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Click to see Voice of Force included in this Zimbio reviewer's best list. Click to see Voice of Force included in this amazon reviewer's best list. Synopsis of VOICE OF FORCE: Two men with two different desires. Or two predators out to satiate opposing but equally potent
drives. When the lusts for sex and power collide, can friendship even be possible? And when two such men do find
mutual ground, can they withstand the interests of those who would put family, faith, profits, and politics between them? Newspaper critic Ragland Hughes is openly gay. Opera
tenor Cosimo Fratangelo is famously straight. No one gay or straight says a word as they watch the men’s relationship
evolve from professional association to loving friendship—so long as both men remain alive and profitable. When the body
of one of the men washes ashore off Long Island Sound, convulsive testimony indicts the survivor as the prosecution’s
lone suspect. The media melee that ensues not only casts unwelcome light on the forces keeping a gay man and a straight
man from enjoying friendship, it brands Hughes a predator of heterosexual men and Fratangelo a sociopath driven by ambition.
As for the disparate voices having their say in the two men’s lives, sexuality is to be defined and judged as something
much more than genital union. Part thwarted love story, part cautionary tale, part philosophical rant,
VOICE OF FORCE sounds out the deep divide of sexual difference running through even the most liberal of enclaves. With
Destiny seen as neither predestined path nor consequence of human choice but the balance of submission and resistance to the
history bearing down on us, a simple criminal case is made a microcosm of ancient familial fear. We know a murder has
been committed but in the end we’re left deciphering what the larger crime is and how long it’s been in the making. Reviews
of Voice of Force online:
"Voice of Force" is a
compilation of documents: part journal, part news clipping, part opera
libretto, part audio transcript and includes a short story that is a real gem
woven into the novel. Moving seamlessly through these various forms the novel
gives a strange coherence to the way in which our lives are archived and
understood at the opening of the twenty-first century. Part love story and part
thriller, the novel leads us smoothly through these transitions and we are
deftly transported into the realm of obsessive love and desire. The story begins with discovery by Ragland
Hughes, an opera critic, of a young singer at the start of his career. From the
first moment we watch the elaboration of what becomes an obsession with the
young singer whose career Hughes is in a position to launch and mold until it
is self-sustaining and his help is no longer needed. Throughout the story we
are privy to the inner world of Hughes - both his passions about art and art
history, about travel and place, but above all opera and his young opera star. The over-arching question posed by the novel is
what to make of a homosexual man's love and friendship with a man who is
straight. To Denson's credit he does not give us two innocents to contemplate.
We have the character of Ragland Hughes, a gay man and opera critic and we have
a young, straight, rising Italian opera star - Cosimo Fratangelo. We follow the
development of this relationship through the eyes of Ragland Hughes via his
journals and later through the eyes of many of his and Fratengelo's
acquaintances in the form of documents and audio tapes. The book gives us over
and over glimpses into the powerlessness felt in all forms of unrequited love.
We are lead through the mounting tension of desire developing in Hughes as he
moves closer to a place still largely taboo in the culture and still discussed
in hushed tones. Added to that we have known from the opening page of the book
that there has been a murder. The book creates an entire world, in the
way that 19th
century novels do - a world that is convincing and beautifully written. We
begin to miss it before the last pages unfold. Susan Silas, Amazon.com Is Increased
Awareness of Sexuality and Difference Truly Helping Us Live More Harmonious
Lives? “ Voice of Force” in essence asks some simple
questions: Has increased awareness of sexuality and difference truly helped us
live more harmonious lives? Or has it merely compelled people to mask the
prejudice they inherit from traditions and institutions beneath a civilized
veneer? Increasing tolerance may have softened the fault
lines of social prejudice, but Denson suggests that when a public tragedy draws
out the voices of discontent, we learn just how deeply homophobia still shapes
and enforces everyday life in even the most liberal of enclaves. The story concerns
two men, famously
straight opera tenor Cosimo Fratangelo and an openly gay newspaper critic
Ragland Hughes. A beautifully written, sometimes ecstatic and mystical memoir
draws us in on the relationship that evolves into a naked and raw exposition on
two very different kinds of obsession. Then, suddenly, the memoir ends and the
