The Front Runner
Encyclopedia
The Front Runner is a 1974 novel by Patricia Nell Warren
. The book, considered by some as a classic example of LGBT literature
of the period, is a love story exploring issues relating to homosexuals
in American sports.
The novel is:
It is written in the first person
, as if by the protagonist
Harlan Brown.
coach at fictitious
Prescott College, a new, small, progressive, experimental private liberal arts college
sixty miles from New York City
.The nearest community is said to be Sayville, which is the correct distance and would locate the college on Long Island
. However, the direction to New York City is consistently said to be "down" ("I jumped into my Vega and drove like a madman down to Manhattan," p 210), and NYC is not typically considered "down" from Long Island, which lies east and south of Manhattan
. Also, the trips to Fire Island are treated as if they are major excursions, not ordinary events; Sayville is the embarking point for some of the primary ferries to Fire Island, so going there for someone living near Sayville would be almost like going to the corner store. Other elements - significant hills, heavy snow at Thanksgiving
, etc. - also imply an Upstate New York
location rather than Long Island, which has a more temperate climate than the upstate exurbs of NYC; and Sayville is on the South Shore
, which gets even less snow than the rest of the island. See the Sayville and Long Island
articles for further information.
The story begins in late 1974 and ends in early 1978, with occasional flashback
s giving information about Brown's past. When the story begins, Brown is thirty-nine years old, an ex-Marine
, a graduate of Villanova University
(where he both ran and coached track), and a rigidly closeted
homosexual. Six years earlier he was forced to leave an important head coach
ing position at Penn State University because of untrue accusations of sexual misconduct
from a male student on his track team.
Although Brown had been sexually attracted only to men all his life, he had suppressed that attraction successfully, married a girl he impregnated
while in college, and lived a wholly straight life, with only occasional furtive, traumatic excursions into the gay underground of pre-Stonewall
New York City. The student whose accusations drove him from Penn State was himself secretly gay, made sexual advances toward Brown, and then turned on Brown when those sexual advances were rejected. The episode also ended Brown's unhappy marriage; his ex-wife and two adolescent sons appear only briefly in flashback.
Although the reason for his leaving Penn State was not widely publicized, the rumors in the track world made it impossible for him to find work in that field. He tried unsuccessfully to find other work he was qualified for; finally he moved to Greenwich Village
and supported himself for two years as a high-priced hustler. He was very successful at hustling because he was - by his own account - very good looking, in perfect physical condition, and extremely well-endowed sexually. But his heart was not in it; he longed to return to the track.
When Joe Prescott, the founder and president of Prescott College, needed a new athletic director, he managed to find Brown in Manhattan and offered him the job, which he accepted. He immediately stopped hustling, returned with determination to the closet
, and threw all his energy into coaching; at the college, only Joe Prescott knew the truth about his sexual orientation and his past.
The story opens in December 1974; Prescott tells Brown that three star runners, who have been expelled in their senior year from the elite track program at the University of Oregon
because they are gay, want to transfer to Prescott and train with Brown. Although Brown is wary because of the Penn State experience, he is eager to work with such talented runners, so he agrees.
All three new runners - Vince Matti, Jacques LaFont, and Billy Sive - are extremely attractive and sorely test Brown's straight act; but Vince and Jacques are more or less a couple, and Billy is the one he falls for. He manages to suppress his attraction for a few anguished months, but he and Billy soon become lovers, and after the boys graduate and take teaching positions at Prescott, Billy moves in with him.
The difficult, drawn-out process of their coming out
as a couple (and Harlan's as an individual) in the intensely homophobic world of amateur athletics takes up most of the book, throughout which the sport - and particularly Billy's determination to qualify for the 1976 Olympics
in Montreal
- plays as large a part as the characters' homosexuality.
Harlan and Billy do eventually come out fully as a gay couple, and Billy overcomes practically insurmountable opposition and hostility to run in the Olympics. He wins the gold medal in the 10,000 meter race and is within meters of winning the 5000 meter
race as well when an anti-gay assassin shoots him in the head and kills him.
Harlan is devastated, but fortunately he and Billy had stored samples in a sperm bank
a few months earlier; their close lesbian
friend Betsy Heden offers to bear Billy's child, so hope and a new life emerge from the tragedy.
called The Front Runner "the most moving, monumental love story ever written about gay life." It was the first book of contemporary gay fiction to reach the New York Times Best Seller List
, and as of 2006 more than ten million copies had been sold. It had been translated into at least nine languages, including Japanese
, German
, French
, Danish
, Swedish
and Dutch
, Italian; it was the best selling gay novel in Spain
and the first gay novel ever published in Latvia
.
in 1975 - a series of major producers, screenwriters and directors, including Frank Perry
, Arthur Allan Seidelman
, Barry Sandler
, and Jeremy Larner
, were involved directly or indirectly in producing such an adaptation. None of those efforts resulted in a motion picture.
