Acknowledgments  vii

Introduction: Referring to Same-Sex Sexualities in the First Person  1

1. Gide, Bourget, and Proust Talking  29

2. Questions of Register in and around 1902  57

3. Colette, the Moulin Rouge, and Les Vrilles  94

4. Gide and Posterity  165

5. Prousts Queer Metalepses  193

6. Sodom and Gomorrah: Prousts Narrators First Person  215

Epilogue  250

Notes  259

Works Cited  303

Index  317

“Since same-sex-attracted men and women still argue about how to define themselves and others today, it is all that much more interesting to see how three particularly masterful users of language went about doing so when the field was new and virtually wide open.”—Richard M. Berrong, The Gay & Lesbian Review

“This is an inspired book by a seasoned scholar. . . . Essential.”—C.B. Kerr, Choice

"[E]ngaging and often entertaining and, by dint of its diversified engagement, will be very useful to scholars in disciplines beyond sexuality studies and narratology."—J. Marina Davies, Novel

“This is a brilliant and important book. I have been entirely won over by it.”—Emma Wilson, French Studies

“Michael Lucey constructs a deft and innovative model for thinking about the problems Colette, André Gide, Marcel Proust, and others faced as they struggled to articulate a first person that might aptly speak about — and, just as often, speak for — same-sex sexualities in a fraught linguistic, literary, social, and political arena. . . . This notion of the I as a figure—rather than as a subject—is one of the most important and exciting contributions Never Say I makes. . . . Lucey’s formulation of the I as a figure allows us to see how each I can indeed be read, so long as it is read with care and attention to the fields within which it occurs. And it allows us to see more clearly the sophistication and simultaneous earnestness and playfulness with which these novelists, theorists of the self, handled the critical task of learning to articulate a queer first person.”—David Namie, GLQ

“Highly recommended….[A] fascinating first volume. Though what Lucey will achieve in his highly anticipated second volume remains to be seen, it is hoped that the work in progress will be just as impressive, consequential, and valuable as the first to scholars of gay and lesbian studies and French literature alike.”—Brian Gordon Kennelly, The French Review

“Never Say I is a clear, cogent literary history of the articulation of the discourses and representations of same-sex desire and homosexuality in early twentieth-century French literature, and it is an important addition to our understanding of the literature and culture of the period.”—Lawrence R. Schehr, Modern Philology

“Lucey’s impressive volume is an original and insightful exploration. . .“—Rachel Mesch, Symposium

“Never Say I offers detailed, closely argued readings of a substantial corpus of novels, letters, review essays, and journalistic pieces, and represents an important contribution not only to our knowledge of the three authors in question, but also to the historiography of sexuality.”—Madeleine Dobie, Modern Fiction Studies

“Though the book’s title highlights the role of Gide, Proust, and Colette in this process, Lucey’s study offers much more than a rereading of these three well-studied figures and their work. Instead, he not only investigates the “position-taking” that came to characterize their literary output but also seeks to understand these positions in the context of an intimate web of writers, critics, and others in the cultural elite in France in this period.”—Patricia Tilburg, Journal of the History of Sexuality

“Since same-sex-attracted men and women still argue about how to define themselves and others today, it is all that much more interesting to see how three particularly masterful users of language went about doing so when the field was new and virtually wide open.”—Richard M. Berrong, The Gay & Lesbian Review

“This is an inspired book by a seasoned scholar. . . . Essential.”—C.B. Kerr, Choice

"[E]ngaging and often entertaining and, by dint of its diversified engagement, will be very useful to scholars in disciplines beyond sexuality studies and narratology."—J. Marina Davies, Novel

“This is a brilliant and important book. I have been entirely won over by it.”—Emma Wilson, French Studies

“Michael Lucey constructs a deft and innovative model for thinking about the problems Colette, André Gide, Marcel Proust, and others faced as they struggled to articulate a first person that might aptly speak about — and, just as often, speak for — same-sex sexualities in a fraught linguistic, literary, social, and political arena. . . . This notion of the I as a figure—rather than as a subject—is one of the most important and exciting contributions Never Say I makes. . . . Lucey’s formulation of the I as a figure allows us to see how each I can indeed be read, so long as it is read with care and attention to the fields within which it occurs. And it allows us to see more clearly the sophistication and simultaneous earnestness and playfulness with which these novelists, theorists of the self, handled the critical task of learning to articulate a queer first person.”—David Namie, GLQ

“Highly recommended….[A] fascinating first volume. Though what Lucey will achieve in his highly anticipated second volume remains to be seen, it is hoped that the work in progress will be just as impressive, consequential, and valuable as the first to scholars of gay and lesbian studies and French literature alike.”—Brian Gordon Kennelly, The French Review

“Never Say I is a clear, cogent literary history of the articulation of the discourses and representations of same-sex desire and homosexuality in early twentieth-century French literature, and it is an important addition to our understanding of the literature and culture of the period.”—Lawrence R. Schehr, Modern Philology

“Lucey’s impressive volume is an original and insightful exploration. . .“—Rachel Mesch, Symposium

“Never Say I offers detailed, closely argued readings of a substantial corpus of novels, letters, review essays, and journalistic pieces, and represents an important contribution not only to our knowledge of the three authors in question, but also to the historiography of sexuality.”—Madeleine Dobie, Modern Fiction Studies

“Though the book’s title highlights the role of Gide, Proust, and Colette in this process, Lucey’s study offers much more than a rereading of these three well-studied figures and their work. Instead, he not only investigates the “position-taking” that came to characterize their literary output but also seeks to understand these positions in the context of an intimate web of writers, critics, and others in the cultural elite in France in this period.”—Patricia Tilburg, Journal of the History of Sexuality

“A breakthrough book. Never Say I isn’t just an ‘important contribution,’ as people say. It is a necessary one, disturbing many simplistic assumptions about the writing of same-sex subjectivity in modern France.”—Ross Chambers, author of The Writing of Melancholy: Modes of Opposition in Early French Modernism

“In this abundantly helpful work, Michael Lucey retrieves a vital moment in modern culture when saying ‘I’ required not only a certain courage but also a certain art.”—D. A. Miller

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