Monday, December 31, 2018

BMDC begins New Year with Fifth Wednesday!!

Happy New Year's Eve, Colleagues!

Nearly a decade ago (2009-2011), we had a practice of holding occasional “bonus" Bookmen meetings on fifth Wednesdays, which individual members hosted to discuss titles that were personal favorites but didn’t have a gay connection (or at least not a strong one).  Those books included Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Vladimir Nabokov’s “Mademoiselle O” (a short story), Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh and John Kennedy O’Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces

Robert Muir has proposed reviving that tradition by discussing the Nikolai Gogol short story “The Overcoat,” which is widely available in various collections.  He recommends the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, but that is in no way a requirement.  Gogol anthologies should be available in most libraries, and the Dover Thrift edition on Amazon is a steal at $3.34.

Keith Cohen, who lives in the Van Ness neighborhood, has graciously volunteered to host the meeting on Wed., Jan. 30, 2019, at 7:30 p.m.  His apartment building isn’t far from Metro and also has some parking spaces available.  I’ll send further particulars via group e-mail, but the idea is for those who are interested to respond to that message to obtain Keith's address and phone number.  (I should also mention that we'll order pizzas and split the cost.)  So stay tuned!

Sunday, December 30, 2018

A Kameny cameo appearance...

I had mentioned at our last meeting, when we were discussing Lillian Faderman's The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, that I had a vague memory of local legend Frank Kameny attending one of our meetings sometime in the mid-2000s.  It was when we were meeting at Sparky's Espresso Coffeehouse on 14th Street NW, and I think it was late spring or early summer.

Tim, who would have been facilitator during the period in question, tells me he has no recollection of such a visit.  So I wondered if I might be hallucinating--until I found a 2011 e-mail I'd sent a friend mentioning that I'd met Kameny a few years before.  But I still can't recall the date, how Frank found out about the meeting, or the title we were discussing, though I presume it must have related to D.C. activism.

Could any of you who were active in the group back then corroborate my feeble memory?

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Photographs before and after Stonewall

You may recall that back in September, I forwarded an invitation to participate in a Kickstarter project to republish a large paperback full of the work of photographer Fred W. McDarrah, the first staff photographer and first picture editor of the Village Voice.  I contributed to that effort, as perhaps some of you did, as well, and am delighted to report that I am now the proud owner of a handsome paperback that you, too, can purchase from OR Press.

Admittedly, it's a bit steep at $30, but in addition to many unique photos illuminating gay history, the book offers a foreword by Hilton Als and introductions by Allen Ginsberg and Jill Johnston.

When it was first issued in 1994, on the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, incidentally, the book bore the title Gay Pride: Photographs from Stonewall to Today.  Now it is called Pride: Photographs after Stonewall, and celebrates most of the period we just discussed in Lillian Faderman's The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle.

I'd be happy to bring my copy of Pride to our next meeting in case some of you would like to check it out.

Monday, December 10, 2018

Truly Putting the Gay in the Gay Nineties

Last week (Dec. 6, to be exact), Michael Dirda devoted his weekly Book World column in the Washington Post to a fascinating survey of literature from the British 1890s, which he rightly calls "the first colorful flowering of modern gay culture." Many, perhaps even most, of the figures he references will already be familiar to you, my fellow Bookmen, but Dirda includes several authors I'd never heard of—but plan to check out.

On a very much related note: Next month I'll issue the semiannual call to nominate titles for our next reading list.  I'm pretty sure I'll be recommending at least a couple of the books Dirda discusses here.

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Caravaggio's "Seven Works of Mercy" — NSFT

Spot the "female-presenting nipple" of Roman Charity:


"female-presenting nipples"

A very interesting opinion piece in the Post  last week: "RIP Tumblr porn. You made me who I am." Of course I knew about Tumblr (and not for the politics of "Riverdale" — ahem!) but had little idea that this site had become such a queer matrix. Now, alas, all is revealed, including an all-purpose ign*nce on the part of CEO Jeff D'Onofrio's underlings who presumably didn't waste a second pondering whether the "female-presenting nipples" of this post's title would be Cis or Trans and are entirely ignorant of the wisdom they might receive from the lactating Madonna


RIP indeed!

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

"The Immoralist" on Broadway (?!)

Ken Jost was kind enough to share the following tidbit.  Did you know that a play based on the book we discussed tonight—Andre Gide's The Immoralist—ran for three months on Broadway in 1954?  It starred Louis Jourdan as Michel, Geraldine Page as Marcelline and James Dean (!) as Bachir.

And an appreciation of the novel here by Wallace Fowlie.

