Camille Pfister
Editor in Chief
On October 17, Sewanee alumnus and published author Robert Kuehnle (C’ 68) will be returning to the Mountain to speak to students, faculty, staff, and community members about his latest novel THE MAJESTIC LEO MARBLE. Kuehnle has 17 novels published under his pen name, R.J. Lee.
The Purple sat down with Kuehnle prior to his visit, to explore the personal connection LEO MARBLE has to Sewanee, and to Kuehnle himself, and what Kuehnle hopes to do while visiting the Mountain on Thursday.
“This is my 17th novel, but it’s the one that means the most to me, because it’s very personal,” Kuehnle said. “I couldn’t have written [this novel] without including my tenure at Sewanee.”
Kuehnle attended Sewanee in the late 60’s, graduating a year before women began attending. Kuehnle described himself as “kind of a legacy” as his father, uncle, and grandfather all attended and his grandfather was an Episcopal rector in his hometown and on Sewanee’s board of directors.
Kuehnle also described being at Sewanee as a “great relief” because it was a “great education” and he had realized “at a very early age that I was same sex oriented” and being in an all male school meant he didn’t have to date girls as a “camouflage” like he had done in junior and high school.
“I must empathize that I was still very much in the closet, and that was not a good thing,” Kuehnle clarified. “Because had I not been in the closet, there were many opportunities I could have explored my sexual orientation.”
There are four chapters in LEO MARBLE that take place at Sewanee, and the ones that follow the main character’s senior year are the most important. These chapters include details that mirror Kuehnle’s own life at Sewanee, although some of the details are not exact.
“The main reason I wanted to include Sewanee was because my senior year, as I write in the novel, I had a roommate who was gay,” Kuehnle said. “He confessed that to me at one point. His mother died halfway through the semester.”
In the novelization of this story Kuehnle doesn’t have the character based off the roommate returning to Sewanee, but he actually did. “I had a distant, unspoken relationship with him from that point on,” Kuehnle said. “I was actually falling in love with him, but I never told him that.”
The chapters are important to reflect upon because during such transient periods in our lives as college, we might do things we later regret. While we learn and grow from those experiences, we shouldn’t damn ourselves for it. Growth is an important part of any person’s life, especially queer people. Queer people have a history of not being allowed to talk about their history and their emotions. Being open is how we grow.
“It is something I look back on with regret, because I could have helped him,” Kuehnle said. “Because of the way the culture was, when I was growing up, it was just something you didn’t talk about. If you were queer or gay, you didn’t talk about it, you just cringed and hid in the closet.”
Sewanee has also grown since Kuehnle’s days on the Mountain. In Fall of 1969, the college opened its doors to female students and now there are organizations like the Wick and the Queer and Ally House, which work with the University, students, and the community to spread awareness and support the women and Queer students on our campus.
“When I found out that several LGBTQ+ organizations existed on Sewanee’s campus, I felt a great sense of validation,” Kuehnle said.
“I learned a lot, but I didn’t learn enough to free me from the bondage of being in the closet. I felt like I needed to prove I was a regular guy who was conservative in his opinions.”
It’s been 10 years since Kuehnle has visited the Mountain. The last time he was here was with his late husband. Kuehnle’s husband expressed interest during his visit, according to Kuehnle, calling Sewanee “European and Medieval”, which I bet every Sewanee student knows exactly which buildings he was looking at when he said that. Kuehnle laughed at what’s changed, remarking on how All Saints’ was the same, but there was a whole new dining hall and “Gailor was our dining hall!”
Now that Kuehnle is returning to Sewanee for an author event and he has “fulfilled my dreams of being a published author” and is coordinating with LGBTQ+ organizations on campus to meet current Queer students, which is the “audience [he] wants to reach”, he said it “validates everything I’ve been through.”
Another section of LEO MARBLE touches on Kuehnle’s time in New Orleans during the ‘70’s and ‘80’s at the height of the early gay civil rights movement, heading into the AIDS crisis. Activists during this time risked their lives and fought every day for the rights we have today, and Kuehnle wants to honor that movement.
“Some of the things gay students take for granted are possible because of the things that those of us in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s did,” Kuehnle said. “You can’t imagine how fulfilling it is to have that sense of history unfold before your very eyes.”
As Kuehnle prepares to meet students who are about to enter the world, he said his biggest goal is to “help students when they go into the real world not to take anything for granted.”
Come see Kuehnle speak about his latest novel, THE MAJESTIC LEO MARBLE, on October 17 at 4 p.m. at the University bookstore.