“Let’s go, Paul,” said Audrey.
His grandfather drove. The snow was young, and the world was quiet. Audrey navigated, narrating every turn of a drive Paul could have taken with his eyes shut. He watched the passing streetlights, their bright halos of falling snow. He watched for the hilltop glimpses of distant bridges.
Julian’s car wasn’t there. Paul could all but feel Audrey’s dread. “It’s a Chevy,” she said to their grandfather. “Little red two-door. Are you sure we didn’t pass it?”
Audrey led the way, across the dirty chessboard tiles and up the winding stairs. There in the second-floor hallway the door hung open, lamplight spilling across the carpet. She froze, and their grandfather gently squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll give you the all-clear once we know what’s inside,” he said, and she swallowed hard before nodding.
The apartment was empty; of course it was. The telephone receiver swayed in the circulating air, skimming the floor like a hanged man’s shoes. The floors were strewn with books and the open mouths of fallen drawers. Audrey sidled past and shuffled through the wreckage, but Paul’s grandfather didn’t let go of him.
There was an envelope waiting on the dining table, propped up against a drinking glass to ensure it would be seen. Audrey noticed it as soon as Paul did, and picked it up before he could reach it. Even without his glasses, he could see his name written on the outside. Not Pablo, not anymore; his full name and address, printed clearly, as if the post office would have to find him.
Audrey held the empty envelope between her fingers and examined what was inside. One was a photograph, the other a page torn from a book. Paul recognized the photo. It was the one they’d taken on the drive down from the bridge, underneath the low canopy of leaves.
“What does this mean, Paul?” Audrey asked him.
She handed both papers to him, but she meant the book page. To her the chess notation would be an incomprehensible cipher of numbers and letters. Paul would have struggled to read it himself, but he’d all but memorized the game—all the times he’d watched Julian replicate the endgame on his portable board, trying to pinpoint the moment the outcome was inescapable.
Paul looked at the boys in the photograph as if he’d never seen them before. Eyes locked, hands entwined just beneath the frame. They were windburned and beaming and younger than he could ever remember being.
The other two were talking quietly, as if to keep Paul from hearing. But he wasn’t listening. The letters on the book’s page seemed to run together.
U.S. Open 1970—Kazlauskas v. Kaplan—Championship Final.
The opening move was circled in red.
Author’s Note
I conceived of these characters in 2011 and began seriously writing These Violent Delights in 2013, but I have been trying to tell this story in various forms and iterations since I was a teenager myself. Along with many other members of the post-Columbine generation, I spent my childhood being told by the culture at large that adolescent anger was a latent threat of violence—that the alienation and sense of grievance living inside me could erupt at any moment into monstrosity. I was terrified of my own anger and of where it might lead me, perhaps without my even realizing it.
This likely explains why, after learning about the Leopold and Loeb case in my early teens, I was briefly but intensely enthralled with it—not aspirationally, but because I recognized enough basic similarities that I could see them as what I feared becoming. I was queer, Jewish, isolated, and both too smart for my own good and nowhere near the visionary genius I thought I was—and for a time this let me imagine that my own misanthropy could spiral out of control in the same way. The finer details of the Leopold and Loeb case turned out not to interest me (by now I’ve forgotten most of them), but I retained my fascination with the places in the case where I had seen some reflection of myself. This resulted in a book that ended up being more thematically concerned with those surface-level commonalities than with the actual case. With the skeleton of the plot squared away I was free to write about queer alienation, the provisional whiteness of Jews in America, the lonely arrogance of clever young adults.
The most prevailing concern of These Violent Delights, of course, is the kind of toxic and identity-consuming romantic friendship that many queer people experience in their teens. While obsessive love is clearly not bound by gender or orientation, there is, I think, a dialectic of both wanting and wanting to be that is specific to same-gender relationships of this kind. My own experiences of these relationships felt like another latent threat I carried inside me, one that fed off my alienation from the outside world by affirming it. Here, too, one can find the beginnings of this theme with the Leopold and Loeb case, but the greater spark of my inspiration—and in many ways the impetus to write the book—stemmed from the 1954 Parker-Hulme murder case in New Zealand. I learned of it in 2010 from the film Heavenly Creatures, whose emotional texture and tone have been a much more direct influence on this book than the murder as historical fact. This is another case I have never researched in deep detail, and which I have used solely as a jumping-off point for basic plot beats and themes.