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Friday, November 30, 2018

More on Matthew Shepard at National Cathedral

On Thursday night I went to the National Cathedral to hear Yo-Yo Ma playing the Bach cello suites. I purposely arrived very early, and used up some time wandering around the crypt chapels. In the St. Joseph Chapel, just about under the middle of the Cathedral, I saw a notice on the wall, printed on a card made of some kind of white poster board (?), probably temporary:

      Matthew Wayne Shepard
              1976—1998
  is interred in the columbarium
           behind this chapel.
          Requiescat in pace.

In the corresponding position on the wall on the other side of the chapel was a bronze plaque saying that Helen Keller and "her lifelong companion Anne Sullivan Macy" were interred in the columbarium. Maybe there will eventually be such a plaque for Shepard. Anne Sullivan Macy, of course, was the "Miracle Worker" played by Anne Bancroft in the play and movie of that title..

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

"The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin"

Ken Jost was kind enough to report that Netflix is now offering a 2017 documentary about Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin: "The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin."  Ken and his partner James recommend it.

Here is a review from the New York Times; the Washington Post didn't review the film, but did run a profile of Maupin last fall which announced that he is serving as executive producer for a Netflix series of new films based on the six novels. No indication yet when those will be available, but hopefully soon!

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

The Japanese have a word for it: Tsundoku

I recently heard a contestant on “Jeopardy” tell Alex Trebek that she practices "Tsundoku."  It is not, as Alex surmised, a martial art, but a condition that I suspect applies to many Bookmen members!  Particularly yours truly.

Friday, October 26, 2018

Matthew Shepard: Celebration and Interment

Instead of braving the crowds at Washington National Cathedral this morning, I live-streamed the memorial service that preceded the placement of Matthew Shepard's ashes in the columbarium. Here is a link to the service leaflet if you want to follow along.

Allow me to assure those of you who are allergic to liturgy that while the format is the traditional Episcopal burial service, the musical portions of the two-hour service are quite substantial, but nearly all contemporary. The Washington Gay Men's Chorus performs a set of songs as the prelude.

Two highlights: You'll get to hear quite a bit of the oratorio I've been telling you about, "Considering Matthew Shepard," performed by Conspirare, the ensemble for which its composer, Craig Hella Johnson, composed it. Johnson pretty much leads the whole service from the piano, in fact, apart from the cathedral organist's playing of the hymns.

And if you've never heard Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop to be ordained by the Episcopal Church, preach, you're in for a treat!

"Waugh"


read or listen

Monday, October 22, 2018

Serendipity

When I scheduled The Laramie Project for discussion earlier this month, I of course had the 20th anniversary of Matthew Shepard's murder in mind.  As it turns out, there is also a connection between that event and the book we'll be discussing at our Nov. 7 meeting, Insult and the Making of the Gay Self. Specifically, in Didier Erebon's Postscript to his Introduction, on p. 12, we find this:

At the moment that I am finishing this introduction, I read in the newspapers that a young gay man was murdered in a small town in Wyoming. He was tortured by his two attackers and left to die, tied to a barbed-wire fence. He was twenty-two. His name was Matthew Shepard. I know he is not the only gay man to have had such a tragic fate in the United States in the past few years, just as I know that numerous gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals are regularly and systematically victims of such violence. A report by Amnesty International recently provided a terrifying list—one that was, alas, far from complete.

But it is Matthew Shepard's photograph that I have in front of me today, along with the account of what he suffered. How can I not think of him as I prepare to publish this book? How can I not ask the reader to remember, in reading it, that there are more than just theoretical problems at stake?

How indeed?

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

The Two Harolds

"glimpses of what it was like to be
black and gay in America
when it was dangerous to be either"


Thursday, October 11, 2018

Shepard at Last Laid to Rest

The Washington Post reports that Matthew Shepard's parents have decided to have their son's ashes interred in the crypt columbarium at Washington National Cathedral on Friday, Oct. 26 (I don't know the time). The service will be open to the public, and I hope to attend.

Although visitors will not have access to the crypt, National Cathedral is reportedly considering the installation of a plaque that they would be able to view and touch.