entire format of the novel changes. Without showing us a single criminal act, author
Roger Denson chronicles what happens before and after one of the two
protagonists is killed. Thankfully
we aren't led through the investigation or trial of the accused man. Clearly
this isn't a crime drama or suspensful who dunnit. Instead, we are presented
newspaper articles to represent the media melee that bring to light the forces
keeping a gay man and a straight man from enjoying friendship. While flirting
with the popular
fixation on crime dramas, soap operas, and celebrity scandals, the novel
penetrates deep beneath such genres to trace the fault lines of a relationship
cutting against conventions, identities and institutions defining who we
believe ourselves to be. Half way through, the format changes again. We
are presented a short story and an opera libretto--both extraordinarily
stylized--that provide insight into the accused man's psyche. Another format
change and we are
transported years later to a series of death row monologues and conversations,
some of them confessions, others rants, all of them psychologically raw and
revealing of the prejudice driving the characters. In tracing the characters' mind swing between
depravity and mysticism, author G. Roger Denson abandons the novelist's godlike
prerogative of "seeing all." In its far reaching and philosophical
scope, Voice of Force is a reflection on how an individual is judged according
to the resistance he puts up to the forces bearing down on his life. As the
promotional copy on the back of the novel proclaims: "A murder has been
committed, but the judgment lies in deciding what the true crime is and how
long it's been in the making." I would answer that, based on the material
presented, that crime has been in the making for millions of years. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?EAN=9781451568622 It’s always
a reward to come upon a novel with highly intelligent characters, something
hard to find these days. It puts their flaws and mishaps into greater relief.
And in this case their prejudice. I never before realized to what extent things
like family and profession set the die of our lives. Even the landscapes in
this novel determine why people do things. Two themes run throughout
the novel, each pulling at the other. The first is the force of destiny. The
second is the voice that force takes, or the people whose voices shape our
lives. Maybe even the voice of God, if you believe in such a thing. Some of the
characters in this story do, some don’t. But unlike most novels, the belief or
disbelief in God doesn’t simply get named and then taken for granted.
Everything here has a purpose for inclusion in the story. Everything is weighed
out. Faith or disbelief gets raked through the character’s lives in ways that
they have to account for when facing the imminent death of a character later
on. Some of it gets expressed as guilt, some as (self)righteousness. But all of
what gets expressed has consequence in the world. The same can be said of other
motives: family and profession, especially. And of course money. What I found most
exhilarating is the way many of these motives get voiced unconsciously. We hear
the characters say one thing about what they did or believe yet see an entirely
different picture of it as they describe it. To see the delusion of a character
at the same time the character sees it as a virtue or a necessity is the mark
of a talented author. Even though the structure of the novel is more modern, I
was made at times to think of George Elliot or Henry James. Or at least an
author of that ilk in the making. Not the smoothest of reads,
for the abrupt changes in style and format (obviously intended to mark the
different voices telling the story), but a rich and complicated telling even
when some of the characters become shrill and desperate. Anton Myles, Goodreads.com http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7431805-voice-of-force Click here to read G. Roger Denson's bio.
Here are some excerpts from VOICE OF
FORCE: I realized as we talked that Cosimo’s
disarming sweetness was in fact a multi-layered mannerism, one he must have
cultivated over years of study (not with any teacher, but intuitively from the
time he was a child). As he became more disarming, he operated at an
ever-deepening level of unconscious persuasion, lulling me like a drug, freeing
me of the defensive and incredulous mind I usually inhabit. Then, as I felt
that impulse that always creeps up when I’m with compelling straight men (he
showed interest in more than a few of the women nearby), I told myself I
couldn’t dwell on it for an instant. I wouldn't let the past repeat
itself. Instead, I buried all desire, losing myself in Cosimo’s broken
English—which, with some wine, became even more pleasingly cadenced, even
songlike. (Page 11) When I could finally look his way, I
knew instantly that Cosimo had never healed from the wound inflicted by this
confrontation of sea, sky, and shore, and I could see from his face and the way