While both these crimes have clear reflections in the plot of These Violent Delights, the characters, events, and dialogue are wholly invented, and are not intended as either factual record or as speculation on “what really happened.” This book is fiction, and all fiction is more autobiography than anything else. What the story records, ultimately, is the deep fear I once carried about my loneliness and what it could do.
Recognition
I recognize that this book was written on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish, Mohegan, Tonkawa, Chimakum, and Klallam people.
Acknowledgments
This book exists because of the people who believed in it. My incomparable agent, Caroline Eisenmann, understands this book to an almost uncanny degree—she has been a force of nature, as fierce an advocate as I could hope for, and I have never doubted for a moment that These Violent Delights belonged in her hands. The book truly found its shape under the guidance of Erin Wicks, whose sharp editorial eye is matched only by her unwavering compassion. I’m forever indebted to Erin for pushing the book, and me, as far as we could go; thanks to her, These Violent Delights is as close now to its ideal self as it ever could be.
I am also deeply grateful to the rest of the team at Harper Books. Many thanks to Nikki Baldauf in managing editorial and Caroline Johnson and Leah Carlson-Stanisic in the art department for all their work in bringing this book into the world; to Katherine Beitner and Kristin Cipolla, Tom Hopke, and Leah Wasielewski for helping it find its readers; and to Jonathan Burnham and Doug Jones for giving it a home.
Ollie Levy read and critiqued several iterations of this book, and listened patiently to countless hours of the frustration, self-doubt, and general fretting that writers euphemistically refer to as “bouncing a few ideas off you.” Ollie has a particular talent for asking piercing, insightful questions with such diplomacy that I was always delighted to help the book answer them. I must also offer a special commendation to Wyn Tarbell, who has probably spent more time reading this book than anyone else—including the very first shaky fragments, which I’m certain would never have evolved into a book without Wyn’s early kindness and support. Many other lovely friends have read along and helped this story reach the page. My deepest thanks to Marissa Beverly, Lindy Bolzern, Chrissy Ebbert, Arden Harbert, Kae Hunter, Gabriel Lippincott, Trina Luciano, Briana Pipczynski, Alex Max Schaffner, Jessie Taylor, and A.M. Tuomala—their encouragement has meant the world to me.
Writing my art history master’s thesis was as rigorous an education in writing as any MFA, and to a great degree this is thanks to my committee head, Kelly Dennis. In terms both funny and exacting, she gave insights into pacing and thematic focus that have been invaluable in writing and revising this book—not to mention helping me develop a deep appreciation and thick skin for constructive criticism. (After sitting at her desk first thing in the morning, w
atching her red-pen through my thesis pages line by line, editing has been a piece of cake.) Every “great, galloping Germanic sentence” is better for her mentorship.
Many other teachers have helped shape me as a writer, as a thinker, as a person. My deepest gratitude goes to Ken Allan, Margaret Breen, Anne D’Alleva, Anke Finger, Naomi Hume, Melanie Feinberg, and Andrea Roth. And I dedicate this book in part to the memory of David Heller, a brilliant professor and deeply kind man who deserved a much longer life than he was given.
Finally, and with boundless love, I thank my mother, Leslie Nemerever, for supporting me unconditionally through this process and for all my life. I’ve told her before and will tell her again that she gave me a wonderful childhood, suffused with art, imagination, and delightful strangeness. She has always encouraged me to follow my passions wherever they might take me, and I’ve learned so much from her own drive to discover and create. I truly could never ask for a better mother.
To these people, and to the rest of my friends and family: I am so glad and so humbled to have you in my life. Thank you for everything.
—MN
January 2020
About the Author
MICAH NEMEREVER studied art history and queer theory at the University of Connecticut, where he wrote his MA thesis on gender anxiety in the art of the Weimar Republic. He is a prolific home chef and an avid amateur historian of queer cinema. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
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Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction. While historical events inspired the plot and some basic details, this work should not be interpreted as depiction of, or commentary on, these events. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other names, characters and places, and all dialogue and incidents portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.
these violent delights. Copyright © 2020 by Micah Nemerever. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Caroline Johnson
Cover images © Clique Images/Stocksy United (young man); © Roman Sigaev/Shutterstock (brush stroke)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-296365-9
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-296363-5
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