Written in the wake of his divorce, Manuel Betancourt’s third book, Hello, Stranger, explores intimacy, relationships, and closeness as he reevaluates the romantic narratives he values most and the ones he is willing to discard. A critic at heart – one with an impetus to cruise his reader – Betancourt merges personal narrative and criticism to escort the reader through romcoms, paintings, and hotel bathrooms, prompting them to consider what happens as traditional models of intimacy are fractured into the queer and the lyric. 

Manuel and I spoke on zoom to discuss his hybrid research practice, the ways flirtation binds us to the present, and the closeness that develops when a person becomes more open to the stranger. I may have also convinced him to write a romcom for throuples. His elegant interrogations of established models of affection and community bring the reader to “think of […] queer time, and also poetic time. What would it mean to live – instead of in a short story – to live in a lyric?”

Hello, Stranger is available on January 14, 2025.

Dez Deshaies (DD): One aspect of your work I really admire is that with every new book – you’ve had three in the past five years, an incredible accomplishment – your work has become more and more personal. This is a book that, in a lot of ways, is about intimacy. How have you grown into the writer who wrote Hello, Stranger. What brought you here? Where did the idea to write about a stranger begin? 

Manuel Betancourt (MB): I’m a trained academic. I was in grad school and did my doctorate, and that space was one where you never used “I,” you couldn’t bring yourself into the work. The choice of what you worked on was personal – we used to joke that every dissertation was an autobiography, and mine was all about movie fandom, and the way the personal bleeds into the screen and vice versa. So when I wrote The Male Gazed, that was the first instance of me trying to bring the personal in, and that was on the helpful advice of my agent and editor, who suggested that writing about masculinity is great and fine, but if you want to draw a reader in, the way to do it is to write about your personal life. And of course then, with Hello, Stranger, I sort of pushed that even further, mostly because of the topic. I thought that there wouldn’t be a way to write about intimacy if I didn’t write myself in.

The book really began with my obsession with Closer – with the film that opens the book – that I have been wildly, wildly obsessed with. If I’d had my way, I would’ve just written a book about Closer. Smarter people than I am were quick to let me know that that was probably not a great idea, a sellable idea, a marketable idea – and that it was a way of selling my ideas short. If I really wanted to do that, I could broaden my scope, and I think that led to thinking about this figure – the stranger. And thinking about the stranger and intimacy – these two things together – was what unlocked the project, and led me down rabbit holes to see various different films, and photography, and art – this constellation of texts that I created. 

DD: It was interesting that this book was a combination of research and also the personal experience that got built into that research. It felt like when I had been in academia, reading queer theory for the first time, thinking, “People can do this? This is allowed?” Your work pushed it to a different level. Could you talk more about what the research process for this book was like? 

MB: That was probably my favorite bit, and that was what I enjoyed the most about grad school – those moments in the library where you’re reading a book, and it leads you to another book, and that leads you to some writer, and that leads you to a movie. I love doing that. 

True academic that I was, I was like, “Well, I need to read everything that everyone has ever written about strangers.” Even back in grad school, I was so exhaustive and so completist in my research to the point where I got paralyzed, because I thought, “Everything has already been said, and I’m not bringing anything to the table.” Originally, I read Camus’ The Stranger, and that’s what led me to Georg Simmel, which is in the opening chapter, and so I did do a lot of research on strangers, but I realized that a lot of it tended to be more sociological, and more “kin and not kin,” and that wasn’t really what I was interested in. Then, I thought, “I should read everything everyone has ever written about intimacy.” And that’s a lot, so I thought, “OK, queer intimacy.” Even when I was just doing research, it became a way of corralling. It’s not just all strangers, it’s not just all intimacies – it’s this queer version of intimacy. So, there’s a lot of queer theory in the book, although not explicitly. It’s what frames the book. 

