Beyond Gay: Denton Welch’s In Youth is Pleasure

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay considers Denton Welch’s autobiographical novel In Youth is Pleasure (1945) as a queer response to the classic bildungsroman design. It argues, first, that the novel exists structurally within Welch’s oeuvre as an instance of failed development or maturity, evidencing his inability to move beyond the ‘precious’, adolescent stories of his youth. I turn in this context to consider In Youth is Pleasure as a novel that is itself about immobile, unproductive forms of living. While the novel is structured around a common bildungsroman premise – a sensitive, isolated boy yearning for independence – it also resists the generic movement toward maturity and resolution. This is especially marked in the novel as a question of sexuality. In contrast to queer ‘coming of age’ stories that emphasise a progression toward sexual identification, Welch’s novel ultimately refuses the narrative logic of the closet. There is no single, illicit desire at the centre of the novel waiting to be exposed and claimed, but rather, an unlimited copia of pleasure that exists ‘beyond’ the terms of sexual identity altogether.