Walt Whitman, gay love and a posthumous novel

Daniel Dell Blake doesn’t want to fit in. He wants the right to stand out.

But in a small fictional town of Elysium, New York, that’s a dangerous wish.

Blake is the main character in – Song of Myself: A Novel.

He was created four decades ago by a gay rights pioneer – Arnie Kantrowitz.

Now – nearly three years after Kantrowitz’s death – his partner has succeeded in finally getting the novel published.

On an overcast day in New York City’s West Village, Dr. Larry Mass shuffled across the polished concrete floor of the New York City AIDS Memorial.

He’s part of the Stonewall Generation — a cohort of LGBTQ activists who were energized by the Stonewall uprising in 1969.

Dr. Mass is a co-founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and he wrote the first news report on AIDS.

At the memorial – he stopped at the end of an inscription etched into the floor.

“Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged,

Missing me one place, search another.,

I stop somewhere here, waiting for you,” Mass read.

Those are the final lines from Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself,” which is included in his seminal poetry collection Leaves of Grass.

For Mass, Whitman, the poet, is fundamentally entwined with memories of his partner.

“No matter what horror or tragedy you’ve gone through, no matter what pain, no matter what color you are, no matter what religion. He embodies that. He will always be there,” as Mass began to weep.

Dr. Larry Mass reflects on his partner Arnie Kantrowitz’s legacy at New York City’s AIDS Memorial.

Ryan Benk/NPR

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Ryan Benk/NPR

Sitting near the memorial’s fountain, he explained why Whitman’s words have long been so important to many queer people.

“Society does not acknowledge these people in any way, shape or form,” he said. “They have no idea even who they are. And here’s this poetic voice of humanity who keeps saying again and again ‘I am your voice. I am your spirit. I am the grass on which you stand.’”

Mass’s partner – Arnie Kantrowitz – was not only a scholar of Walt Whitman – he considered him part of his life and soul.

That closeness informs Kantrowitz’ novel, “Song of Myself” – and the journey of its protagonist, Daniel Dell Blake.

In the book, a knowing teacher gifts young Daniel a copy of Leaves of Grass, and Daniel carries that collection of poetry along with him – from the home of his tyrannically religious father, to New York City and his first love, to a World War II POW camp, and then back to the U.S., where Daniel is jailed for sodomy.

The character’s experiences mirror the history of gay life in the 20th century.

At a book launch event last month in New York City’s LGBT Community Center, friends and fellow activists talked as much about Arnie Kantrowitz’s life and legacy as the fictional adventure he wrote.

John Adrian took one of Kantrowitz’s gay literature classes at the College of Staten Island in the 1990s.

“He was so open and honest about who he was and I thought ‘he’s awfully bold,’” Adrian said.

Adrian added that the scholar and gay rights activist taught him to be unapologetic.

That characteristic was on full display in a 1973 appearance on Jack Paar Tonite, when Kantrowitz turned a homophobic barb back on the late night host, winning laughs from the crowd and even getting a chuckle from Paar himself.

It’s that cleverly charismatic version of Arnie Kantrowitz that the gay activist wrote into his own novel, imagining a meet-up with the adult Daniel Dell Blake at a rally.

Kantrowitz co-founded the organization now known as GLAAD – and was recognized in the 1970’s for his autobiography “Under the Rainbow: Growing up Gay.”

But as he got older, he wasn’t as widely known as others in his circle.

Judith Stellboum, who taught literature at State Island College with Kantrowitz, said the man she worked with just didn’t care about publicity.

“He never was pretentious. If you didn’t know about his book he never would say ‘I’m Arnie Kantrowitz and I wrote the first book about … ‘ You know, he didn’t have an ego like that,” she said.

Kantrowitz started writing his Song of Myself in the 1980s – and an editor’s note says that since it’s being published posthumously, the decision was made to only copy edit the story. It also acknowledges that the novel is a product of its time, and could have used sensitivity readers to review some of his characters.

Still, the novel is empathetic and funny and fiercely defensive of all marginalized people – something Kantrowitz was always known for.

Back at the AIDS Memorial, Dr. Larry Mass remembered when his partner gave up on publishing his novel.

“Arnie’s heart was broken that it didn’t find a home in this first go-around, but that happens. It was also happening during the height of AIDS and he didn’t want to bother people,” Mass recalled.

Kantrowitz just thought there were probably more important stories to tell at the time, but Mass thought then – as he does now — that his partner’s words are timeless.

Mass hopes that, just like how Daniel Dell Blake finds himself in Walt Whitman’s words in Song of Myself, maybe some other fellow traveler might some day find themselves in the words of Arnie Kantrowitz.