by John Donovan
Davy, though mystified by his urges and feelings, is a kid with his head screwed on tight. He sees through a lot of the crap that adults say or do. He sees his flawed parents, and he resolves to be a better person, to not make the mistakes they have made. He's honest and humane. And he's taking things one day at a time. He'll realize his true feelings soon enough, and he'll face them with honesty and integrity. This, I think, is what contemporary teenagers today can take a way from this novel: Don't be afraid to be true to who you are, but get to know yourself first. Get comfortable with yourself. Love and respect yourself. Everything else will follow in time.
I first read Donovan's novel when I was an adult, openly gay, comfortable in my own skin. But I now wonder: what if I had come across this novel as a teenager? Would it have made any kind of impact? I like to think it would have given me some comfort, knowing I wasn't, in fact, alone in the world. There were other boys like me out there. And seeing yourself reflected in the culture as a visible, strong hero of a story is as important today as it was in 1969. Anyone who picks up I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. today-forty years after it first made its appearance-will still find this lovely novel to be a relevant and compelling story of a boy trying to find his place in the world.
Martin Wilson was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He received a BA from Vanderbilt University and an MFA from the University of Florida, where one of his short stories won a Henfield/Transatlantic Review Award. His debut novel, What They Always Tell Us (Delacorte Press, 2008), won the Alabama Author Award for best young adult book. The novel was also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, an Indie Next Selection, an ALA-ALSC Rainbow List Selection, and a CCBC Choices Book. He lives in New York City. Visit him at www.martinwilsonwrites.com
Taking the Trip with Davy and Altschuler, and What Happened Along the Way
BY KATHLEEN T. HORNING
Perhaps by today's standards, John Donovan's I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. seems a bit tame, but when you consider it in the context of the times in which it was published, it is downright revolutionary. It was published just a few months before the famous Stonewall Riots erupted on June 27, 1969, noted today as the catalyst for a national gay liberation movement.
During the months Donovan was writing his novel and at the time it was first published, gays and lesbians had even fewer rights in the United States than they have today. Homosexuality was still classified as a psychological disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, and homosexual acts were considered a criminal offense in every state except Illinois. Most gays and lesbians had to go underground in order to survive. They were largely invisible in real life and most certainly invisible in youth literature. In retrospect, it's amazing that such a book was written, let alone published.
It started with a query letter from Donovan to editor Ursula Nordstrom, the head of the Department of Books for Boys and Girls of Harper & Row (now HarperCollins), asking if she would consider publishing his novel about "buddy-love." Perhaps Donovan put out those initial feelers to Nordstrom because he thought that, as a lesbian, she might be more open to a gay novel, and might better understand the issues. Speaking about the publication of I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. in a 1979 interview that appeared in The Lion and the Unicorn, Nordstrom said: "I had for years said that I wished someone would write a book that would give just a hint that there could be a romantic feeling between two persons of the same sex. It happens to almost everybody when they're growing up, a crush on a teacher or something, and they outgrow it or they don't outgrow it."
In her years at Harper, Nordstrom had established a solid record of publishing cutting-edge children's novels, including It's Like This, Cat by Emily Cheney Neville, which won the Newbery Medal in 1964. Like I'll Get There..., it also deals with a disgruntled teen named Davey, living in New York City, who feels a growing disconnect from his less-than-perfect family. It's Like This, Cat and the groundbreaking Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, published by Harper a year earlier, helped to usher in what was then called "New Realism"-novels for young readers that depicted life as it really was, rather than as adults wanted children to believe it was. New Realism was quickly replacing the familiar and comfortable romanticism of children's books published in the first half of the 20th century, and, although popular with young readers, it was not entirely accepted by the literary establishment in the children's book field in the 1960s.
It's Like This, Cat was also an early example of the newly developing genre of young adult literature, books featuring teen protagonists, aimed at teen readers. As those born in the post-World War II baby boom entered adolescence, there was an increasing recognition of the importance of the teen years, and publishing books specifically for this new generation of teens was seen as an important way to meet their educational and recreational needs.
Nordstrom responded enthusiastically to Donovan's query letter, saying that she had been waiting to publish a good book involving "buddy-love problems" for a long time, and that she would be happy if he would be the one to write one successfully. She received and accepted the manuscript six weeks later, on August 5, 1968, and she and Donovan worked to get the manuscript into final form by September. Several of Nordstrom's editorial letters concerning the book were published in Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, edited by Leonard Marcus (HarperCollins, 1998).
We don't see Donovan's side of the correspondence, but from Nordstrom's letters to him, we can see that there was considerable talk about how a children's book with a gay theme might be received. Nordstrom expected there would be a lot of resistance to the book, and assured Donovan that they would be ready to fight it as "intelligently and gracefully as possible." With that in mind, she asked his permission to send a copy of the manuscript to Dr. Frances Ilg, Director of the Gessell Institute of Child Development at Yale University, hoping for an advance quote to put on the jacket. In her letter to Dr. Ilg, Nordstrom writes that this would mark the first book on the topic for young readers, and they were worried about adults who might stand in the way of the young readers who would read it with "some recognition and some relief." Dr. Ilg provided a three-sentence testimonial that was used on the book jacket:
A moment of sex discovery is told simply but poignantly in the life of a thirteen-year-old boy through his relationship with a friend of his own age and sex. It is how he absorbs this experience that becomes the key to what will happen next. Davy is able to face the experience and make his choice.
