“He shut his eyes so tight that neon bleeds into the blackness. He doesn’t understand how this works. Larry and Jackson get naked and name their dicks, but when Larry sees him staring at “Freddy,” it’s a bad thing. He says a little prayer. God, give me a new life. This one isn’t working for me. He waits for a merciful bolt of lightning to strike his brain, to offer him some clue as to how it all works, this whole world of normal boys.” [30]

From previous discussion, if a classic addresses issues that concern with forces beyond our control, then The World of Normal Boys will endure as a different kind of classic that reaches and massages the hearts of those who can resonate with the book’s awareness. I see myself in Robin, the teenager who is about to begin high school. Robin collects postcards from museums, keeps a short stack of Broadway cast albums, and hangs out at the top of the bleachers in PE. Robin is made fun of being a sissy just because he doesn’t live up to the standard of a jock. Why is a boy always expected to throw a football and drive a Camaro? Why all the center of attention? This book simply rhymes with me because growing up, I couldn’t stand those boys who act so tough and get everyone all riled up about all those stupid games. What is normal? What is the norms of being normal?

Once upon a time it wasn’t all girls singing “I kissed a girl and I liked it,” licensed civil marriages and same sex kissing photos posted on Facebook. Yes. Hard to believe. Not too long ago, any hint of homosexual relations were treated with scorn, marginalisation and even death.

David, our American in Paris, is waiting for his fiancée, Hella, to return from a vacation in Spain. It is in this window of his impending matrimony that he meets the beautiful Giovanni, in a bar and for three months they disappear into the shadowy, intense embrace of his rooms in the outskirts of Paris. However, their love is blighted by Hella’s return and as a result David retreats back into the safe, unturbulent waters of the more socially acceptable heterosexual relationship and abandons Giovanni quite abruptly leaving the young barman bereft. This consuming, forbidden affair wrecks destruction in this tragic Bermuda triangle.

James Baldwin was an African American who, in the late 40s left the oppressively radical America for what appeared to be the more liberal airs of Europe. What makes this novel quite extraordinary is not only the deft penmanship, the sensitive insight into what is quite a ruthless man (a product of his environment?) but that for the time, a black man dared to write a novel that contained no other black characters and instead centres around a white man’s experience – and of the incredibly taboo subject of homosexuality, manhood and constrictively, constructed gender roles, which even now produces the idea of ‘coming out.’

This novel is a foundation text of gay culture but I think it goes beyond that. To just define it by those means goes against Baldwin’s desire to leap over boundaries and lines in the sand. Everyone harbours something taboo, something secret. This novel, quite beautifully, shows us when a person struggles with their internal desires, when secrets are kept and how many lives are derailed when they are exposed.

But if Randy’s death taught me anything, it’s that life is short. I know it’s nuts, it’s impulsive, I haven’t thought it through at all. But sometimes, Kevin, you just have to say ‘what the heck?’ and take a chance. [144]

The Year of Ice follows a year in the life of Kevin Doyle, who turns eighteen in 1978, as he forays into adulthood and a life that his rearing and family values have not prepared him for. Kevin likes boys: he has a crush on a fellow football teammate whom he dreams of marrying. In the past two years, Kevin’s relationship with his father, Patrick, has grown distant, and as lonely women (from widows and widowers support group) vie for his attention, Kevin discovers Patrick’s closely guarded secret: At the time of his wife’s death, he had planned to abandon his family for another woman. What appeared to be a fatal car accident—as Eileen Doyle’s car hit a patch of ice and careened off the icy Mississippi River in Minneapolis—may as well be a suicide.

And I don’t believe, not even for a second, that she killed herself. She wouldn’t do that to me. She wouldn’t leave me with a man who wanted to skip town without me . . . did she figure out that I liked boys? Is that what drove her into the Mississippi? . . . Was it my fault? [74]

The Year of Ice evokes the pain and loneliness of a coming-of-age teenager who is both fearful and curious of his sexual orientation. He can only maintain disguise of a boyfriend, a sort of alpha-male-to-be to fit in the pecking order of males, to a girl with whom he avoids to engage in intimacy. He seeks the consolation of an imaginary boyfriend in the form of his crush at night. In the face of the confrontation of ugly, long-buried family secrets, Kevin negotiates life on his own. Evoking the character of Maurice in E.M. Forster’s novel, he realizes the forbidden love, let alone the concomitant’s happiness, is only possible in a dream. I resonate with Kevin’s trembling escapades as he reaches out to secure copies of Playgirl, writing and answering personal ads, and attempting to cruise bars.

That’s what I need, camouflage . . . I wanna go inside, but I can’t make myself to do it. So I head to the Dart and stick the key in the lock. I sit inside for a minute or two before I turn the ignition . . . I wanna cry. “cause the guy I love was waiting for me in the 90’s, but I didn’t have the balls to walk through the door and say hello. [229]

With an intimate and honest (often humorous) voice,

I think I’m gonna pass out ’cause all the blood’s rushing out of my head and I’m seeing spots in front of my eyes and she won’t stop spazzing. Why the hell do I have to do this? I squeeze, I cringe. She like oh, oh, and I’m like eeeew, eeeew. [185]

That’s what I love, somebody gave birth, so they’re better than the rest of us. Just because we can reproduce doesn’t mean that we should. [242]

the novel is a story where being gay is only one of a teenager’s problems, and not the most difficult one. It examines what happens to a family when the fiercest loyalties are not to each other, but to one’s own secrets. The book is cross-genre at it’s best.

262 pp [Read/Skim/Toss]

Read my first review from almost three years ago.

Maurice looked at him with tenderness. He was studying him, as in the earliest days of their acquaintance. Only then it was to find out what he was like, now what had gone wrong with him. Something was wrong.” [114]

Written in 1914, E.M. Forster was ahead of his time when it comes to social acceptance toward homosexuality. In Maurice Christopher Hall, one finds an unfairly generous share of virtues: privileged for success, Cambridge education, handsomeness, and business success. But deep in his heart is a misery because the only sex that attracts him is his own: he loves men and always had loved them. He renounces his faith, frees from claws of religion, and rebels against being his father’s double, refuses to uphold the tradition of upper-class propriety. He’s completely sold out for Clive Durham, who believes in platonic restraint and induces Maurice to acquiesce, for Maurice is humble and inexperienced at that stage.

I have become normal—like other men, I don’t know how, any more than I know how I was born. It is outside reason, it is against my wish. [126]

Maurice and Clive are both outlaws. Whereas Maurice does not cease to love, Clive chooses to assimilate to the social norms, and that is, heterosexuality. After what seems to be (Forster makes it seem to be) some kind of “hellenic” temperament that flings him into Maurice’s affectionate arms, Clive quickly turns to women and sends Maurice back to the prison of loneliness. Even though their actions demonstrate a difference in courage, what Forster wants to emphasize is one’s will to suffer. It touches me immensely that Maurice pours into his love dignity as well as the richness of his being—he never stops loving even when his heart is broken. Clive, on the other hand, has avoided suffering by adopting the easy way. Although it’s indisputable that he intends no evil toward Maurice, Clive slowly deteriorates through his political pretensions and self-deceit.