What did end up happening – and this, I also found with The Male Gazed – was that things kept echoing one another. I would find Before Sunrise, and Before Sunrise was quoting this poet, W.H. Auden who was in very fascinating gay relationships of his own. Or when I’m writing about Cabaret, and I’m writing about Christopher and His Kind and The Berlin Stories, writing about Christopher Isherwood, and his relationship, and then find he’s friends with two throuples made of writers and and the artists – it ended up being that the research itself was showing me who was around it, and who was orbiting these themes. 

There were a lot of days in the library where I was loving just getting to read. There was a lot of film-watching, which I do as part of my day job as a critic – and a lot of films that I hadn’t seen in a long time, and a lot of films that I had meant to see. The research was really, really fun, and then, of course, all of my friends keep snickering, like, “So, what’s the actual field research like? Strangers! Cruising! You’re writing a book about this!” And I don’t think I ever set out to be like, “Today is the day when I’m going to do cruising research,” but there was this sense of then trying to think through the themes of the book. How does it feel to be more open to strangers? How does it feel to move through the world thinking that it is a kind of cruising playground? I was trying to think of how to orient my life around it. I started writing the book right after my divorce, and a lot of it did have to do with the idea of how I wanted to live my life – what did that break mean? I began to understand that part of the book was about rethinking how I thought of the versions of intimacy and relationships and closeness that I’m supposed to value, and supposed to nurture – and the ones that I’m supposed to discard. 

DD: I don’t want to spoil too much of the book, but the place where you arrive when discussing all of the above, along with the path of the book as a whole, I found really moving. I also love the idea of saying, “Today’s the day I’m going to do field research on cruising.” I’m gonna go update all of my profiles. 

You spoke to this a bit already, but in the early parts of the book, you start by talking about this brief, beautiful culture of flirtation. One thing that stuck with me was this idea of creating or extending a present, which you talk about when writing about flirting, or when seeing a stranger and imagining a future with them. I’m sure that a lot of folks who read this interview will be familiar with queer time. Could you speak to how it comes across in this book and your writing? 

MB: While I was doing all of my research – while I was thinking through this figure of the stranger, and intimacy, and queerness, and desire – I realized that the book was also about storytelling, and about narrative. It was like a study in genre. The “genre” of romance is, “boy meets girl, boy marries girl, and they create a family.” There’s a kind of teleological arc to that story. You meet, you fall in love, and you live happily ever after. 

That’s where the book begins. Every chapter is about trying to break out and break apart that kind of story. So, then, what kind of other stories could we tell? One of the things that I found fascinating about reading all of this writing about flirtation is that flirtation stays in the present, as you’ve pointed out. It stays in this fleeting moment of time, and we tend to make it into a beginning. But I kept trying to think about what would happen if we don’t make it a beginning. What does it mean if we don’t think in terms of beginnings, or in terms of endings? And that is what eventually pushes me to think of – yes, queer time, and also poetic time. What would it mean to live – instead of in a short story – to live in a lyric? What would it mean to live in a painting, live in a photograph, or live in a Frank O’Hara poem? Or an Auden poem? 

So, the book is sort of an exploration of different alternatives – trying to think away from the ways that we’re encouraged to think about our life and our romance. I don’t know that I come up with any tangible answers, but I was fascinated with thinking about alternatives. I think that’s why the book eventually splinters into different genres. Movies couldn’t fix it, literature couldn’t fix it, but I do go to poetry, and I do go to painting, and the final chapter’s about cuddling, which is also a very amorphous vision of intimacy that doesn’t really go anywhere. You lose yourself. Even as an image, it’s much weirder than a hug, or a kiss, which have, sort of, two sides, and often a time constraint. Part of me was just playing, and trying to think through these various ways in which other artists have been thinking about these things. We begin in that heteronormative, traditional idea of storybook romance, and I wanted to splinter it very slowly, into all of these different directions. 

DD: I was really impressed with how you begin by setting up that very heteronormative motif, and you set the reader on a path that feels like the book is going to be about the flirtation, and then the relationship, and the next step. But there’s a thing that happens during the book where it starts going in all directions, that’s echoed in the form of the book as well. 

You discuss intimacy as “an aspiration for a narrative about something shared.” When you think about writing – or art in general – do you think about that, in terms of intimacy? 

