Back to The Lost Library

This Lambda Literary interview with Philip Rappaport, Open Road Media's Director of Publishing Partnerships, will mainly be of interest to those who follow publishing trends. However, there is an interesting discussion of The Lost Library, the anthology of essays about GLBT literature no longer in print that we read last year, and Open Road's campaign to acquire the rights to those works and reissue them as e-books.

Bidart / Gurganus Readings

Frank Bidart, whose Metaphysical Dog we will be discussing later this year, is giving a reading this Thursday evening (2/19/15) at 921 Pennsylvania Ave SE. Admission is free but registration is required. For more information, see Sunday's Washington Post article.

Also, in a couple of months (Tuesday, April 7), Allan Gurganus, whose The Practical Heart we have read, will be giving a reading with Elizabeth Strout at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Tickets are required and are $15 each.

Ici repose …

Am I the only one who is a fan of Colette?

Maybe I was a lesbian in the fin de siècle.

"Choir Boy" on stage and page

Studio Theatre is currently offering a production of Tarell Alvin McCraney's play "Choir Boy." Here's the Post's review and Clinton Yates' thoughtful column. MetroWeekly has conducted a long interview. It's a play I'm sure we will discuss once it becomes easily available (i.e. is published). In the meantime, I encourage people to see this production, and then join BookMenDC at some future date when we discuss the play. In those discussions it's always nice to include people who have viewed a production even if (or especially when) they haven't read the play!

Dorian, Uncensored & Reshowtimed

Our group discussed Oscar Wilde's 1891 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (which had appeared the previous year in serial form), back in 2004. Since then, however, Nick Frankel has published The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray, an edition that restores a good deal of material which Wilde was forced to expunge. Though we already have plenty of titles to discuss during 2015, I'd like to suggest we consider revisiting this classic down the road.

On a related note, those of you who have seen the Showtime series "Penny Dreadful," set in London during the Gay Nineties, know that it features Dorian Gray as a character. The show's second season will begin airing sometime this spring.

Hey, Jude!

Those of you who were unable to join us for our discussion of Jonathan Galassi's poetry collection, Left-Handed, may be interested in the following New York Times profile / interview, published on Jan. 27, 2012: "Contradictions of the Heart." In it, you'll learn who the real-life "Jude" was, and what happened between the two men in real life. (Hint: Not as much as the poems imply.)

Now that we've got your attention …

Just to help along John's query (below), there's an article in glbtq and a "User Wiki" List (not sure what that is—the "user" part, I mean).

John doesn't expect much along this line of inquiry, and neither do I, but it would be fun to have a list of compositions (or even just moments or passages) that strike readers as "gay" (with or without peignoir).