> there are homoerotic themes in some of his work but the characters are not gay in terms of their identities, and homoeroticism has more to do with the ideas of power rather than sexual identities

Heavily anti-gay cultures (like Nazi and far right) produce surprising amounts of homoerotic art for some reason. I think it goes with certain kind of masculine supremacy - you need to convince boys they are better off with masculine boys only and somehow end up homoerotic as a result. Plus, I guess, once everybody is obviously not gay, people stop clocking those things as what they are.

Edit: not trying to imply that the book is like that, just want to support the point that homoerotic does not imply gay culture.