Visibility: Growing Sideways in I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip.1

Abstract

This chapter revisits the first-ever young adult book with gay content, John Donovan’s I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip., originally published in 1969. Mason finds value in elements of this novel that have been critiqued over the years: invisibilities, ambiguities, nonteleological ways of conceiving growth, and, specifically, how the protagonist never has a “coming out” moment. Donovan’s adolescent protagonist, Davy, resists what Kathryn Bond Stockton calls, in The Queer Child, “the vertical, forward-motion metaphor of growing up,” instead “growing sideways” through his relationship with his pet dachshund, Fred. This novel, Mason argues—so often lambasted for its hopelessness, stereotypes, and omissions—is a lot queerer than it may initially appear, and much more relevant to contemporary notions of sexuality and queerness than many critics have suggested.