'Better Angel' Summary

The novel is a Bildungsroman recounting the passage of Kurt Gray—his surname plays on the author's Brown—from his adolescent years in central Michigan to mature adult and his development as a musician and composer. Kurt's teenage years are marked by "solitude, bookish seriousness, gender dislocation, and religion", a dislike of sports, and an interest in amateur theatricals. He memorizes Bible stories and experiences a Christian awakening that transforms into a spiritual devotion to poetry and music. At the University of Michigan, he has his first same-sex experiences and discovers the poetry of Swinburne, "a revelation". After graduating he explores the psychological literature of Jung, Freud, and Ellis, then Edward Carpenter, Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium (Plato), and Oscar Wilde. Kurt identifies a contrast between American religiosity and an alternative offered by the Europeans he reads, which he identifies as spiritual, even preferring the French spirituel: "The English never had created so exact a word for it."  

The novel describes the love affair between Kurt and another man Derry, and their relationship with a third man, Tony. Brown later said that it was in the main autobiographical, that he based Kurt on himself, Tony on actor Alexander Kirkland, and Derry on Harry Burnett. Brown and Burnett were lovers for 60 years, beginning in 1926. All three of them worked together in the Yale Puppeteers on tour and then in their base at the Turnabout Theatre in Los Angeles.