Not to crush it down, not vainly to wish that it was something else, but to cultivate it in such ways as will not vex either God or Man. [70]

The love of women would rise as certainly as the sun, scorching up immaturity and ushering the full human day . . . some goddess of the new universe that had opened to him in London, someone utterly unlike Maurice Hall. [130]

So Maurice’s fall actually acclerates his descent to the pit bottom, but suffering has only prepared him and toughened him for what is in store, true love. I’m not sure if the relationship woe makes Maurice more courageous, it certainly makes him stronger. Unlike Clive, Maurice is more inclined to accept human nature as his suffering and pain have shown him a niche behind the world’s judgment. When he relapses with Clive’s gamekeeper at the house, he has taken a risk and they have loved. The exchange between Maurice and Alec are suggestive but affirmative. That they have both taken a risk to love has put them in a test of which the outcome bodes auspice. In Maurice, E.M. Forster has deftly delved, ahead of his time, in the issues of homosexual love, openness, class, and self-deceit. It’s a poignant and yet redeeming story of one’s journey to find love, through suffering, doubt, and conviction.

Did you ever dream you’d a friend, Alec? . . . Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep. [197]

255 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss]

“It frightened me because Corey was a guy. I wanted to protect it because such a love was so ridiculous and fragile. Love was for marriage, and I couldn’t marry Corey . . . I couldn’t distinguish the excitement of my fear from the excitement of love.” [61]

Joel Scherzenlieb grows up at a time given to homosexual panic. In 1970, at summer camp boys behind his back call him queer, which makes him feel misgiving because it means he’s weak and helpless. His divorced parents, whom he doesn’t trust, are busy criticizing each other, let alone ushering and fortifying their gay son to adulthood. When he reunites with Corey in New York City three years later, he falls in love with the man who comes to his defense at the camp but decides that being with Corey doesn’t make him gay.

“But I’m not queer. That’s why I have to end it . . .
“Were you in love with him?
“Of course not. I’m straight [76]

It’s obvious that the relationship between Joel and Corey is uneven, if not one-way, because one is more mature, secure, and monogamous than the other. Joel seems to be using Corey’s feelings as a chance to test his own fantasies, fear, temptations, and even homosexual panic. Joel is far from being comfortable in his own skin. Is he to blame for his promiscuity behind Corey’s back? Christopher Bram, with an erotic and yet controlled style, delivers an emotional journey of someone who does not know love let alone understanding love in the context of a committed relationship. Coming to terms of his homosexuality, Joel has also given himself to a concussion of libidinous escapades that he thinks can never hurt a partnership that is based on true love and understanding.

Oh yeah? I know how you people live. Yeah, you live like couples and pay lip service to love, but if there’s somebody on the street who catches your eye, you’ll jump into bed without thinking twice about it. I’ve heard all about the gay scene. [281]

So disconcerting and yet so dead-on. Bram’s purpose is not to advocate monogamy but to explore the validity of love. In order for Joel to make sense of love, he has to commit, in his own words, discourtesies, errors of judgment, and sexual nothings—acts that debase Corey’s love and that take Corey’s trust for granted. It’s almost necessary for him to fall so deep, to the point of self-hatred, to recognize requited love that he’s shown. The only way the prodigal son to perceive love is through forgiveness.

I could resist it only by hating him back, but even that turned against me, because I hated myself for hating Corey . . . Corey was too good for me, and I hated myself for hating him even as I hated him for making me hate myself. [369]

Surprising Myself is Bram’s first novel and that it lays the ground work for his later novels. The ideas of no-string-attached sex and emotional fidelity recur in Exiles in America. The novel captures beautifully the altering gamut of emotions, as well as the reversing cause and effect in a relationship that is stranded in misunderstanding. So powerful and raw is the portrayal of one’s guilt and selfishness and their consequence on mutual trust. The only foible is the lingering drama of the sister’s bungled marriage, which is to mirror Joel’s lack of gratitude. I resonate most deeply with the book’s undoing the deception that love is some trite convention between two people. It shows the destruction power of speculation and exploitation.

424 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss]

Are you planning on participating in the upcoming 24 Hour Read-a-thon (either as a reader or cheerleader)? Have you made any preparations for the event? And, veterans out there, any tips you’d like to share with the newbies?

I’m a newbie myself since I couldn’t make any of the previous read-a-thons. All I know is that I will need constant caffeine boost during the early-morning hours since I will begin at 5 am West Coast time. Other than Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun and Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (the play on which My Fair Lady is based), the upcoming read-a-thon will have a gay literature theme. I will be reading GLBT titles that I have recently acquired. As far as the updates go, I might not be able to post hourly update since I will bury my nose in the books. I doubt I will finish more than 2 books since I’m a slow reader, but I plan to flip through at least the first few chapters of each, just to alter reading materials.

The World of Normal Boys: A Novel K.M. Soehnlein
The Hour Between Sebastian Stuart
Surprising Myself Christopher Bram
At Swim, Two Boys Jamie O’Neill
The Charioteer Mary Renault

I will have to do a quick run for grocery shopping, stocking up snacks that I can munch over reading. Post-its would be essential for note-taking. What about you? Will you be joining us for the read-a-thon on Saturday, Oct 24?

“In this kingdom of ours there are no distinctions of social rank, eminence, age, or strength. What we share in common are bodies filled with aching, irrepressible desire and hearts filled with insane loneliness. In the dead of night these tortured hearts burst out of their cages, bearing their fangs and coiling their claws as they begin a frenzied hunt for prey.” [30]

As befit to Banned Book Month, I took up my friend’s timely recommendation of Crystal Boys by Hsien-yung Pai, who is one of the very few Chinese (celebrated) homosexuals that have come out. Pai is appreciated for sophisticated narratives that introduce controversial perspectives in Chinese literature. First published in the Chinese language in 1983, Crystal Boys (Sons of Sin) has been the seminal work of gay Chinese literature. It tells the story of a group of homosexual youths living in 1960s Taipei largely from the perspective of a young, gay runaway, A-Qing, who serves as its main protagonist. A-Qing comes from an impoverished single-parent family. His father cats him out after learning that he is gay. Eventually A-Qing drifts into New Park (now the 228 Memorial Park in Taipei), a gay hangout and begins his life as a hustler.

In the dim light of the reddish moon above we look like a pack of sleepwalkers, frantically stepping on each other’s shadows as we skirt the lotus pond, never stopping, round and round, in crazed pursuit of that nightmare of love and lust. [30-31]

These boys are not mere shadows under the moonlight in the narrow strip of land surrounding the lotus pond hidden by a tightly woven fence. They are shadows of a society that does not have a place for them. Regardless of their status, education, and eminence, they are all forsaken by their families because of their being homosexuals. Until they find true love, they have to eke out a living with their bodies with no feelings involved. In their sealed-off, congested world, they all reach out hungrily, desperately, trying to retrieve something from other’s bodies that they have lost on their own. When A-Qing meets Dragon Prince, who has lived in exile in America to save the face of his father, Crystal Boys steers into the theme of filial love that lays the foundation of Chinese society. His fateful love for another hustler boy at the Park about ten years ago has become a legend.

The whole lot of you, young as you are, have no self-respect and no drive to better yourselves. Instead you get involved in cheap, shameful activities! How would your parents and teachers, who worked so hard to educate you, feel if they knew what you were doing? Sad? Pained? You’re society’s garbage, the dregs of humanity, and it’s our responsibility to rid society of you, to put you away… [191]

Crystal Boys was way ahead of its time in portraying underdogs in a society that pronounces heterosexuality as the sole moral code. It exemplifies to the full how society is constantly on guard against anything and everything labeled as disorder, which might disrupt order. The individuals that are labeled as disorder might be ostracized, but perfectly undeniable is the blood-tie to the families, however dysfunctional they might be. Pai’s writing is contemplative and penetrating, bearing all the grief, indignities, humiliation, and injustices that have filled A-Qing’s heart since he was expelled from the society. The landmark novel weaves together themes of survival, redemption, and love that only those who have lived through the loneliness of the time could understand.