his hands gripped the rail that its full meaning was resurrecting in his mind
with all its primal force. He became visibly exuberant in reuniting with
the huge, ambient essence that had fashioned him, and I realized that his sea,
and his sea alone, must seem exactly as it did when he was a boy. Now I
know what I hear in his great voice is the sea itself surging forward in all
its grandeur, and how could it be otherwise? How else could he embrace the
gaping expanse before us? How else could he be heard over the roar of
this surf but by forging a voice of resounding bronze? (Page 56) How can anyone who spent his adult life
in the business of opera think for a moment that a singer onstage could be
singing to him? Yet the opposite question was now posed to me—how could
Cosimo not be singing to me alone—this question seemed for once the less
absurd. Aren’t I the man who made Cosimo love another man? Who
makes him, even in his atheism, wrestle with the mythology of Catholic
sin. Isn’t that why I saw him up there, before everyone, indicting me for
having cost him all? No. It’s just a performance. That’s what
he excels at—not honest displays. That’s why he can get his charge across
to me in the middle of such a devastating scene. And yet why do I, who
never believed in damnation, let alone a power that can damn, why have I become
so willing to receive his incrimination? No, this is more than a
performance. Art alone doesn’t change minds or hearts like this. (Page 140) Between waking and sleeping on the train
I saw a door to my past open. Suddenly I found myself peering at
the face of the man I'd not seen in a decade, a face I had at one time feared
and revered. I must have gone into shock. I don’t think I was
asleep. I remember only emerging from a vacancy when I saw Cosimo staring
at me from Ethan’s place—the seat across the aisle, indicting me as only he
can. “You look like you wish someone dead.” Even when I remain silent
Cosimo knows what I think. But even more perplexing is what I next
blurted out. For they were words that never before had conscious thoughts
affixed to them. “He is already dead. And though it's many years
after it happened, I still hate him. There’s no reason I should hate him
anymore. He died quite violently. Drowned, actually. You
would think his misfortune would've lessened my hate, if not dissipated it completely.”
“So, you wished him to die.” “What?” I said. “Wished it?” “And you
hated him so much you wished him to die violently.” He was inside me now.
Cosimo had reached my dark core. “What?! No!” “You did. That
is why you still hate him. Because he made you hate yourself for wishing
it while he was still alive.” Just like that he said it all, leaving me nothing
more to discover or admit. And all I could do was look out my window at
the passing scenery. (Page 76) "Mirella a girl?" Cosimo laughed a laugh I never heard from him before. "Mirella has not been a girl since
she was eight," he said. "No, already by eight she was a woman ... a woman with a quiet fury growing in her. I
mean you know nothing about the closeness of a poor family ... a family in a small house. That is why I know so much
about little girls," he said. "I know that's when they tell their first lies to boys. When they tell their first
lies to brothers ... to fathers. Lies about brothers and fathers. That's when they first imagine themselves to
be women. But because the world still sees them as little girls, they have to devise a special means to get what they
want. They've seen the big girls get what they want using sex, but they know that will not work for them. It only
gets them resented, punished, compromised. Rather than reveal their secret prematurely, they learn to use means that
have no name ... no word to describe them ... at least none that I'm aware of. Not even the great psychoanalysts have
put their fingers on it, Rags." (Page 92) "I should say immediately that it wasn't an electric light he saw, nor a candle flickering. It was an inner
light, that of a spirit, and it shone from a man sitting alone, low in a corner. Although he was beautiful and young,
the man looked miserable. His eyes didn't look out, though there were hundreds of people at the party to look at. He
spoke to no one and barely moved except to nod his head automatically to the jazz riffs playing loudly. Yet, unconsciously,
somehow, he'd shone a beacon to the man watching him, and from the start the pattern was set. One man watched the other:
the one who shone a light and the one who watched it from the shadows. (Page 165) “When he first came to me to compose the
music for Cain and Abel, Ragland said, “Gabriel, compose music that
shows the beauty of the first brothers. But you must also compose it to
show their ugliness, their humanity. Compose music that shows the
intensity and complexity of the first brothers’ love, but also the fear and
rivalry that love instilled in them. Perhaps I should tell you. In
his libretto, Cain not only kills Abel. He rapes him.” (Page 326) “In today’s world a gay man and a
straight man should be able to become steadfast partners and friends.
