the characters he lovingly portrays in the pages of his memoir. Clearly, a person must be full of life to have had a life as full as his.
What I was not left hungry for was wanderlust, reinvention and authenticity. I wish this book was written twenty years ago so my younger self could see what someone from Lafayette could offer the wide world. For Fletcher, it was all beautiful and magical. When you read about boating in Italy with a potential suitor, or dining in Paris with artists and potentates, it will be hard to refrain from packing a suitcase. When Fletcher decides to come out, and risks everything to be with someone he loves, you may look at your own missed chances and be tempted to gamble it all again. But best of all, this book will make you wonder about your most authentic self and beckon it to come out amongst the hawks and angels.
FICTION With Hawks and Angels By Joel Lafayette Fletcher III
University Press of Mississippi
Published March 24, 2023
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