328 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss]

I started Crystal Boys (Sons of Sin 孽子 in original Chinese text) by Pai Hsien-yung, who is generally considered among the greatest living stylists of Chinese fiction and prose. Born in China in 1937, he studied in Taiwan and came to the U.S. in 1961. He became a professor of Chinese literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1965, and retired in 1994. The book paints a very poignant picture of the gay community in Taiwan during the 1970s, which is better known as buoliquan, literally glass community, where the individuals are known as glass boys. The novel follows a short period of the life of A-Qing, expelled from his family because he is gay, who begins the life as a hustler. I haven’t read an opening paragraph more dismayed and repressed than this:

There are no days in our kingdom, only nights. As soon as the sun comes up, our kingdom goes into hiding, for it is an unlawful nation; we have no government and no constitution, we are neither recognized nor respected by anyone, our citizenry is little more than rabble. . . We prick up our ears like a herd of frightened antelope in a predator-infested forest, forever on guard against the slightest sign of danger. The wind gusts, the grasses stir; every sound carries a warning. We listen for the sound of the policemen’s hobnailed boots as they march past the green barrier that separates us; the minute we hear that they are invading our territory we scatter and flee as if on command . . . [17]

Social outcasts they are—unwanted by their families because of their being homosexual, the book exemplifies how modernism is principally concerned with order. Modernity (modernism) is fundamentally about order: about rationality and rationalization, creating order out of chaos. The assumption is that creating more rationality is conducive to creating more order, in this case order is synonymous to morality defined by heterosexuality, and that the more ordered a society is, the better it will function (the more rationally it will function). Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as “disorder,” which might disrupt order. Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between “order” and “disorder,” so that they can assert the superiority of “order.” But to do this, they have to have things that represent “disorder”–modern societies thus continually have to construct “disorder.” In the novel, in the society that doesn’t tolerate homosexuality, this disorder is the gay community and the individuals who live in it. Likewise in western culture, this disorder becomes “the other”–defined in relation to other binary oppositions. Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, (etc.) becomes part of “disorder,” and has to be eliminated from the ordered, rational modern society. This book is a testimony of how far the gay community has evolved over time. It draws the picture of what life was like for gay men in our recent but little-known past.

He screws up everything Clay’s been taught to feel about the world, and yet Clay does not want to avoid him. It’s like he wants to be confused, which makes Clay feel oddly guilty.” [189]

In this novel Christopher Bram reconstructs the last days of the once-famous James Whale, who directed Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. Although surviving a stroke that doesn’t impair his mobility, the director who lives in retirement is suffers olfactory hallucination. More so than death, he is afraid to wake up with his mind in pieces, for it has betrayed him for so long that it cannot regain his trust. He has taken fancy of his gardener, Clay Boone, who has become his sole companion with whom he can talk about his past, which has been haunting him.

So what if the guy is a homo, as long as he keeps his hands to himself? But accepting that, knowing it and accepting it, feels just as wrong to Clay, passive and cowardly. [176]

As Clay becomes more assured that the old man is not pawing on his skin, he finds himself being admitted to Whale’s harrowing past. The old man has a secret agenda for his confident. I understand that Gods and Monsters aspires to morph the horror and atrocities of the First World War into a horror movie. On the surface the novel also explores gay issues in 1950s Hollywood, where stereotype is invincible. But the flow of the novel is as snarled as the director’s mind, which is slowly giving in to senility and delirium. The appearances of Elsa Lanchester, Greta Garbo, Charles Laughton, George Cukor, Princess Margaret and Elizabeth Taylor in this novel unfortunately don’t compensate for the slow and somewhat disjointed story-line. Bram has managed, however, to fashion a love story of Whale and his obsession with his handsome yardman out of the grim material of Whale’s suicide. I would have enjoyed reading it more if Bram would pick up the pace sooner than 70% into the book instead of makng loops.

270 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss]

“There’s got to be something else. What are other people for? Something besides sex and money and votes. Or we wouldn’t constantly talk about each other. Are we just entertainment? Distractions? Are we just burying our own shit in other people’s shit?” [305]

Christopher Bram delves into the adage “the personal is political” and wages war against the dark, manipulative forces and conspiracies against gays in Gossip. Ralph Eckhart, 34, is the manager of a Greenwich Village bookstore who adopts a mild political view. Young but a bit jaded, he enjoys falling in love yet knows not to trust it. Despite his passion for Bill O’Connor, a young closeted Republican who writes misogynistic propaganda, he knows he should not wear his heart on the sleeves too soon.

Even requited, such love would be foolish, messy and brief. Unless it changed Bill’s politics. That fantasy was back, larger than before, giving value to lust, turning sex with a Republican from a self-betrayal to a good deed, a moral rescue. Bill went against his best interests by seeing me. [92]

They are lovers, even if neither of them is in love, because God political discrepancy and political conservativeness forbid. When Bill writes a tell-all book that spreads gossip about women in Washington, including a footnote about a lesbian affair between a speechwriter, who happens to be Ralph’s friend Nancy, and a married senator, Ralph ends the relationship. He picks friendship over love: it’s no way he can be with someone whose lie has hurt a friend and jeopardizes her career.

You would have to be blind not to realize that I’ve had second, third and fourth thoughts about us ever since we met. It was over our political differences yet I now see that your politics are symptoms of deeper faults: opportunism, thoughtlessness, and self-absorption . . . I have been sleeping with the enemy . . . [146]

But it isn’t anywhere near the end. The end of personal liaison marks the beginning of a power struggle between left- and right-wing politics, fueled by a homophobic culture that has defined the politics. Ralph is charged with homicide after Bill was found dead in his apartment, coincidentally, just days after the author has come out on national TV to win Ralph back. He is arrested on no grounds except that he was once a politically aware gay man who once knew the right-wing victim.

Deeply disturbing and chilling, Gossip is both a knife-sharp satire and revelation of how in a politcally charged environment, nobody can afford to show themselves in a bad light, and in defending and sustaining a cause, anyone, regardless of affiliation and beliefs, can become an institutional liar. Christopher Bram drops the bomb on politicians left and right, exposing all the hypocrisies that unfortunately sustain the political climate of this country. At one point Ralph is asked why he isn’t angrier at the violation of his rights, and that he is emotionally and politically autistic. The truth ironically is that Ralph is the only person who is not morally blinded by the so-called cause pertaining to any political interests. It just shows how assimilating to a general cause can backfire that an individual can lose his own identity and idiosyncrasy. Gossip is convincing but disturbing: a book that I enjoy reading but not sure if I love reading. The ugliness of the content is as unbearable as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

337 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss] Well-written and witty, but my ineptitude and indifference in politics will render this book less memorable. This is an important book of our time.

American ROMANCES, Rebecca Brown. (City Lights) $16.95

Because of The Haunted House, The Gifts of the Body, and The End of Youth, Rebecca Brown’s writings have been regarded by many as some of the greatest contributions to contemporary gay and lesbian literature.

An activist, teacher and community organizer, Brown has used a variety of mediums to project her voice, including composing the libretto for the dance opera The Onion Twins, working with painter Nancy Kiefer on a book Woman in Ill-Fitting Wig, and developing the original two-act play The Toaster. In her most recent work, American ROMANCES, Brown presents a collection of unusual essays that explore the idea of what it means to be American.

