Classic Literature and a New Society:
Vikram Seth’s choice to write The Golden Gate in verse
Vikram Seth chose each aspect of The Golden Gate as a way to show the world
the cultural changes happening in San Francisco in the late 1970s and 1980s. The
choice to set the novel in San Francisco is both relevant to history and to Seth’s life.
In terms of history, late 1970s and 1980s San Francisco was a center for liberal
activism and the counter cultural movement. It started with the “Beat” poets of the
1950s, who started the trend of celebrating alternative lifestyles and rejecting set
standards. “Beat” poets are most famous for exploring different sexualities,
religion’s place in the modern world and their portrayal of the whole human
existence. In 1967, the Summer of Love brought thousands to San Francisco in what
is now called the “Hippie Revolution.” That summer turned the Haight-Ashbury
neighborhood into a community based in “free love” and sexual and social
inhibition. This sexual awakening brought a wave of LGBTQIA activism to match the
growing community. San Francisco is home to both the first lesbian rights
organization in the US and the first openly gay person to run for public office. Seth’s
characters are thrust, just as many 20-somethings actually were, into a city that was
moving drastically faster than the country, and the world, around it. San Francisco
is a superb foundation for Seth to build a narrative around the lives of characters
that average readers have never seen.
San Francisco was not only a historical choice for Seth, but also a personal
choice. Seth was born in Calcutta, India in the early 1950s. He was educated in
London as a child and again as a teenager. After graduating from a college in
England, he moved to California for graduate school at Stanford. This would have
been around the mid 1970s, the peak of San Francisco’s wave of unconventionality.
The welcoming atmosphere that his new home provided, especially in contrast to
that of Indian and British culture, must have shocked Seth, a self-identified bisexual.
Two of Seth’s main characters are gay, meaning that many of his other characters
have to deal with contrasting perceptions about the LGBTQIA community. This
novel comes off the heels of first assertion of AIDS by the medical community. At
first diagnosis, AIDS was called GRID, which stood for gay-related autoimmune
disease. This caused not only a panic in the gay community, but also a backlash
from the rest of the world. LGBTQIA individuals were suddenly cloaked under a
surge of anti-gay sentiments and general contempt. The Golden Gate, published in
1986, is the culmination of Seth’s integration into San Francisco at the peak of a
great controversy and his quest to portray the city in a better light.
Seth writes the novel in verse to communicate a larger message. The entirety
of the novel is written in fourteen line stanzas with rhyming couplet endings and the
following rhyme scheme: A B A C C D D E F F E G G. This is a combination of both
standard Petrarchan and Shakespearean rhyme schemes. Petrarch popularized the
fourteen-line stanza construction. His poems presented a problem or asserted a
desire in the first lines, called the Volta, and then in the last few lines, he changed the
rhyme scheme to indicate that he was stating his final thoughts. Seth got the idea
for rhyming couplets from Shakespeare. Some of the most popular pieces of
Shakespearean literature include the rhyming end couplet. The couplet serves as a
concise conclusion to the previous lines, and usually, makes a poignant last remark
about the topic. Both Petrarch and Shakespeare are famous for being able to convey
intense love and grief within strict parameters. Seth’s distortion and recombination
of both Petrarch’s and Shakespeare’s styles can be likened to the innovative styles of
“Beat” poets. Seth’s recombination of classic styles is a conscious decision.
Furthermore, he portrays complex and unusual characters in common situations.
Seth allows the reader to take in the story with a familiar writing style, before
presenting them with his unconventional characters.
Seth drew inspiration from many other famous writers, including Homer,
Virgil, along with referencing the Bible and other popular literary devices. In the
opening stanza of the novel, Seth quotes four different archetypical conventions of
beginning a story. The first is “Hail Muse” (1.1 line 2). The invocation of a muse is a
common literary device used in Greek mythology, literature and poetry. Both
Homer and Virgil open the Odyssey and the Aeneid, respectively, by calling upon a
muse to help them recount the story of a great hero. Epic poetry often cites muses
as the tools by which they are able to tell such long, intricate tales. Next, Seth quotes
two literary conventions that have unclear beginnings due to their prevalence: first,
“Dear reader” (1.1 line 2) and then “once upon/ a time” (1.1 lines 2-3). “Dear
reader” is the classic introduction of an exposition character, in this case an
omniscient narrator. Authors use exposition characters to convey to the audience
information that the protagonist already knows, mostly as a way to jump directly
into the story. Seth creates an omniscient narrator, possibly in his own voice, that
gives the reader valuable background information. “Once upon a time” is a story
opener that dates back to the 13th century, but was popularized by The Brothers
Grimm, who started stories with “es war einmal” which was translated into “once
upon a time.” Seth finishes this ode to traditional openers with the phrase, “There
lived a man” (1.1 line 4). This phrase comes from the first lines of The Book of Job, a
tale that addresses the justification for compliant worshippers to suffer. Seth starts
the novel with recognizable literary phrases to introduce the trend of constructing
well-known concepts of marriage, love, sex, religion, heroism and death and then
deconstructing them as they apply to San Francisco residents.
