Both extraordinary breakthrough and disappointment

Granta, £9.99

a senator’s daughter in a dungeon, from which Clarice rescues her. Picky? Maybe, but Gerald has several lapses like this, stylistic flourishes that not only fail to come off but blunt the point he is trying to make. The nightclub in question is where he is sent with an “available” young woman, as an inducement to sign for the Yale team. The sexual politics is much more interesting than a throwaway line from a misremembered movie in which actor and character are blurred.

That is Gerald’s problem throughout the book. He is required by the dominant culture to act a part and read his lines. He even has the pressure of his father’s youthful celebrity feeding into that. And yet every instinct, social and sexual, plus God’s failure to deliver his apocalypse in the opening pages, points against such a passive surrender to the prevailing mythology.

I thought several times while reading Gerald’s book about Calvin C Hernton’s (that is Calvin Coolidge Hernton’s) Sex and Racism in America, an old book now and probably discredited several times over, not least for its failure to engage honestly with gay relationships and queer aesthetics. Gerald’s account is both a breakthrough and a disappointment. It is too long and calls out for more disciplined editing.

Everything ultimately has to fall short of being the Great American Whatever, otherwise the quest would end. Gerald’s has the promise to take autobiography on a step not just from Baldwin, from whom he borrows a certain incantatory cadence, but also from Maya Angelou, and closer to both Harvard and the Civil War from Henry Adams and his The Education of... as well.

THAT it falls short of its own promise is both disillusioning and a confirmation of its central message, which is that self-reliance and speed – the outflanking movements that gave the young Gerald his moment in the football spotlight – are the only way to avoid the crushing mass of American life. No miracles, just a lot of wind work and well rehearsed routines. Unfortunately that’s how the book often comes across, windy, self-regardant and pat. But there is something grand and deeply moving there as well, struggling to get out but also struggling to get back home.

Casey Gerald’s book contains several lapses – stylistic flourishes that not only fail to come off but blunt the point he is trying to make