Nordstrom's concerns about resistance to the book turned out to be largely unnecessary, at least in the library world, where she feared the book would meet its harshest critics. It was widely and positively reviewed in the professional library journals that recommended books for purchase by both school and public librarians, and it received starred reviews in two of the most influential library journals: Kirkus and School Library Journal. Interestingly, it was reviewedand recommended-twice by Catholic Library World, once for Catholic school libraries and once in a review section for young adults, where it was labeled "HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR YOUNG ADULTS AS WELL AS ADULT READERS."
These reviews show a great deal of sensitivity and appreciation for Donovan's depiction of the boys' relationship. In his School Library journal review, Michigan librarian Bruce L. MacDuffie wrote that the story provided a "... steady confirmation that self-knowledge is strength, self-respect renewable, [and] mutual respect central to all relationships." The unnamed reviewer for Kirkus concluded "It's a very moral (and discerning book) about a boy, not a moralizing or exploitative fix on a problem."
Outside the library community, reviews were mixed. Although it received glowing reviews in Book World and Saturday Review, the critics writing for the Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times Book Review both found it unsettling, with the latter oddly referring to Davy's affection for his dog as "bestiality." The review in the Atlantic Monthly was the only one, however, to offer strong criticism of the boys' relationship, saying that "... the
application of grammar school jargon to corruption and passions is neither natural nor comforting." These two reviews were the exception. Overall, the book was both highly regarded and recommended for young readers at the time it was published.
Since then, critics have been less kind to the book, pointing out that it falls into the same trap many early gay teen novels did, which was to punish the main character with a car accident leading to death or serious injury. (In Davy's case, his dog was hit by a car.) Some have also criticized the book for depicting gayness as a choice or suggesting that being gay is just a passing phase, and they worried that this would misinform young readers. Many critics have also zeroed in on the guilt Davy felt after "making out" with his best friend Altschuler, especially when he feels responsible for his dog's death as a result.
None of them, however, commented on Davy's age as being significant-he is just thirteen, with a fairly naive view of the world, and it is his view of the world that informs the novel, as he is groping his way in the dark and into adolescence. He takes his cues from the people around him: from his late grandmother ("... a great old girl. She was real stiff by nature but she had respect for me...") and from his unstable, homophobic mother who completely overreacts when she learns Davy shared a romantic kiss with his best friend. And from his father, who is divorced from Davy's mother. In a heart-to-heart talk, he reassures Davy that what he and Altschuler did was normal, a phase that he would outgrow. More significantly, however, he gives Davy an important message about self-preservation:
Then Father talks a lot about how hysterical people sometimes get when they discover that other people aren't just what they are expected to be. He tells me there are Republicans who are always secretly disappointed when friends turn out to be Democrats, and Catholics who like their friends to be Catholic, and so forth. He says that such people are narrow-minded, he believes, and funny, too, unless they become hysterical about getting everyone to be just alike. Then they are dangerous. They become religious bigots, super-patriots, super-antipatriotic, and do I understand? I tell him I think I do, but can't people learn to understand other people? He thinks they can, but only if they want to.
Even by today's standards, this is a powerful and radical message for a father to give to a son who might be gay.
Another aspect of the book that's usually ignored by critics is Davy's love interest, Altschuler. He's also thirteen but he's just a little bit wiser than Davy, and certainly more comfortable with who he is. Davy looks up to Altschuler and even calls him "the kid philosopher" after Altschuler tells him, "Life should be beautiful." When Davy confronts him after his dog is killed, Altschuler tells him that he's crazy, that it wasn't his fault that the dog died, and it wasn't because of their "queering around."
"Go ahead and feel guilty if you want to. I don't."
"You don't, really?"
"No," Altschuler says.
"I guess the important thing is not to do it again," I say.
"I don't care. If you think it's dirty or something like that, I wouldn't do it again. If I were you."
The book concludes with the two boys repairing their friendship by agreeing to respect each other. The ending is wonderfully vague and open to interpretation. We don't know if Davy and Altschuler will get back together in the romantic sense. After their last conversation, it seems plausible. Actually, Donovan has brilliantly constructed the novel so that it offers one message (it's just a phase) to the audience who needs that message in order to find the book acceptable, and another (be true to yourself) for those who needed to find the recognition and relief Ursula Nordstrom had hoped the book would offer to some young readers. I like to think Davy and Altschuler found that beautiful life together, or at least started out on the same journey to get there.
Today's books with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender teen characters shows that both society and young adult literature have come a long way in the forty years since I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. was first published. They feature more diversity in terms of themes and characters; original storylines, both comic and tragic; and overt expressions of sexuality and gender. We've gotten here in a large part thanks to the pioneering efforts of John Donovan, and to the courage of his publisher and the librarians who served as a bridge rather than a barrier between the book and its readers. They showed us that life for gay kids not only could be beautiful, but should be, and that it was a trip worth taking.
Kathleen T. Horning is the director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
John Donovan was president/executive director of the Children's Book Council from 1967 to the time of his death in 1992. In that capacity, he worked tirelessly for the promotion of children's literature. He also used his influence to encourage publishers and educators to work together in finding reading materials for the classroom. He was the author of six books for children (two picture books and four YA novels).
The author of the young adult novel Dive, Stacey Donovan is a novelist, editor, writing coach, and ghostwriter. She also writes nonfiction and specializes in Social Media. Visit her at www.donovanedits.com.