As of 2006, Patricia Nell Warren and her business partner Tyler St Mark had regained the rights and planned to produce a film themselves.
running club in San Francisco soon after its publication in 1974. The organization quickly grew to include approximately 100 affiliated clubs throughout the world.
Patricia Nell Warren
Patricia Nell Warren is an openly lesbian American author and journalist.-Biography:Primarily known as an author, Warren is also commonly known as "the mother of Frontrunners" - the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender running/walking clubs that have been started in Los Angeles and other large...
. The book, considered by some as a classic example of LGBT literature
LGBT literature
Gay literature is a collective term for literature produced by or for the LGBT community, or which involves characters, plot lines or themes portraying male homosexual behavior.-Subgenres:...
of the period, is a love story exploring issues relating to homosexuals
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
in American sports.
The novel is:
Dedicated to all the athletes who have fought for human rights in sports, and to the young gay runner I met at a party, who gave me the idea for this book.
It is written in the first person
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
, as if by the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
Harlan Brown.
Synopsis
Although the title refers to another character, The Front Runner is the story of Harlan Brown, the trackTrack and field
Track and field is a sport comprising various competitive athletic contests based around the activities of running, jumping and throwing. The name of the sport derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area...
coach at fictitious
Prescott College, a new, small, progressive, experimental private liberal arts college
Liberal arts college
A liberal arts college is one with a primary emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences.Students in the liberal arts generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional...
sixty miles from New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.The nearest community is said to be Sayville, which is the correct distance and would locate the college on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
. However, the direction to New York City is consistently said to be "down" ("I jumped into my Vega and drove like a madman down to Manhattan," p 210), and NYC is not typically considered "down" from Long Island, which lies east and south of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. Also, the trips to Fire Island are treated as if they are major excursions, not ordinary events; Sayville is the embarking point for some of the primary ferries to Fire Island, so going there for someone living near Sayville would be almost like going to the corner store. Other elements - significant hills, heavy snow at Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...
, etc. - also imply an Upstate New York
Upstate New York
Upstate New York is the region of the U.S. state of New York that is located north of the core of the New York metropolitan area.-Definition:There is no clear or official boundary between Upstate New York and Downstate New York...
location rather than Long Island, which has a more temperate climate than the upstate exurbs of NYC; and Sayville is on the South Shore
South Shore (Long Island)
The South Shore of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York, is the area along Long Island's Atlantic Ocean shoreline. Though some consider the South Shore to include parts of Queens, particularly the beach communities in the Rockaways such as Belle Harbor, the term is generally used to refer to...
, which gets even less snow than the rest of the island. See the Sayville and Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
articles for further information.
The story begins in late 1974 and ends in early 1978, with occasional flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
s giving information about Brown's past. When the story begins, Brown is thirty-nine years old, an ex-Marine
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
, a graduate of Villanova University
Villanova University
Villanova University is a private university located in Radnor Township, a suburb northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States...
(where he both ran and coached track), and a rigidly closeted
Closeted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
homosexual. Six years earlier he was forced to leave an important head coach
Head coach
A head coach, senior coach or manager is a professional at training and developing athletes. They typically hold a more public profile and are paid more than other coaches...
ing position at Penn State University because of untrue accusations of sexual misconduct
Sexual misconduct
Sexual misconduct is misconduct of a sexual nature. The term may be used to condemn an act, but in some jurisdictions it has also a legal meaning....
from a male student on his track team.
Although Brown had been sexually attracted only to men all his life, he had suppressed that attraction successfully, married a girl he impregnated
Human fertilization
Human fertilization is the union of a humanoid egg and sperm, usually occurring in the ampulla of the uterine tube. The result of this union is the production of a zygote, or fertilized egg, initiating prenatal development...
while in college, and lived a wholly straight life, with only occasional furtive, traumatic excursions into the gay underground of pre-Stonewall
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...
New York City. The student whose accusations drove him from Penn State was himself secretly gay, made sexual advances toward Brown, and then turned on Brown when those sexual advances were rejected. The episode also ended Brown's unhappy marriage; his ex-wife and two adolescent sons appear only briefly in flashback.
Although the reason for his leaving Penn State was not widely publicized, the rumors in the track world made it impossible for him to find work in that field. He tried unsuccessfully to find other work he was qualified for; finally he moved to Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
and supported himself for two years as a high-priced hustler. He was very successful at hustling because he was - by his own account - very good looking, in perfect physical condition, and extremely well-endowed sexually. But his heart was not in it; he longed to return to the track.