MB: It’s funny. One of my favorite quotes of all time is by Roland Barthes, and it’s been sort of a mantra in terms of how I write. He says that the writer must cruise the reader: “I must seek out this reader (must “cruise” him) without knowing where he is.” Technically, the title of the book is already interpolating a kind of intimacy with my reader. The first chapter is also called, “Hello.” I really want to be in conversation. 

There’s this sense of aloneness that you’re experiencing. Everything you’re creating – the thoughts that it brings up, the memories that it calls forth – I’ve always thought of reading as a very active practice. There is a kind of closeness you create – with a book, an author, a character, a moment, a line – that is unlike anything else. I almost wish I’d even tried to think through it [for this book], but it’s a giant mountain, and I probably didn’t have enough stamina to climb it. But it is a kind of intimacy unlike anything else. And it’s also the kind of intimacy that keeps changing. It can be erotic, it can be non-erotic – it can be many things. There’s something there. You get to know characters intimately, and you get to know authors intimately through their work, but we don’t think of closeness. That’s the other access point of what I was thinking about for this book – it’s strangers, it’s intimacy, but it’s also closeness. And what do we mean by closeness, and do we value it? What does it mean to get close to someone, or to have some distance? I’ve always loved being able to shuttle back and forth, and I think that’s always what I try to do when I’m reading. I love close reading. I love reading at the level of the sentence, I love reading at the level of the form, I love reading for structure – and then I love pulling back and being able to read in terms of context, or history, or autobiography. This is the literary critic in me – it’s the shuttling that really creates productive readings, which is ultimately what I also hope shines through in the book. I really adore all of these texts that I’m writing about, and I think that they’re so fruitful and so generative, so it feels like modeling that same kind of intimacy. 

DD: I’ve heard a lot from other writers about how it feels so difficult to let go of control by putting a book out into the world – whichever relationships are formed because of that book, or whichever types of closeness develop are things that you have so much less control over. So I like that model that you talked about, of, while in process, being able to dive into something, and then pull back, to play with the amount of control that you have leading up to a release. 

You may already be living it – but, if you could write your ideal romcom, what would that look like? 

MB: I’ve been thinking that one of the things I should write next is a romcom, since I’ve been thinking about it so much. I’ve always loved the romcoms that sort of break apart, or that are deconstructions of romcoms. So, my favorite romcom is My Best Friend’s Wedding, and – it’s funny, because if I think of it as my romcom, I’m imagining myself as the villain of the piece, never of the subject. I love romcoms that break the very concept of the romcom apart. Part of what I’m trying to do in my life – and I am in a throuple, which already feels like the antithesis of how we imagine a romcom. What would a romcom with three people look like? Someone out there should be writing it – I’m sure someone is already working on it. As soon as you break the balance, and as soon as there are no two halves, it gets more interesting – also, from experience, I can say more challenging. So, my romcom would be witty and quippy and a little bit sardonic, and it would constantly be questioning its every plot twist, and winking at the audience, knowing, like, “we’re in a structure, and we know the structure, and we’re going to break it apart and keep moving.” I love those kinds of metafictional tropes. 

DD: You should totally write it! I can’t wait to interview you about your soon-to-be Oscar-winning movie. 

When reading this book, I started thinking about my own relationships and my own friendships. And it got me thinking about how more and more friends have started mentioning that it’s felt tougher to flirt, or tougher to open themselves up to connection. As a person who is now an expert on all of this, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you do to stay fulfilled. 

MB: When I first pitched the book, I actively pitched it as a post-quarantine study. That’s not in the book anymore, but I really was trying to think about this idea of closeness, and how we create intimacy when everything is flat and in tiny, little squares. What had that done to our idea of intimacy? I do think there’s something to be said about how a lot of us struggled during those first few years of Covid, when we were making active choices about spending less time with people, and not being so close, and not hugging and instead doing elbow taps. 

The idea of being around strangers in uncontrolled situations, and tightly hugging – that sometimes still gives me anxiety, just because we’ve been culturally conditioned in many ways to think that. I think that’s still very present. Of course there’s no way of going back, so how do we reframe ourselves, and reframe our interactions? 

