Christopher Coe
Christopher Coe was an American author, photographer, and cabaret singer, born in Pennsylvania and raised in Portland, Oregon. He spent significant portions of his adult life in New York City and Paris, which influenced his artistic expressions. Coe is recognized for his novels, particularly "I Look Divine" (1987) and "Such Times" (1993), both of which explore themes related to identity, beauty, and complex romantic relationships. His works often draw on autobiographical elements, reflecting his experiences as a gay man and his relationships, including a significant bond with an older male partner.
In "I Look Divine," Coe delves into the protagonist's obsession with physical beauty, while "Such Times" examines the emotional struggles of maintaining a relationship amid societal expectations and personal desires. The narrative poignantly addresses the realities of living with HIV, as Coe himself tested positive for the virus. His experiences with love, loss, and the financial burdens of healthcare impacted both his life and writing, culminating in his untimely death in 1994. Coe's literary contributions continue to resonate, offering insight into the complexities of gay identity and the human experience.
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Subject Terms
Christopher Coe
Writer
- Born: November 27, 1953
- Birthplace: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
- Died: September 6, 1994
- Place of death: New York, New York
Author Profile
Born in Pennsylvania but raised in Portland, Oregon, Christopher Coe divided his adult life between New York City and Paris. His professional life combined a number of interests, including photography, cabaret singing, and writing. For a time, at Columbia University, Coe was a student of novelist and editor Gordon Lish, whose predilection for semiautobiographical material and self-revealing first-person narration can also be traced in Coe’s work. Coe’s first novel, I Look Divine (1987), for example, chronicles the life of a gay man named Nicholas, for whom identity resides in physical beauty, as embodied especially in the face. Coe seems to have shared his character’s preoccupation with appearance. In a 1987 interview, the writer half-jokingly asserted that he dropped out of Columbia University partially because of his personal dismay over a bad photograph on his student identification card. As the character Nicholas avows, “Inner beauty is what counts, but outer beauty is what shows.”
Significant autobiographical elements can also be found in Coe’s second and most celebrated work, Such Times (1993). Like the narrator, Timothy, Coe was devoted for a number of years to an older male lover, with whom he purchased an apartment in Paris. Timothy measures the beginning of his life from the time that he met Jasper, but the control that he exercises in his career as a photographer does not extend to his romantic life. Despite the younger man’s desire for an exclusive relationship, Jasper argues that monogamy is “antithetical to the homosexual life” and, consequently, indulges in episodes of anonymous sex.
Timothy’s reconciliation to this state of affairs is the dramatic heart of the book. “Everything that has come to me has come because I loved without demands,” he asserts. From Jasper, he acquires a taste for fine clothing and haute cuisine, the experience of “ecstatic sex,” and, perhaps, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). To preserve his idealized image of their relationship, Timothy has unprotected sex with a stranger so that if he does test positive for HIV, he will not know for sure whether Jasper infected him.
Timothy does test positive, and so did Christopher Coe. Character and author, because they lacked medical insurance, were also virtually bankrupted by the costs of their health care; Coe died in 1994 in New York City. That Timothy’s fictional life partially mirrored Coe’s adds poignancy to the narrative.
Bibliography
Burgin, Richard. “Not Just a Pretty Face.” The New York Times Book Review, August 30, 1987, 11.
Hempel, Amy. “Talking to Christopher Coe.” Vogue 438 (September, 1987): 455-458.
Nelson, Emmanuel S., ed. Contemporary Gay American Novelists. Westport: Greenwood, 1993. Print.
Pearl, Monica B. AIDS Literature and Gay Identity: The Literature of Loss. New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.