At moments reading the American ROMANCES can seem disorienting. Brown intertwines pop culture, autobiography, literary and cinematic history, drawing upon everything from John Wayne’s personal life to Gertrude Stein’s infatuation with the Oreo to the author’s own adolescent struggle with Christian faith to illustrate her ideas. Yet, while using a hybrid of genres, she always manages to connect her histories/memories/stories to a larger idea of what makes America the way it is. The result of Brown’s work is an entertaining journey into seeing in unlikely places how:

American mainstream culture derives from these sources: England (our official language and laws); race warfare (killing the Natives to take the land; building an entire economy on slave labor); and religious fanaticism (the Puritans and everything created in opposition to them, such rock ‘n’ roll, feminism, sex for anything other than babies):  and the public confession by which we try to both explain everything and explain everything else away.

An intense read, Brown’s activist voice does leaks out in certain places. As when, after describing Ellison’s Invisible Man, Brown states “How many times do we have to go through this invisiblilizng of others?  When are we vermin going to get that we’re all here, we’re all queer (or colored or weird or different) and just get used to it”. However, throughout the essays, Brown maintains a mostly playful tone while she makes interesting historical connections and often dips into her deeply personal past.

For example, she draws comparisons between author Nathanial Hawthorne and beach boy musician Brian Wilson (who grew up in the California suburb of Hawthorne) as a springboard for exploring some thoughts on what constitutes the American spirit.

Viewing Nathaniel Hawthorne as a symbol of East Coast Puritanism, she retells how the Puritans came to new soil as an act of defiance, to set up a new way of life, “Oh, the sins of the fathers! Oh, the visitations upon the sons! The dream of America! The nightmare, the horror, the hope.” The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson then stands as an icon of West Coast Hedonism. While the culture of the West Coast has in many ways formed as a reaction against Puritanism, ultimately both share a common spirit of rebellion and exploration. “The Puritans dreamt of the City on the Hill and came to the New World to build it. Then when it went to hell their sons and sons of sons went west, and daughters, too… And so, to California they went”.

Later, when recounting her early years as a fundamentalist Christian and her break from faith, Brown recognizes that her own life has, at times embodied both Puritanism and the West Coast spirit.  She describes how by the time college came she had rejected her religious past, but that at the same time she also felt that “Part of me also missed it. I missed having faith in something and believing things could turn out right over time”. Here, Brown draws up another important thread that runs throughout American ROMANCES: how nostalgia, an idealized romance of the past, and a rejection of history has all shaped America into what it is.

Whether she’s being tragic or funny—and she sometimes is both simultaneously—Brown always points her essays back to poignant conclusions. Describing her fundamentalist past she writes, “Now I think that words can be a way to point toward God, and a story, like the Christian one, can tell, in a way I understand, about encountering a God who always was and is and does not need our telling.”

Throughout the rest of the collection, Brown writes in a variety of registers, from informal conversation to the detailed scholarly history to something near poetry. This helps keep the piece engaging and fresh.

Ultimately, American ROMANCES offers bold reflection on the complicated question of trying to figure out just what is and isn’t American. Rebecca Brown has written a fun and powerful book that balances its insight with entertainment.

Ted English is a teacher of first-year composition and a graduate student of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Oklahoma

“He had almost forgotten the intoxication of such moments, it had been so long since anything like this had happened to him. God, he thought, this is just what I need. A lusty affair. Not just a one-night stand but a real affair. His blood rushed..” [80]

Consider that Douglas Dean had been a fixture of the theater scene in San Francisco, and that he had been a columnist and feature writer for The Advocate, I’m a late boomer to his (posthumous) literary glories. Under the pen name of Douglas Dean, Dean Goodman published twelve paperback novels and Prime Time is his last, released in 1988.

What separates Prime Time from other gay paperbacks is Dean’s knack of instilling in a linear plot passages of lyrical and poetic beauty. To be honest, what kind of gay fiction would it be without sex scenes? But Dean has handled these scenes with grace and moderation. The flow of intimate moments is so natural and reasonable, erotic but not lewd. It springs from the heart. Prime Time indeed explores the human condition of gay men.

His earlier instincts had not been wrong. He and Craig O’Brien had exchanged subliminal messages during their first meeting, and the messages they exchanged today were even stronger. [80]

Once again Eric felt the surge of power. He was amazed at the passion which this man awakened in him, welling up like a furious flood clamoring for release behind a concrete dam. [141]

Set in San Francisco in the mid 80s, a few years into the regan administration, the novel chronicles the story of three friends: Eric, Albert and Kentucky. An actor, a novelist, and a playwright, respectively, who still have dreams of scuuess and new height in their career. While the book touches on many literati, art, and gay scenes across America with flashbacks of the men’s lives, the main focus is Eric Chamberlain, whose acting career has been stagnant and underestimated. His frustration with life’s most mundane, like coping with Social Security that might go bust, and battling with retarded management of a dyfunctional public transit agency, doesn’t seem unfamiliar even today, 20 years later. At work he has to defend himself against treacherous professional enemies who out of jealousy thrive on attacks and destruction in order to discredit him.

He felt as if he were a character in a story by Edgar Allan Poe, trapped in a room without doors and the walls of the room were closing in on him, coming nearer and nearer until they would suffocate him and crush the life out of him. [101]

In the midst of all these is a soul searching process that would eventually lead to an understanding of self-worth. The title Prime Time, after all, is pun-intended. It bestows a sense of urgency to seize the moment to love and to be loved. The witty prose explores how people with different moral values and outlook in life have to negotiate their difference, even to compromise in order to achieve success in relationship. Between physcial and emotional fidelity, there ought to be a balance that would make a relationship feasible. It’s a fairly new concept to me who is more concervative when it comes to exclusivity. Dean, however,does have a point about taking a chance in what might be a lifetime happiness.

315 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss]

How adventurous and embracing are you toward unknown authors and their works? My attitude would be open-minded, as long as the premise of the book intrigues me, and that the plot is promising enough to live up the expectation. But I always feel attached to one subgenre, which is always overlooked because the subject to which this subgenre addresses is often biased, and that is gay literature and fiction. The latest find from our mini book exchange club is Prime Time by Douglas Dean. Graces atop the back cover is a catchy line in red:

Are there no more “good times” after a certain age?

It’s a suspenseful story of three friends, in San Francisco, who strive for “the golden apple” of greater success in the treacherous, lustful (gay) world of the theatre. A quick look in LibraryThing reveals that only 1 person has added this title to the bookshelf with no review. How rare is that? A more exhaustive research on the internet yields 9 more titles by Douglas Dean, the oldest dated 1969. Douglas Dean is actually a pen name of an author from guess where—San Francisco! This seems like a literary trail worth pursuing.

On a side note, I have been (very) behind in responding to your comments. I am trying to correct the delinquency as I have to knock out the towering portfolios of students’ papers for the summer session. Bear with you, I’ll catch up with blog reading as well.

So, now I’m back in DC and reality is rushing in. Not only do I have to face the prospect of returning to teaching, but I also have to brace myself for the process of querying agents. Over the summer, I’ve compiled a list of agents, some of whom I submitted my first manuscript to and others whose names I’ve come across by way of recommendations and research.

