Order, and the overall chronology of events isn’t made obvious. Last two of which compose the final section). Possible new romance, and his momentary attraction to a former student (the Scenes that can quickly descend into scenes of detachment, alienation, andĪmerican teacher (a Greenwell stand-in) in Bulgaria on the heels of a breakup.Įach part of the triptych narrative focuses on a particular sexual or romanticĮpisode: his relationship with R., his assault by a stranger he met online, a Writing about longing, but is also expert at navigating emotionally fraught sex Regret, disappointment, and, mostly importantly, eros. Greenwell’s prose is lyrically brutal and filled with anger, Like Greenwell’s debut novel What Belongs to You, a romance is at theĪgain privy to a semi-autobiographical tale that hones in on queer desire, Cleanness, at its core, is an examination of the sticky and inextricable pairing of masculinity and violence - and, ultimately, the resulting trauma of when these two frictive forces inevitably collide. His novel is about beautiful men and, more importantly, the ready-to-erupt violence that bubbles under their surface. But Greenwell’s connection to beauty, as an abstraction that is essential and inescapable, bears highlighting.

This is not a new claim violence will always be entwined with the concept of the cycle, in which violence is replicated over and over again, perpetually and across generations. In On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry writes that beauty “seems to incite, even to require, the act of replication.” The same is said of violence in Garth Greenwell’s new novel Cleanness.

Cleanness greenwell