Gloria

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

If the American intellectual Lionel Trilling collaborated with Grace
Metalious, author of the 1950s potboiler Peyton Place, they might have
produced Keith Maillard’s Gloria. This novel shows how Gloria Cotter,
a West Virginian steel executive’s daughter, tries to find
intellectual and sexual fulfilment, combining literature and sleaze in
the process.

The book’s many sexual encounters are handled in a sensational
manner. A description of Gloria’s society mother Lacey’s bedroom
athletics might not be out of place in an adult paperback. Gloria’s
own erotic adventures could be described as “over the top.” She is
deflowered by fellow literature student Ken Henderson in a clumsy and
hysterical scene that cheapens the book. When Billy Dougherty, her
father’s sleazy subordinate, tries to force his attentions on her, he
actually says, “You need a real man with a real....”

Maillard can be sensationally shallow, but his work is not a simple
melodrama. To understand a soap opera, one needs only to watch other
soaps; to understand Gloria, one needs an education. A working knowledge
of English literature is required to fully understand the story, despite
a list of literary references. Although the author has prodigiously
researched his material, some familiarity with postwar America is
useful. For example, readers would have to know about the steel
industry’s price-fixing conspiracy, which was prosecuted by the
Kennedy administration, in order to understand the true significance of
the top executives’ secret meetings.

Since the book is around 660 pages long, one is tempted to wait for the
movie. In any case, Gloria may become the intellectual’s latest guilty
pleasure.