I find the submission process daunting, because I know rejection is on its way. It’s just a matter of course. And although I feel really good about this novel, I know it won’t be some agents cup of tea. Questions float through my head, such as: Will they see the gay angle as a marketing plus or minus? These days, I really do think it’s a plus, especially because gay marriage is such a hot topic, but I don’t know. Will they get what I’m doing with the structure? The dual narrators? The interwoven pulp pastiche, which serves as a thematic echo for the main story? I don’t know, but I do feel like I sending them something that’s high quality, character driven, and ends really well.

We’ll see how confident I sound after a few rejections. Sigh.

“Do you know how many times in my life I’ve done just that? Go with my heart? It’s getting to be a cliché with me . . . Do you know how many times I’ve ended up feeling like a fool for going with my heart? I just don’t want to feel like a fool anymore.” [281]

In 1996, on the mouth of turning fifty, David Masiello suffers more than a mid-life crisis. Since his partner Johnny has died of AIDS two years ago, David has lived a lethargic life that is lacking in purpose. Cruising bars until the wee hours in the morning, hoping to find someone who might give an old bachelor a chance for relationship, or at least consoling his loneliness for a night, David feels like he is wondering with the lost souls in purgatory.

. . . I’m tired of being alone. Big news, huh? I’m tired of keeping my apartment clean for no one but myself. And I’m tired of not cleaning my apartment and worrying that that’ll be the day I do bring someone home. [16]

Hoping to relieve his heartache, David accepts a one-year position at a Western medical clinic in Beijing, where he would renew himself. Lonely but excited, he sets out to explore the polluted, congested imperial city whose charm quickly wears out in less than a week. Ubiquity of people and noise becomes a nuisance as China wallops him. The publicness of everything, which deprives privacy, is overwhelming. It’s the vibrant description of life in Beijing, which accurately captures the culture and psyche, that separates the book from it’s cookie cutter contemporaries.

Everything I saw, everything I smelled. Everything I heard, tasted, touched. It was all China. I couldn’t get away from it, not for a minute. . . People were everyone. It was hard not to think of the streets as infested with people. [77-78]

As David explores the bustle of street life and worms into the clandestine gay scene, after a series of comic and poignant encounters with Chinese men, he perceives that the same casual attitude and behavior are to blame for the heartbreaking gay relationships as in home.

But these guys don’t seem much interested in hooking up again . . . I wonder if they want to see anyone a second time. It’s not you, David. It’s the culture. The youth thing. [11]

What hits home is Gambone’s dissecting of the inveterate Chinese culture that reigns over the lives of men, who are bound by their Confucian responsibility. David’s courtship to Bosheng, a handsome artist from the northeastern city of Harbin, is complicated by not only Bosheng’s past relationship woes, which taught him not to wear his heart on the sleeves, but also his filial duty to obey his parents and continue the family lineage. Foreigners never understand that the pulse of the Chinese culture, the foundation on which social and moral values are built is family life.

Wherever I went in Beijing, life jostled and jerked and lilted along the rhythms of family life. Here, in fact, family life was life. [100]

As David begins to comprehend the divide between Eastern and Western values, as well as Bosheng’s fear of relationship, he realizes that the stoic resignation to the fate of homosexual, the loneliness, and the grief of unrequited love afflict gay men regardless of the race. What makes it even more difficult for these Chinese men is that they live in a closed world where freely expressing their thoughts is not allowed. Gambone’s novel explores what it really means to feel the urgency of seeking happiness in an atmosphere so suppressed that one does not necessarily have a choice to love and happiness. The novel is so close to my heart that it reminds all of us to not take our loved ones for granted.

There are days when I think I understand that better than you do. It’s just that I’d rather choose which part of the mess to take on. I mean, why can’t I just be—gay, without burying into all this business of . . . of—this business of picking up men in seedy places? [149]

Chinese guy, David, we fall in love too easy. Not experienced in love like you American guys. You go to bed one night with Chinese boy, the next day, he mistaking it for love and wanting you to be his lover and begin a marriage. . . Too much breaking heart, David. [183]

So right on. This book makes me laugh but also brings tears to my eyes. Beijing: A Novel resonates and evokes James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room in its poignancy of gay relationship.

312 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss]

He felt the familiar flames of self-hatred spark then leap skyward once again, fanned by the certainty that he will never be a real man, no matter how many muscles he grew. He was paralyzed now, the invisible strings yanking every part of him in opposite directions. [181]

Nick Nolan’s novel is another sexy coming-of-age, coming-out-of-the-closet story at a glance. A closer perusal will do the justice that Strings Attached is thoughtful to incorporate the reality of a neglected teenage boy reared by an alcoholic mother. When Tiffany Tyler, whose drug addiction fifteen years ago had wrecked her family apart, goes into rehab again, seventeen-year-old Jeremy Tyler moves from Fresno slum to the paradise estate of Katherine Tyler and Bill Mortson.

No, she said she wants to make sure I eat the right stuff. And she even wanted to have my hair cut a certain way, and ordered a bunch of stuff for me from the Banana, and she corrects the way I walk and the way I talk. It’s kind of driving me crazy. [54]

While Aunt Katherine (indubitably) dotes on Jeremy, she is also controlling him like Gepetto does Pinocchio—holding up his head an imaginary string. Caught up with recreating the legacy of Jeremy’s father: genteel, well-educated, classy, preppy and athletic, she is determined to carve, or clone her great-nephew into the image of what she likes to think his father was. That Jonathan Tyler had died so unfairly, at a premature age, might well justify her exerting a tight reign over Jeremy.

Whom you fall in love with has little to do with it; to be a man you must be three things: courageous, honest, and selfish. . . . Courage is needed to be honest with yourself, and once you know your true nature you must be courageous to be selfish about your needs. [111]

In Arthur, the gay butler, he finds the courage and strength to face his true self, although he continues to suppress his desire and obliterate his attraction to guys by dating Reed, a beautiful mulatto girl in school. Jeremy’s mentality mirrors that of parents (including mine) to whom their sons have come out. They cling on to the last hope that a magical combination of beauty, sexiness, and intelligence in the opposite sex might make them forget any disturbing urges and help them become the man they dream of becoming. As Jeremy becomes in touch with who he really is as a person, he falls prey to an insidious plot that will rid him to be at the helm of the Tyler enterprises.

Strings Attached embodies what great storytelling should be: well-written prose, engaging plot, and thought-provoking commentaries. It speaks so powerfully that what matters the most in life is not the label or how society defines a person, but that one is comfortable in his skin. It takes courage to be true to one’s self because one is not capable of love unless he is true to himself. This novel exemplifies cross-genre fiction.

290 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss]

June is Gay Pride month in San Francisco, and Hawaii (Oahu) celebrates Pride in July. In honor of this annual event, I’ll name the five gay literature classics that have one way or another shaped my perspective as a person. Sometimes readers (or people in general) maintain a deception that gay and lesbian literature is erotica. While some of the books sport an erotic scene or two, most of these novels are “high-brow”, literary fiction that is quintessential of the artistry of writing.

Literary Fiction/Literature

1. The Folded Leaf, William Maxwell. A classic story: Athletic and slightly unruly Spud Latham saves the frail, flat-chested Lymie from going under in time plants a seed of friendship (more than friendship) that will be tested by tough trials that touch the innermost of human heart.

2. Maurice, E.M. Forster. Very few, perhaps none of the contemporary gay fiction paints a more authentic, true-to-life picture of how a coming-of-age gay man is torn between his sexuality and the need to assimilate to social and cultural constructions of the “normal” than E. M. Forster’s Maurice does. It’s most heart wrenching, because Maurice just wants to be loved.

3. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin. The book explores the troubling emotions of man’s heart with unusual candor and yet with dignity and intensity. It delves into the most controversial issue of morality with an artistry. The most touching and absorbing thing is Giovanni’s unconditional love for David, whose fearful intimation opens in him a hatred for Giovanni that is as powerful as his love for him.

4. The Swimming-Pool Library, Alan Hollinghurst. His first and probably the most powerful. The novel exposes the day-to-day episodes of gay life. Nipping into a library of uncatalogued pleasure is a realm of halt, darkness, and unknown possibility. It is in this uncharted territory where the difference between sex and companionship becomes blurry. The most recent The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize.

5. Dancer From The Dance, Andrew Holleran. What hits me the most (and that is the one thing that tugs so snuggly in my heart) is that Malone is very melodramatic, sentimental, and clinging on to temperament. He surely lives (and suffers) for love more than others. Whether he finds the love of his life or not, his determination renders his living life to the full. The novel, after all, can be viewed as a bittersweet journey to self-enlightenment: He struggled to come out of the closet. He quit a career in law to pursue with passion the one thing that had eluded him utterly–love.

Lighter Reads

1. Latter Days, C. Jay Cox. A sweeping romantic story it advertises to be, teaches us a lesson or two in relationship. It might have gone a little far with the miracle and the angel’s singing but it’s what fiction does after all.

2. The Front Runner, Patricia Nell Warren. This is the classic story of a gay runner who fought his way to Olympics and his gay relationship with his coach.

3. The Dreyfus Affair, Peter Lefcourt. Combining romance, comedy, and baseball writing, the book, in a contemptuous tone, exposes how backward and hypocritical this country is. This is the story of two basball players falling in love.

4. Landing, Emma Donoghue. Donoghue explores something that is very sketchy, sensitive, and provocative—the rhetorical inquiry of love over generational, geographical, and demographical differences.

5. Letter from Point Clear, Dennis McFarland. This is not really GLBT literature, but one of the characters, a gay brother, makes up a substantial part of the novel. His brother-in-law, a pastor in the South, is confronting his sexuality.

Check out this post for more suggestions in this genre.

It is not easy to get a gay novel published. Possibly our most celebrated gay writer, Edmund White, summed up the situation back in 2007: ‘The market is very small. Only 3% of all people are gay and if you take a diminishing dumbed-down reading public to begin with, and say you are only aiming for 3% of that market, that’s awfully small. So gay novels if they are successful sell 5,000 copies.’

Not an easy job then. The trick, perhaps, lies in judicious marketing. As a leading gay journalist in London (founder of ‘Attitude’ magazine and currently Editor of the gay pages in ‘Time Out’), Paul Burston is a master of knowing what this 3% want. His latest novel, ‘The Gay Divorcee’, is a deceptively light hearted critique of the London gay scene, laced with blisteringly witty repartee and timely social comment. It is probably what many gay readers want and also what they need.

‘The Gay Divorcee’ narrates the story of Soho bar owner Phil Davies who is engaged to be ‘married’ to breathtaking rancid queen ‘Fag Ash’ Ashley. The problem is that Phil is still married to Hazel and is blissfully unaware that he has a nineteen year old son from that union. More crucially, Ashley knows nothing about the first wife. The story charts the shenanigans in the tumultuous six months leading up to their impending nuptials and is set against the bitchy, incestuous, often terrifyingly hedonistic gay ghetto.

Burston neither aspires to nor pretends to write gay literary fiction, (he has said that he often finds White’s prose pompous), and if any comparisons are to be drawn with current gay luminaries it would be with Armistead Maupin. He shares the same gift for vivid characterization through snappy dialogue enthused with a heartwarming appreciation of the intricacies of humanity. Central character Phil is every bit as vulnerable, complex and lovable as Maupin’s Michael and Burston’s achievement is to reflect the hopes, dreams and fears of a new gay generation in his struggles.

Maupin chronicled the social and sexual fluxes of San Francisco during the heady days of gay liberation. The darkness of the closet was in the past and AIDS had yet to decimate an entire community. His work was enthused with a real joie de vivre as the characters exalted in different ways to explore their freedom and build novel ways of relating and forging a new queer aesthetic. The backdrop for Burston’s work is entirely different; his characters are often jaded and there is a real sense that the London gay scene has reached the end of the line.

This is unsurprising since Burston has often been critical of the scene. Perhaps his stance is best summed up in an interview with Homovision in which he says that there is more to gay culture than spending the night in ‘a railway arch in Vauxhall.’ The infamous railway arch in question comes in for quite a lot of flack in this novel, along with the GHB overdoses and general decay of beauty and lost opportunities that it seems to represent. There is a sense of nostalgia, rather reminiscent of the world Maupin depicts, as the fragile character Martin remembers a time when men had sex in beds instead of saunas and actually spoke to one another as opposed to gaping at anonymous body parts on Gaydar.

These are issues that mean a lot to Burston – he confronted them unblinkingly in an article in ‘Time Out’ in 2007 entitled ‘London’s gay scene in crisis.’ His achievement in this novel is to package questions that may be unpalatable to many in what appears to be a light, comic read ; the criticism comes in the odd throw away remark and the motif of an anonymous, hysterical ‘Blog’ lampooning the self destructive ‘gay glitterati.’

The book is structured in short, easy to digest chapters and its action is fast paced. The aim is to appeal to the frenetic lives of gay Londoners who can grab a few pages on the tube between work and the next bar or spa where they can then grab the next guy in the sexual McDonalds that is the gay scene. What they may not expect in between is to be subtly questioned about the motives and implications of their behaviour.

We need to find new ways of talking about what is going on in the gay community, only then can problems be addressed and solutions found. Burston is our chief advocate here – he pioneered gay literary saloon Polari and in February his House of Homosexual Culture debated bare back porn at The South Bank Centre. While there is an undeniable sense that London’s scene is struggling in this novel, there is also the suggestion that it can extricate itself from impending catastrophe.

The key to this is communication as this is the only way that the characters fathom out some sort of survival for themselves. Interestingly, the gay action is counterpointed by the staunchly heterosexual conservatism of Wales and the mystery shrouding the Bridgend teenage suicides which no one is discussing. Whether Burston becomes the new Armistead Maupin is yet to be seen. He has, however, nominated himself to be one of the scene’s spokesmen for the noughties. It’s a vital role that may prevent us surrendering to the danger of apathy.

legendary gay author Edmund White at home in Paris

Last week a friend challenged me on why I read so much gay fiction. ‘Why read that ? It’s so depressing’ he claimed. ‘It’s all coming out stories, AIDS memoirs or undiluted angst.’ I was in a pub at the time and, perhaps unsurprisingly, was unable to form an especially coherent retort. His words were still swimming in my fuzzy head the next morning, however, as I picked up my latest gay novel, and began to ponder the confrontational question with something near the depth it deserved.

 In some ways I can understand where my friend is coming from. Gay novels of the 1950s were often unremittingly bleak, focussing on the tragic destiny of gay men, often resulting in inevitable death (James Baldwin’s ‘Giovanni’s Room’ comes to mind.) Yet surely coming out, angst and AIDS are inescapable in gay literature simply because they are intricate parts of the gay experience. Gay men have to come out on an almost daily basis . Likewise, the spectre of AIDS is unavoidable and it is, perhaps,  inevitable that these issues will lead to more than a modicum of angst !  The task of the gay writer, then, is to present these themes in a way that highlights the positive aspects our lives, the hope that can be gauged from the seemingly insurmountable.

