Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017)

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a novel by American writer Andrea Lawlor. It was published in 2017 by Rescue Press. The book is heavily influenced by the queer culture of the 1990s, and took Lawlor 15 years to write.

The picaresque novel follows Paul, a 23-year-old who discovers that he can shapeshift and uses this ability to alter his gender expression while wandering the United States. He is a flâneur who enjoys wearing performative outfits and seeks out various sexual experiences with a diverse assortment of partners; his gender identity is never made explicit. Set in 1993, the novel takes place in various locations where the author has lived. The text exhibits postmodern influences, using footnotes and pastiche, with short fables interspersed throughout.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is Andrea Lawlor's debut novel. The book received positive reviews, with reviewers praising its novel approach to gender and sex as well as its innovative structure and period accuracy. It was republished by Vintage Books in 2019, and Lawlor received a Whiting Award for the book.

Background

Writer Andrea Lawlor was involved with queer activism as an undergraduate in the 1990s, founding the first lesbian and gay group at Fordham University. They began writing Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl in San Francisco when they were 30 years old. They had just quit a corporate job and began exploring creative writing while working at a bookstore, taking a night class at Gotham Writers' Workshop. The first draft of Paul began as a retelling of the Tiresias myth. The concept was also influenced by Orlando: A Biography, which Lawlor read in high school "because it was on a list of books with something queer in them". Ovid's Metamorphoses and Wild Seed were additional influences.

Lawlor later enrolled in a creative writing graduate program taught by Samuel R. Delany at Temple University, and turned in the draft; Delany encouraged them to continue working on the story. Lawlor completed the first draft of the novel while in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Massachusetts. They worked on the novel while enrolled in graduate classes, teaching, working, and caring for a baby with their partner. The novel took 15 years to complete.

According to Lawlor, the draft was initially rejected by various publishers because they did not think it had enough plot or conflict. Lawlor refused to make protagonist Paul learn a lesson in the text, believing that conventional plot structure would make the novel unrealistic.

Lawlor is close friends with Jordy Rosenberg, author of the queer novel Confessions of the Fox; Rosenberg lives with Lawlor's family. The two authors' novels were among the first by transgender or non-binary authors to be picked up by major publishing houses.

Publication

Rescue Press published Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl with an initial run of 500 copies in November 2017. It was Lawlor's debut novel. Despite the limited initial printing, the novel was reviewed in the "Briefly Noted" section of The New Yorker, which Lawlor said prompted widespread interest in the book as well as potential film rights. (The book was optioned by Ryan Murphy.) Lawlor was subsequently able to begin working with literary agent PJ Mark, who negotiated a deal for broader publication with Vintage Books.

Vintage Books reprinted Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl in 2019. According to Lawlor, half of the profits from the reprint go to Rescue Press in perpetuity. Picador published Paul in Britain and Australia in 2019.

Content

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is set in 1993, and its content is heavily influenced by the queer culture of the 1990s. The novel's protagonist, 23-year-old Paul Polydoris, is a student and bartender who discovers that he is secretly capable of shapeshifting. He uses this ability to change his gender expression, sometimes for sexual purposes, while adventuring across the United States and avoiding voicemails from his first love who has been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Settings include the punk subculture of Iowa City, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, Provincetown, Massachusetts in the off-season, and a leather bar backroom in Chicago. All these settings are in places the author has lived.

Paul Polydoris conceives of himself as Paul and uses the masculine pronoun for himself throughout the narrative, although his gender identity is never explicit to him or the reader. He is characterized, and characterizes himself, as a flâneur who is gratified by wearing performative outfits and seeking out various sexual experiences; he is able to "make himself be attracted to anyone". He is also able to change his body and his genitalia, and does so often. His ethnicity is similarly ambiguous, although less under his control.

At the beginning of the novel, Paul is studying film studies in Iowa City. The novel opens with him shapeshifting his body to have breasts and a vagina, dressing in feminine clothing, and going out to a bar while looking like "the girl he wanted to fuck". At the bar, his friend Jane believes he is in costume and is impressed by how realistically female he looks. He later becomes a muscular bottom at a leather bar while traveling to Chicago so he can "see what leather guys [do] with other leather guys," and takes on the appearance of a girl in a miniskirt to experience the sex lives of "normal straight people". All of these identities are temporary for him.