This is in the book, but my advice would be to be more open – to have openness to the world, and openness to a generous reading of the world, and reading of strangers. I don’t want to be that person who talks badly about the apps, but I do think there is a kind of insidious way of thinking about other people when we’re reducing them to photos, or labels, or height, or measurements, or skin color – any of the ways that you can literally filter people out. One of the things that I try to do in my life – and I’m sure fail on any given day – is trying to be more open. It’s not about being less discerning – it’s about being more open to possibilities. Not always thinking that what I’m looking for is what I need to find. I think that’s why flirting in a bar has a very different vibe to it compared to hitting someone up on an app – there’s a way in which it could go anywhere. And I think you’re more inclined to be nicer, to be more generous, and to be less of an asshole to someone who is right in front of you and offering you a kind of kindness than you are in an app, where you can just close it, or block them, and continue on your merry way. 

I say this, of course, as someone who’s in a relationship with two people, and sometimes, people are like, “I’m still single! How dare you have two?” 

DD: Do people really say, “How dare you have two?” 

MB: Oh, all the time. Every single time I say we’re in a throuple, it’s like, “And I can’t even get a date!” Which is hilarious. People either ask that or weirdly ask about sleeping arrangements. There’s either curiosity or a kind of playful envy. 

DD: It’s interesting. I like the way that you’re talking about it, because it almost feels like the disruption of the fantasy – what you write about with the romcom – and how allowing yourself to disrupt that is a way to continue getting closer.

MB: Yeah, as soon as you start thinking of people you flirt with as your possible life partner, you close yourself off, because then you’re already looking for ways to say no to them, like, “Oh, they drink, and I don’t want a drinker as my partner.” So you’re already looking for ways to say no to them instead of ways to say yes. 

This is the only time I endorse improv as a life mantra – you should always say, “yes, and.” Improv should not be used for anything else in the world. But it is helpful when flirting and meeting people. You should be open – you should be saying yes, instead of – to your point – trying to find how they fit into this readymade template of a fantasy that can be very claustrophobic. 

DD: Maybe that’s a symptom of the post-quarantine world, where part of that capital-F Fantasy is tied up in the claustrophobia that happens around it. 

MB: I think it’s also part of efficiency. We’re supposed to be able to find a partner really quickly, and you should be able to fulfill these tasks, and I should be able to do this now, and I’m running out of time. Abundance, people – abundance! 

DD: When thinking about the future, is there anything you’re looking forward to reading, or watching – or rereading, or rewatching? What are you feeling fulfillment from?

MB: I loved the TV adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude. This is a book that I grew up loving. It’s easily my favorite novel of all time. Watching the adaptation, I was like, “This is going to be terrible, this is Netflix,” but it’s so beautiful. I’m really looking forward to reading more of Garcia Marquez’s work. He’s the person who made me fall in love with reading and writing and ultimately being a critic. That was the first book that I read and enjoyed because of the discussions it engendered. I loved being in a class, and talking about it, and talking with friends about it, and talking to my teacher about it. It really showed me that joy in reading can come not only in the moment of reading, but also in the moment of analysis. I think all critics can hopefully relate to that. 

DD: I love seeing your face light up as you talk about that, and it’s true – the communities that we form around writing are so valuable. It’s funny – I feel like if I were to walk out into real life and start talking to someone on the sidewalk about how fun it is to talk to critics about criticism, they’d be like, “What planet did you come from?” But it’s very fun. 

Is there any parting wisdom you’d like to share?

MB: It is weird to write an entire book about all of this – someone was asking me about it, and they said, “At first, I thought this book was going to be a how-to guide!” And I have no desire to tell anyone how to create intimacies. I’m always more interested in questions than answers – which, again, is such a critic/academic way of thinking. I don’t have the answers – I just have a lot of fun questions, and I want to revel in them. And I think more of us should try to do that – not think that you have the answers to questions. Maybe you should ask more.