The book I picked up that following day was Edmund White’s seminal history of post gay liberation New York  ‘The Farewell Symphony.’ I consider it to be one of the benchmarks of gay literature. The novel charts the struggles of a gay writer (essentially White), as he attempts to forge a new queer aesthetic in a time of monumental change. In close to five hundred pages, White creates a near perfect portrait of the furious hedonism that defined that era, as his narrator struggles to piece together a coherent life. The novel’s structure mirrors the fragmentation at the heart of gay lives – it is an intricate tapestry of personal histories, cultural anecdotes and the inexorable quest for discovery and transience through sex. The author takes the dark motifs that every man grapples with and gallantly shows how one man patterns out a unauthordox yet workable lifestyle. The end result is utterly exhilarating.

Far from being depressing, the best gay novels take us on a journey, inspiring us, as they show us how cruel realities can be transformed into life changing strategies for survival. Look at Armistead Maupin’s life affirming ‘Tales of The City’ and its depiction of a tolerant gay ‘family’, or even Alan Hollinghurst’s ‘The Line of Beauty’ – which despite its unflinching portrait of the hypocritical AIDS ravaged 1980s, concludes with its narrator becoming rich in self knowledge.

 When Hollinghurst’s novel won the booker prize in 2004, the puritanical ‘Daily Mail’ inevitably fumed. How could a piece of fiction depicting drug taking, gay sex and AIDS gain such a coveted literary accolade? What the paper’s esteemed critics failed to do was to look beyond these themes and examine their treatment; the ways in which they structure the story and influence characterisation. As readers, we too must be wary of dismissing the more desolate issues that form such an important part of our personal histories. True, they are not always palatable, but they are often the scaffolding around which we are able to communicate and fabricate an authentic, if alternative life. And, after all, as Edmund White reminds us true ‘beauty is so often twinned with melancholy.’

Author: Hardy, James Earl

Title: B-boy Blues: A Seriously Sexy, Fiercely Funny, Black-on-Black Love Story

Genre: African-American Literature & Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Literature

Publication Date: July 1, 1994

Number of Pages: 288 pp.

Geographical Setting: New York, New York

Time Period: 1990s

Plot Summary: In Hardy’s first installment of the B-boy Blues series, the main character, Mitchell Crawford, is black, openly gay, and a successful journalist.  Despite his tame outward appearance, he has always had a pining for the “rough trade;” a lover below his professional and social status with precarious intentions.  One evening in a gay bar in Greenwich Village, he encounters, Raheim Rivers, the answer to his dreams.  Raheim is a Hip-hop bicycle messenger with a violent streak who has yet to come to grips with his sexuality.  Raheim becomes Mitchell’s third fling with a Banjee boy and it is all that he had hoped for.  But as their lives begin to intertwine as their relationship progresses, Mitchell begins to press his life perspective onto Raheim.  He wants Raheim to become openly gay and begin to think about his professional future.  Raheim explodes in violence refusing to reveal anything of depth to Mitchell or any of those around him.  Mitchell soon finds out that, despite his outward appearance, Raheim is a smart and talented person.  He also sees an emotional depth in Raheim when he finds out that he has a 5-year old son.  After an incident where Mitchell’s best friend becomes a victim of a gay-bashing, anger begins to rise in his heart.  He quits his job when he suspects that a less qualified co-employee receives the promotion he wanted because he is white thinking that he has become a victim himself.  Lust is lost and love is found for Raheim and Mitchell in Hardy’s tale of finding equality, calm, and companionship in a hostile world.  Hardy introduces the reader into a slice of American culture that has grown in recognition in our current times.           

Subject Headings: Gay Literature; African-American Literature; New York City; Career Journalism; Single Parenting; Homophobia; Racism; Banjee Boy Culture; Hip-Hop Culture; Down-Low Culture; Buppie Culture; Sexual Identity, Cultural Identity; Love Story; Professional Exploitation; Modern Romance; Social Outcasts; Gay Culture; Socioeconomics; 1990s         

Appeal: graphic sexuality, comedic, strong central character, strong supporting characters, mild violence, episodic, resolved ending, emotionally charged, hip-hop influence, homosexuality, urban landscape, cultural diversity, sexual diversity, prejudice, vivid, even pace, contemporary, political, though provoking, strong language

Similar Authors & Works: Invisible Life, the debut novel by E. Lynn Harris, is a novel that centers on Raymond, an African-American bisexual who is torn between the man he loves and the woman he desires.  Wesley and Floyd are two teens who are best friends that share an unspoken passion for each other.  After Floyd’s death, Wesley tries to make sense of his life after marrying Floyd’s girlfriend and then leaving her for another named Paul in John Gordon’s Black Butterflies.  Blackbird by Larry Duplechan follows one month in the life of Johnnie Ray Rousseau, a gay black high school student as he narrates the events that fill his days.  

Relevant Non-Fiction Authors & Works: James Baldwin is a biography of the author of Native Son written by his long time friend, David Leeming.  It brings light to his precarious lifestyle, his homosexuality, and other life adventures.  Black Theology: A Documentary History, Volume 2: 1980-1992 by James Cone and Gayraud Wilmore is collection of essays that sheds light on topics of homosexuality and bisexuality in black theology and spirituality.  Deep Are the Roots: Memoirs of a Black Expatriate is the memoir of accomplished actor Gordon Heath.  It retraces his childhood in New York City to his awakening homosexuality and passion for the arts.     

Andy

Amazon is playing with the fire … in essence, censoring books that they deemed to be “adult” by removing their rankings.  See Amazon Follies.  Amazon, remember:  You are not too big to fail.

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“we Live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep—it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just for this consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined…” [225]

The Hours is a modern literary novel that cleverly adopts the backbone of Mrs. Dalloway. In this vivid portrait of one day in a fifty two-year-old woman life’s in twentieth century New York City, Clarissa Vaughan is preoccupied with the last-minute details of a party in honor of a beloved friend, an ailing poet who has won a literary prize. Richard, so is his name, who disappears into his terminal illness, his sanity, was Clarissa’s first love, a lost lover, a truest friend with whom, she ruefully reflects, if she has tried harder, might accompany each other, as planned, into old age.

Richard actually worried over questions of good and evil, and he never, not in twenty years, fully abandoned the notion that Clarissa’s decision to live with Sally represents, if not some workday manifestation of deep corruption, at least a weakness on her part that indicts (though Richard would never admit this) women in general. . .” [19]

As Clarissa buys the flowers, runs into an old acquaintance, goes home and continues on the day, the narrative evokes another time, place, and person. A young woman called Laura Brown, pregnant for a second time, mother of a three-year-old boy, is married to an amiable veteran of World War II. The date is 1949: she lives a slightly bewildered (maybe ungrateful) life which, in her own queasy thoughts, has welded into an unbeing, in a suburb of Los Angeles. She starts the day making a birthday cake for her husband, encounters this unexpected sexual excitement with another woman, and takes off into a little fugue. She drives into the city checks in a hotel room and reads Mrs. Dalloway.