After the dramatic set up of the first stanza, Seth introduces his less than
heroic main character, John Brown. This completely generic name is an indication
that John is supposed to be an “everyman.” An everyman in literature is an
individual that is seemingly ordinary, although constantly placed in extraordinary
situations. The reader is assumed to identify with an “everyman,” allowing them to
more easily put themselves in situations that they are unfamiliar with. Seth hopes
that John will do just this for the reader. John is described as average looking and
“dogmatic” (1.4 line 3), and is supposed to represent white Americans who are
neither very conservative nor very liberal, which Seth can assume would be the
majority of his audience. The typical reader of The Golden Gate when it was first
published might have been a young “yuppie,” who had never experienced the
counter cultural movements happening in San Francisco, so a John Brown would be
a relatable lens from which to view the story. John’s reactions to issues, especially
to Phil’s sexuality, paints him in an unattractive light, and hopefully presses the
reader to stop identifying with him and question why they identified with him in the
first place. This is a common technique used by Shakespeare called “projected
audience.” Shakespeare often had a character that emulated his average viewer.
This character would say things that the general public agreed with, but then do
something that was more controversial, the point being to get audience members to
reexamine themselves. Seth creates an “everyman” figure to force the reader out of
their comfort zone in the wake of groundbreaking social change.
The interaction between John and Phil represents the interaction between
the reader and Seth. Seth creates Phil, a bisexual character, with the knowledge that
even in the LGBTQIA community bisexuals are looked down upon. It was, and still is,
assumed that bisexuality is a transitioning phase and that it is impossible to be
attracted to both sexes simultaneously. Seth illustrates this with Ed’s recalling of
the phrase, “Fall for a bi, and you’ll get burned” (5.10, line 14). Phil serves as a
multi-dimensional character, outside of the “promiscuous bisexual” stereotype. Phil
first marries a woman and content in this relationship, which attacks the
assumption that bisexual men are simply partially-closeted gay men. When Phil’s
marriage fails, it is him that keeps their son, Paul, and raises him. The tender
interactions between father and son make it impossible for the reader not to
sympathize with Phil. When Seth introduces Ed, he creates a relationship
independent of the bedroom. Many believe that homosexuality is simply based in
sex, but Seth paints a relationship much deeper than that. Seth constructs Ed as a
devout Christian to incite the very same controversy between liberal and religious
communities. Like “Beat” poets, Seth is interested in where religion fits into new
liberal cultures. He doesn’t ostracize the reader by discounting religion entirely, but
instead uses Phil’s love to Ed to make a case against the condemnation of
homosexuality. Phil says:
“Given a God, if he had seen us
And he is just and loving-kind,
Why should you think that he would mind
My touch, your trembling, our caresses,
The loving smart in your clear eyes,
My hands ruffling your hair, our sighs?
If anything, I’d say he blesses
The innocent bodies that express
So forthright such happiness”
(4.53 lines 6-14)
Seth questions why it would be wrong for two people to love each other. He asks
why would any God, who looks down upon Phil and Ed, condemn the genuine
compassion between them. Similar to how the Book of Job questions why those that
explicitly follow the Bible still suffer, Seth wants the reader to question why a God
would create beings to be homosexual, and then punish them for it. Phil says, “It
seems to me a curious fashion/ To give a man an appetite,/Then tell him a
starvations ration/Is all he’s due for…” (8.28 lines 1-4). It makes no sense, not to
mention is downright cruel, for an entire community to be told that their love is
incorrect. Seth pleads with the reader, through Phil’s appeal to Ed, to acknowledge
that the LGBTQIA community isn’t a hedonistic breeding ground for debauchery, but
instead a marginalized group by an uneducated majority.