Right? And when their international success is trumpeted around the world,
they’ve proven that the sexuality that interminably threatens to separate them
can be made to lie forever dormant. Right?” (Page 107) “Give me some credit. There was a
lot I didn’t tell them. A lot that could be misconstrued. I could
have told them about that damn club you once belonged to. Oh … you think
it was a perfectly respectable organization … but under the
circumstances… The prosecutor? The jury? Would they think it? Its
name alone…‘Buddies!’ Really. A bunch of predatory faggots who get
together to voice their obsessive lust for straight men? Oh … we had this
conversation before, didn’t we. I was defending myself when you accused
me … I said, ‘I don’t hate straight men.’ And you said, ‘You just hate it when
gay men love them.’” (Page 319) “Those
women … they were
prostitutes. Cosimo hired prostitutes just to torture his sister …
prancing them around in front of her. At least they were fully clothed
... or I should say … clothed as fully as he cared for them to be. But I
know he never slept with them … never went near them when his sister wasn’t
around. I know this because of how old they were. I mean … well …
they weren’t girls anymore. Cosimo really loved girls. Young
girls. I often wondered if that wasn’t because of his sister somehow.” (Page 286) "But
I witnessed enough of the war waged between father and son to see that though Cosimo and his father sought to kill one another
off by blackening out the pictures of the past they saw before their eyes ... I could also see that they blackened them out
because they were so susceptible to their memories ... memories of what could only have been a deep love and admiration they
once felt for one another. Whatever accounts for the murdering spirit that came to fill that room, it couldn't make
them forget their love. What do you think could have come between them that way? What could have posed such a
threat to father and son?" (Page 342) “I'll
stop, Lucinda. But only after you admit that the origin of male power is found in men's self-denial. All of history
is little more than the story of men being kept from finding male love. It's unfortunate that the cost of women's happiness
is the breeding of crime and war that flourishes in the frustration of male gratification. But if not for these afflictions
... women would have to forfeit men altogether ... and it seems that only a fraction have so far learned they can stomach
it..” (Page 347) “Rags,
you know as well as we do.
Consumers … they’re driven by unconscious needs and desires … unconscious
associations with products, brands, celebrities. But Cosimo … he was
breaking code. You seriously don’t think we should have let the world
know what was going on between you. The way we were marketing Cosimo … we
were fulfilling a need. That’s all. It was nothing against
you. We’re not homophobes. But … we could have lost our pants with
all those rumors. Cosimo had everything else going for him. He just
had to be brought up to code.” (Page 315) “Cosimo
could have been any age ... he would still have become my son somehow. Do you understand? No, of course you don't.
How could you? Mothers and wives ... we keep it all secret from you. Husbands ... they are our sons. Sons
... they are our husbands. The lies we tell you may vary with your age and your role. But the lies ... they're
all designed to console you ... and to keep you.” (Page 304) “I
was prepared for this silence of
yours. I have seen it with condemned men before. I could interpret
a silence like yours to be pregnant with conceit: A man gloating in the power
he has over those who remain obsessed with his guilt … his power over a silly
priest clamoring for a confession in the name of a God he does not believe
in. No … you do not seem to me to be a conceited man. I can see Our
Lord in you too clearly. He too was silent in the days of his
persecution.” (Page 362) “Procreation
is no trick, Mr. Hughes. It is a creative force. Those who bring life into the world
are vital…” “And
those who secure life’s essential balance, Stefano ... they are crucial.” “How
do homosexuals secure the species, Mr. Hughes. I mean as sexual
beings?” “We
preserve the species, Stefano. We are conservation
realized. We provide nature’s … restraint on … your sexual … your
procreative extravagance. We keep your production from becoming …
overproduction … pollution … destruction … unbridled. We keep you from
becoming an obscene cosmic joke.” (Page 364) “Cosimo
was to then learn why there is
so much hate in the world. How else is it we are able to move on this
earth with so much love weighing us down? Love is too filling for life.
It stops us from doing everything we need to do to survive ... to
evolve. We must learn to hate just so we can move even a little
bit. So we can achieve. So we can live. As he realized this,
Cosimo also understood that even his fear had a purpose.” (Page 384) “I
read that story you wrote, Rags. I know that because
your stalker is obsessed with beauty … he can’t see the ugliness he is creating
to possess it. And because your Cain is blinded by the tradition and
ritual that’s been handed him … he can’t see the beauty of the things outside
them. You were trying to tell us … you showed us that whatever goodness and
beauty come with civilization … they must proceed from the remains of its crimes
as much as from its virtues ... that both grow out of our blindness to
them. That’s why the beautiful and the ugly … the good and the evil …
that’s why they coexist. And in turn … that’s why we don’t know where to
begin looking for truth and beauty. They are always transforming …
without our notice.” (Page 359) Click to order VOICE OF FORCE at createspace.com Click to order VOICE OF FORCE at amazon.com Click to order VOICE OF FORCE at barnesandnoble.com
Click to see G. Roger Denson Criticism & Theory
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