Synopsis:
Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he’s pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale―”for the algorithm”―Misha discovers that it’s not that simple.
As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what’s right―before it’s too late.
Review:
2023 offered few surprises quite as enjoyable as Chuck Tingle’s Camp Damascus, a remarkably heartfelt and effective horror novel about a gay conversion camp that is, however redundant it might seem, evil. Tingle, it seemed, was not just an internet meme, but a bonafide writer capable of eliciting both deep emotion and well-rounded characters, all packed into a tight little narrative.
Bury Your Gays is a different kind of announcement.
Here we find Tingle swinging for the bleachers in a sci-fi-tinged horror novel that is one part satire of Hollywood (à la The Player), one part supernatural slasher, and one part psychological investigation of the traumas of a gay childhood in Montana and how those events become filtered and transformed into art. Along the way, the book takes swings at the studio system, AI’s threat to human creativity, and capitalism itself. And it does this all while balancing a tone that is by turns terrifying and humorous.
Misha Byrne is a screenwriter who has a number of horror movies and an X-Files-ish television show to his name. He’s also nominated for an Oscar in the live action short category. All in all, he’s living the Hollywood dream. But he has two problems: despite his clearly queer-coded work, he’s still closeted to the world and his family, and the studio just demanded that he kill off his will-they-won’t-they? are-they-aren’t-they? gay leads.
Why kill them off? The answer, as it so often is these days, is “the algorithm.” Gay tragedy sells, and the board wants maximum profits. End of story.
But when Misha makes a principled stand and refuses, the algorithm has something to say about it. Soon, he is visited by characters from his own work in what at first appears to be some attempts at a viral, word of mouth campaign to boost streaming numbers. But soon, these events rack up a body count, and Misha begins his descent into the real Hollywood.
Tingle mixes up this wild adventure with dream-like segments presented as film script excerpts as well as chapters of stunningly poignant and heartbreaking flashbacks to Misha’s childhood, where we find his movie boogeymen in their nascent forms. It’s weird and daring and incredibly self-assured, and Bury Your Gays manages to pull it all off.
The tone of Bury Your Gays is difficult to pin down, and its final act combines both very broad satire and an action/adventure climax, but this seems mostly to be by design. The novel is a kind of manifesto for the kind of messy, mixed-up art that only humans are capable of creating, and it stands as a celebration of both tragedy and joy, sometimes in the same breath.
Camp Damascus announced Chuck Tingle as a writer to take seriously, and Bury Your Gays shows a writer willing to take big risks for big rewards. A sci-fi horror nightmare that dares to seek joy even in the face of its own blood and guts, Bury Your Gays, is the best possible vehicle for Tingle’s consistent message: Love is Real.
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