Seth redefines love, sex and marriage with Phil’s two relationships. Seth uses
Phil’s relationship with Ed to justify homosexuality, without denouncing the sexual
and lustful aspects of it. His point isn’t that the LGBTQIA community is human
because they value love over sexual pleasure, but that the community is human
because it can value both simultaneously. In a conversation with Ed, Phil questions
anyone’s ability to follow the Bible explicitly, and says, “What’s wrong with sex? The
more the better/If you like someone…” (4.51 lines 3-4). This combined with lines 6-
14 from stanza 4.53 (quoted above) is meant to celebrate the integration of sex into
everyday culture. The “Hippie Revolution” of this time prioritized women’s sexual
liberation, which then permeated through every liberal community. The idea that
sex isn’t something dirty is the first step in redefining love and family. The 1970s
and 80s reconstructed people’s views on what love should look like by attacking
marriage, an institution that is supposedly based in love. With the rise of the
LGBTQIA community came whispers of “gay marriage,” a topic that had never been
brought to the foreground before. Seth chooses to take a distinct stance on this by
inquiring why marriage is a standard for love at all. Phil and Liz’s fast-paced
relationship is the perfect example of a new way of thinking about marriage. Gay
rights activists argue that the legal benefits of marriage should be allotted to all
American citizens, and that the religious part should be the choice of the individuals
involved. Phil and Liz’s loveless marriage seeks to show that marriage itself isn’t
love, but instead a contractual agreement between two people recognized by the
state. In stanza 11.20, lines 9-14, Phil appeals to Liz by saying:
“…love’s a pretty poor forecaster,
I loved a woman—and was dropped
I loved a man—and that too flopped.
Passion’s a prelude to disaster.”
Seth predicts an argument that is still in play with gay rights activists today. New
fast-paced relationships become necessary in the technological world. The
technological world creates a need for stability and immediate gratification where
love and marriage may not occupy the same space. Like Phil and Liz, new
generations may choose stability and contentment over compassion when it comes
to marriage, and in that case, they can examine marriage through the lens of its legal
benefits, not its religious associations. Seth strives to prove that once marriage is
deemed secular then there is no reason for “gay marriage” ‘s illegality.
Verse is the ultimate contrast in this novel. The question that
pervades, and goes outwardly unanswered, is why the novel is written in verse.
Why does Seth choose to restrict himself, vocabulary and space wise, when he wants
to convey such complex issues? Seth spends incredible amounts of time choosing
words and molding stanzas in the hopes of creating a piece of art. He tries to
emulate how both Petrarch and Shakespeare capture audiences with their ability to
both rhyme, and convey exactly the correct emotion. A reader must tip their hat to
any author that puts that much time into their craft. The community built in San
Francisco was stigmatized with being dirty, raunchy and against normal family
values, but this novel works to reverse that. If Seth can describe people that live in
San Francisco with a familiar lyrical melody, then he can assert that their culture
isn’t so unfamiliar either. This “counter cultural” is actually just the recombination
of past ideas to fit a world that acknowledges a breadth of human existence.
The Golden Gate’s amalgamations of classic literary structures serves as a
contrast to Seth’s trailblazing take on modern relationships and lifestyles of twenty-
something’s in San Francisco. He presents the reader with a frame that they already
know, namely a novel based in a city and centered around young people looking for
love and satisfaction, but then fills it with characters, situations and outcomes that
are unexpected. As a member of that community, Seth knows the complexity and
the beauty of its inhabitants. Seth’s placing of well-known narrative styles next to
his experiences forces the reader to reevaluate their prejudices. Contrast, in this
case, is the best way to prove Seth’s point. His goal is to prove that people that live
outside of societal norms and constrictions are exactly like any reader that picks up
The Golden Gate. His characters, especially his main ones, possess traits that make
them a minority in America, but by making their minority status not the outline of
their entire narrative, Seth gives these stereotyped people multiple dimensions. It is
easy to deny a one-dimensional being personhood, but it is impossible to see oneself
and the one’s own community reflected in others and still believe that they don’t
deserve basic rights. The Golden Gate is a plea to an ill-informed audience to
examine the spark in San Francisco and ask themselves if it is really so “counter
cultural” after all.