SOURCE: “F. O. Matthiessen: The Critic as Homosexual,” in Gaiety Transfigured: Gay Self-Representation in American Literature, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, pp. 85-102.

In the following essay, Bergman considers the impact of Matthiessen's sexuality on his work.

Despite the publicity that attended F. O. Matthiessen's suicide in 1950, and the books that were subsequently written about him, including May Sarton's 1955 novel Faithful are the Wounds, it was not until a quarter of a century later that his homosexuality became public knowledge. During his life, Matthiessen had not tried to hide the fact, but neither had he made it a public issue. Friends, colleagues, and even students widely understood that Matthiessen was gay, but they felt in large measure what William E. Cain has recently said, that the “facts of Matthiessen's sexual … life … do not have much direct bearing at all” on his work (Matthiessen, 48).

Matthiessen would have disagreed. He...