WELCOME, FELLOW TRAVELERS
The opera Fellow Travelers was adapted from the novel of the same name by the American author Thomas Mallon. Though this opera is a work of fiction, the main characters of Hawkins and Fuller, are echoes of the approximately 1,200 Federal employees, men and women, fired from the United States government for their confirmed or suspected sexual orientation, or even affiliation with those confirmed or under suspicion. Written in 2007, Mallon offered an intimate insight into the lives of gay men when their very existence was legally deemed a threat to the government.
Thomas Mallon in Summer 2009.
Mallon has been applauded for his ability to write from the perspective of the historical bystander, or an ordinary person present for extraordinary historical moments. Mallon’s other works include Henry and Clara, set around the Lincoln assassination, Dewey Defeats Truman, and Watergate. Mallon remarked that he chooses to focus on the past because the cyber revolution has made us more connected than ever--to a fault--and reading about the past can be a way to revisit impactful human connection, such as Timothy and Hawkins’ romance in an era where there were no smartphones to be exposed by or hide behind. Before receiving his Masters and Ph.D. from Harvard University in World War I poetry, Mallon completed his undergraduate thesis on American novelist and political critic Mary McCarthy (no relation to Senator McCarthy), at Brown University. Mary McCarthy, born in 1912, left the Catholic Church at an early age and became an atheist, but remained interested in Catholicism throughout her writing career. As she moved through her life, she became a critic of McCarthyism and Communism, as well as the
8
WELCOME, FELLOW TRAVELERS
