Men Ruin Everything
Whip-smart page-turner about an artist who is inspired by a group of loitering teens
David is a visual artist who lives in a manicured neighbourhood ‘where the streets smell like diaper cream’. He is neither productive nor successful and has a trivial job in an art gallery. His life changes when a group of rowdy youths start hanging out outside his window every night. David finds himself equal parts annoyed and fascinated.
When his neighbours try to convince him to call the police, he refuses. As a queer man, David knows what it’s like to be discriminated against and he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to the teens, several of whom are non-white. Instead, he uses them as a source of inspiration for his art. He’s particularly drawn to a boy he dubs Romeo, whose butt reminds him of the peach emoji. Unbeknownst to them, he paints a series of portraits of these macho guys in a range of provocative, homoerotic poses, with the title ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Hood’. When Tom, the curator at his art gallery, puts on a big exhibition of these paintings, David’s work draws a lot of attention. Once the youths learn of the paintings, chaos ensues.
To whom does public space belong? Who is allowed to be where, and who is allowed to be what, and on whose terms? As a queer man and as an artist, David is constantly confronted with these questions. He doesn’t want to be reduced to his sexual orientation, and he doesn’t want to be pigeonholed by other people. Like his friend Sophie, who proclaims that gay men make the best friends because they have such a great sense of humour. Or straight curator Tom, who asks David to dress extra feminine to cater to the gaze of the gallery’s clientele. It’s discrimination at its most insidious in a heteronormative world.
The novel is written in the form of a long letter from David to Tom. David shares his experiences and his thoughts on taking up space, masculinity, queerness, class, power, hypocrisy, gentrification and art. Maurits de Bruijn is a masterful storyteller. Without coming across as preachy, Men Ruin Everything is gripping, witty and topical, full of sharp observations and discomfiting eye-openers.
Rights
Cossee International Agency
Stella Rieck
rieck@cossee.com
“De Bruijn has a fresh, compelling voice. His protagonist’s rather bland world is contrasted with incisive thoughts and opinions – about appropriation, about queerness, about the hypocrisy of the art world and recollections of his art school years.”
“This book is reminiscent of Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out and Percival Everett’s novel Erasure: satire from a marginalized perspective, all the more confronting because of its mordant wit.”
“A riveting page-turner. A novel with so many layers that readers will find themselves constantly wrongfooted.”
“A clever novel about identity politics that steers clear of predictability.”
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