When Joe Prescott, the founder and president of Prescott College, needed a new athletic director, he managed to find Brown in Manhattan and offered him the job, which he accepted. He immediately stopped hustling, returned with determination to the closet
Closeted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
, and threw all his energy into coaching; at the college, only Joe Prescott knew the truth about his sexual orientation and his past.
The story opens in December 1974; Prescott tells Brown that three star runners, who have been expelled in their senior year from the elite track program at the University of Oregon
University of Oregon
-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...
because they are gay, want to transfer to Prescott and train with Brown. Although Brown is wary because of the Penn State experience, he is eager to work with such talented runners, so he agrees.
All three new runners - Vince Matti, Jacques LaFont, and Billy Sive - are extremely attractive and sorely test Brown's straight act; but Vince and Jacques are more or less a couple, and Billy is the one he falls for. He manages to suppress his attraction for a few anguished months, but he and Billy soon become lovers, and after the boys graduate and take teaching positions at Prescott, Billy moves in with him.
The difficult, drawn-out process of their coming out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
as a couple (and Harlan's as an individual) in the intensely homophobic world of amateur athletics takes up most of the book, throughout which the sport - and particularly Billy's determination to qualify for the 1976 Olympics
1976 Summer Olympics
The 1976 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1976. Montreal was awarded the rights to the 1976 Games on May 12, 1970, at the 69th IOC Session in Amsterdam, over the bids of Moscow and...
in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
- plays as large a part as the characters' homosexuality.
Harlan and Billy do eventually come out fully as a gay couple, and Billy overcomes practically insurmountable opposition and hostility to run in the Olympics. He wins the gold medal in the 10,000 meter race and is within meters of winning the 5000 meter
5000 metres
The 5000 metres is a popular running distance also known as 5 km or 5K in American English. It is one of the track events in the Olympic Games and the World Championships in Athletics. "5000 metres" refers to racing on a track and "5K" usually refers to a roadrace or cross country event...
race as well when an anti-gay assassin shoots him in the head and kills him.
Harlan is devastated, but fortunately he and Billy had stored samples in a sperm bank
Sperm bank
A sperm bank, semen bank or cryobank is a facility that collects and stores human sperm mainly from sperm donors, primarily for the purpose of achieving pregnancies through third party reproduction, notably by artificial insemination...
a few months earlier; their close lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
friend Betsy Heden offers to bear Billy's child, so hope and a new life emerge from the tragedy.
Reception
The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called The Front Runner "the most moving, monumental love story ever written about gay life." It was the first book of contemporary gay fiction to reach the New York Times Best Seller List
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
, and as of 2006 more than ten million copies had been sold. It had been translated into at least nine languages, including Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, Italian; it was the best selling gay novel in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and the first gay novel ever published in Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
.
Film adaptation
Soon after its publication, The Front Runner became a subject of interest for adaptation as a motion picture. At various times in the following four decades - beginning with Paul NewmanPaul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
in 1975 - a series of major producers, screenwriters and directors, including Frank Perry
Frank Perry
Frank J. Perry, Jr. was an American stage and film director, producer and screenwriter. His directorial debut, the 1962 film David and Lisa, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director....
, Arthur Allan Seidelman
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Arthur Allan Seidelman is an award-winning American television, film, and theatre director and an occasional writer, producer and actor.Born in New York City, he received his BA from Whittier College and an MA in Theatre from UCLA. He subsequently studied with Sanford Meisner, who became a...
, Barry Sandler
Barry Sandler
Barry Sandler is an American screenwriter and film producer. His career has spanned several decades, with the 1980s being his most prolific. The openly gay Sandler is perhaps best known for writing the 1982 film Making Love, the first mainstream Hollywood film to deal seriously with issues of...
, and Jeremy Larner
Jeremy Larner
Jeremy Larner is an author, poet, journalist and speechwriter. He won an Academy Award in 1972 for Best Original Screenplay, for writing The Candidate.-Childhood:...
, were involved directly or indirectly in producing such an adaptation. None of those efforts resulted in a motion picture.
As of 2006, Patricia Nell Warren and her business partner Tyler St Mark had regained the rights and planned to produce a film themselves.
Sequels
Warren completed Harlan's Race, a sequel to The Front Runner, in 1994. A third book, Billy's Boy, (1997) also continues elements of the story introduced in The Front Runner. In 2006, Warren stated that she was writing a fourth and final novel in the series.International Front Runners
The Front Runner inspired the creation of an LGBTLGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
running club in San Francisco soon after its publication in 1974. The organization quickly grew to include approximately 100 affiliated clubs throughout the world.