…he (her son] appears, for the first time, to be suffering from an emotion she can’t read . . . He knows. He must know. The little boy can tell she’s been somewhere illicit; he can tell she’s lying. He watches her constantly, spends almost every waking hour in her presence. He’s seen her with Kitty. He’s watched her make a second cake, and bury the first one under other garbage in the can beside the garbage. He is devoted, entirely, to the observation and deciphering of her, because without her there is no world at all . . He will watch her forever. He will always know when something is wrong.” [192-193]

Another lead finds Virginia Woolf, fictional but plausible, in 1923 at her home in Richmond, recuperating. Pain still colonizes her nonetheless. She’s writing Mrs. Dalloway, at this point still called The Hours. Between her sister’s visit and Woolf’s attempt to slip away to London, she decides that Clarissa Dalloway will not die in the novel, someone else will. So all three women over the interval of time struggle with the same banal unraveling of the hours that make up our allotted time in life. On the course of one day, as the clock ticks away, each woman, with an inner faculty so sharp that can recognize the mysteries of the world, reflects on the choice she makes in their relationship and faces a common consequence, which becomes the delicate link that connects them together. These intricate layers will disentangle at the end to reveal the real person who intimately joins these three women together.

I don’t know if I can face this. You know. . . and then the hour after that, and the hour after that. . . But there are still the hours, aren’t there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there’s another. I’m so sick.” [197]

Although The Hours repeats some of the darker events from Mrs. Dalloway, and at some points follow its cadence too closely (a literary parallel), Mrs. Dalloway is not a prerequisite to The Hours. The truth is, no amount of pedantic comparison-hunting, which I’m so tempted to undertake, would help readers understand the latter if they don’t understand the former already. What’s conspicuous is that the relationship between the two goes beyond allusion. The Hours is insidiously haunted by Mrs. Dalloway, to both readers and the characters themselves, because its theme (even the book as a whole evokes an underwater, echo, fussy quality) is the haunting of present lives by memories and books, by distant pasts and missed, unfeasible futures. Whether it’s Laura Brown’s fear as a failing mother, or Clarissa Vaughan’s regret of her relationship with Richard, or Sally’s realization that material living has cheapened the meaning of love, The Hours contemplates on that reflection is where many of our chances for happiness lie, in the memory not of what happened but of what was promised. Happiness passed us by without our knowing.

It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness [with Richard]; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book . . . There is still that singular perfection, and it’s perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other. [98]

228 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss]

Further Reading
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway vs. The Hours

With Mrs. Dalloway being so slow of a reading (small does of it is probably conducive to a more plausible understanding of details), I picked up The Hours by Michael Cunningham, which I read years ago. Like the original work which has inspired Cunningham to write the modern-day treatise, The Hours also mirrors Mrs. Dalloway’s stream-of-consciousness narrative style (a style pioneered by Woolf and James Joyce) in which the flowing thoughts and perceptions of protagonists are depicted as they would occur in real life, unfiltered, flitting from one thing to another, and often rather unpredictable. stream of consciousness, of which Virginia Woolf is the master, is so prominent in this work.

Cunningham’s novel also employs the same time device in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway — the action of the novel takes place within the space of one day. In Mrs. Dalloway it is one day in the life of the central character Clarissa Dalloway. In Cunningham’s book it is one day in the life of each of the three central characters; Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown and Virginia Woolf herself. Through this prism, Cunningham attempts, as did Woolf, to show the beauty and profundity of every day. Even the most ordinary, if not mundane. It also demonstrates in every person’s life and conversely how a person’s whole life can be examined through the prism of one single day.

The reason I pick up The Hours is for a change of pace and social climate of the reading. Whereas Clarissa Dalloway had not recognized her sentimentality for Sally Seton during her young womanhood is homosexuality, The Hours concerns three generations of questionably lesbian or bisexual women. To some extent the novel examines the freedom with which successive generations have been able to express their sexuality freely, to the public, even to themselves. It’s obvious that for Virginia and Laura to assert their sexuality freely during their time. The assertion of homosexuality would result in extremely dire consequences in a society in which homosexuality is illegal or denied. The undercurrent of anguish that plagues these women in The Hours is starkly different from that of Mrs. Dalloway, which is warfare, the British superiority, and fear of death. Maybe the role of homosexuality is a way of demonstrating how these three women feel distant from society.

Back to reading Mrs. Dalloway. (I back-track half of what I have read since I began yesterday.)

FROM WND

TV stations cave to homosexual lobby, refuse to reveal LGBT agenda

By Chelsea Schilling

Several television stations are caving to pressure from the homosexual community and refusing to run “Speechless: Silencing Christians,” a one-hour paid program sponsored by the American Family Association.

WOOD-TV 8, a television station in Grand Rapids, Mich., has decided against airing the special about the agenda of homosexual activists and their impact on families and freedom of religion.

According to the Grand Rapids Press, “In a letter promoting the program, the American Family Association asserts that most Americans get their ‘information about the homosexual movement from the secular news media and Hollywood, which not only support but promote the gay agenda. What people know is tainted by pro-homosexual propaganda.’”

WSYX in Columbus, Ohio, has also refused the air the program. WSPA in Greenville, S.C., reportedly ran the special, but then it issued an apology from the station manager.

“Speechless” features stories about Christians who have been arrested and charged with felonies for preaching the gospel. According to the film, many are living in situations where they have been intimidated into silence.

A former lesbian speaks about her conversion to Christianity.

“The gay community wants tolerance,” she said. “They can’t tolerate a story like mine that says, you know, I used to be gay, but with the help of Jesus, I’ve been able to overcome that.”

According to one man in the film, Christians are often portrayed as “mean and hateful.”

“It creates a context where violence is being perpetrated against Christians,” he said.

The special, hosted by talk show host Janet Parshall, emphasizes the media’s role in promotion of homosexuals’ “radical agenda,” and includes examples of how television shows and movies such as “Friends,” “Will & Grace,” “The L-Word,” “The War at Home,” “ER” and “Entourage” attempt to persuade viewers that aversions to homosexuality stem from bigotry and ignorance.

“Speechless” explores the homosexual lobby’s impact on school curriculums. Videos promoted as anti-bullying actually endorsed “gay” lifestyles, and students were forced to view them during school hours. It claims homosexual lobbyists also push for “gay” literature in schools.

According to the program, the homosexual activist agenda demands same-sex “marriage,” teaches children that homosexuality is normal, promotes homosexual service in the armed forces, pushes for hate crime laws that threaten freedom of speech, calls for laws forcing Christian business to hire homosexuals and insists upon reserving minority status and preferential treatment for them.

“If you think that agenda is bad for America, you must do something,” a female voiceover states.

While WOOD-TV 8 moved the original airing from a Monday slot before President Barack Obama’s 8 p.m. news conference to a Saturday afternoon spot, it finally decided against running it altogether.

“We made a gesture of the 2-3 p.m. Saturday time period. It’s been 24 hours and we had no response,” station General Manager Diane Kniowski told the Grand Rapids Press in a statement Wednesday.

“Our station is being bombarded with calls and messages, and we find ourselves in the middle of someone else’s fight. Ours was a fair offer and we are removing ourselves from this matter,” Kniowski said.

The Human Rights Campaign, a pro-homosexual organization, issued a national alert against the film and urged people to call for its cancellation.

“I am so proud of our members who answered the lies and distortions of the AFA and stopped this campaign of hate and deception,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “Our community stood up and would not let those lies stand.”

“This should be our wake up call. We are poised to make real progress, for the first time, for millions of LGBT Americans. We know it and so do our opponents,” added Solmonese. “We must stand guard and not allow them to stop these overdue, basic protections by rolling out the same, tired script albeit in new packaging.”

He continued, “Today’s action proves we have the voices and the power to demand a fair fight and a fair debate.”

The entire video is available online.

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