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

"Considering Matthew Shepard"

Two years ago, Harmonia Mundi released the world premiere recording of Craig Hella Johnson's oratorio, Considering Matthew Shepard, for which the composer conducts his own ensemble, Conspirare.  I must admit that I was initially skeptical about the work, worried that it would be maudlin, but I found it profoundly moving and have added it to the stack of CDs I make a point of listening to during Holy Week each year.  (It's on two discs, totaling 105 minutes.) I'll bring my CD to tomorrow night's meeting, but in the meantime, here is a blurb about the composition that I hope will pique your curiosity:

Led from the piano by Johnson, Considering Matthew Shepard showcases the award-winning artistry of Conspirare’s singers with a chamber ensemble of renowned instrumentalists. This three-part fusion oratorio speaks with a fresh and bold voice, incorporating a variety of musical styles seamlessly woven into a unified whole. Johnson sets a wide range of poetic and soulful texts by poets including Hildegard of Bingen, Lesléa Newman, Michael Dennis Browne, and Rumi. Passages from Matt’s personal journal, interviews and writings from his parents Judy and Dennis Shepard, newspaper reports and additional texts by Johnson and Browne are poignantly appointed throughout the work.

Thursday, September 27, 2018

A Bookmen Queery

I don’t know how many of you read the weekly "Queery" department, which profiles a member of the local LGBTQ community, in the A&E section of the  Washington Blade. (More often than not, I just skim it.)  But all modesty aside, I encourage you to check it out this week's installment (which will be in tomorrow's print edition), when yours truly will be answering the questions.  :-)

As you'll see, the focus of the profile is on our group and our origins nearly two decades ago. (Special thanks to Bill Malone for sharing details of our origin story.) Here's hoping it brings us some new members!

Thursday, September 20, 2018

The Only Cover I Want

We read Neil Bartlett's Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall eight years ago (twenty years after it was first published in 1990). Serpent's Tail reissued it last year in a "Classics" edition—which it most certainly is—and with a "Preface: Nearly thirty years later..." All of which got me thinking about the Marks & Simons song "All of Me" (1931) which figures so prominently in this novel.

The first recording was by Ruth Etting. Many, many covers followed by lots of well-known singers. I generally despise covers, particularly of pop tunes from the 20s & 30s. Whatever they gain in artistry they lose in authenticity. But in trying to learn more about the lyricist Gerald Marks and composer Seymour Simons and how they got together and produced this classic song I stumbled upon Mark Steyn blogging about Sinatra's greatest hits.

"All of Me" — #13. Now I'm no Sinatra fan. If I've ever heard his cover of "All of Me" I've mercifully repressed it. (Less easy to be unable to imagine it!) And I'd probably be no Mark Steyn fan either if I knew more about him from watching the "Fair & Balanced" network. But Steyn does write a very informative backgrounder on this hit. And—finally to the point—includes this tidbit:

If I had to name a non-Sinatra live performance that has stayed with me, it would, somewhat improbably, be by the London playwright Neil Bartlett. At the Institute of Contemporary Arts' 40th anniversary bash in the Eighties, Mr Bartlett came out and sang "All Of Me" a cappella and without a shirt and, being gay and frankly somewhat cadaverous, he imbued it, without changing a word, with a topical and eerie Aids subtext:

    Take these lips
    I want to lose them
    Take these arms
    I'll never use them...

This would have been when Neil Bartlett was writing Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall or shortly thereafter. If "All of Me" wasn't already a Gay Song, it became one then! (Cf Ivri Lider's performance of "The Man I Love" in Eyton Fox's The Bubble—my favorite heard cover.)

the new hankie code

And from the same article, Marty Huber of Queer Base, an Austrian NGO


cites the story of an Iranian man who was asked if he knew what the orange stripe in the rainbow flag means. (It stands for healing, though it is possible that not every gay Iranian man knows this.)

And speaking of which …

Good article in The Economist about how Europe vets and discourages LGBT asylum seekers. Pertinent to last night:

This year the [European Court of Justice] told Hungary to stop using Rorschach tests. Some officials had been trying to discern gayness from the way refugees responded to inkblots.

"HOOKER!  thou shouldst be living at this hour:"

Saturday, September 15, 2018

For those who haven’t finished with Eddy ...

There's a lecture this Friday evening (9/21) at the French Embassy—here's your chance!—on Édouard Louis (né Bellegueule), author of The End of Eddy (which we read last year). Tickets are required. More information @

Thursday, September 6, 2018

Pickles Aplenty

The NY Times  Magazine featured a profile of Hollinghurst last March. And a few years ago asked him which ten books he'd take to the famous desert island. Additionally, I've come to realize after my comment to Terry's post a week ago that Stephen Pickles is  "Pickles" — the author of Queens !!

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Spoiler Alert!

Well, not really, but some dates perhaps. May be seen by no one before the discussion but may prove useful to someone behind and catching up. Chapter titles (as printed) and years (spoilers!): One — A New Man (1940); Two — The Lookout (1966); Three — Small Oils (1975); Four — Losses (1995); and Five — Consolations (2012-13). A question that might be worth discussing is why Hollinghurst didn't provide the dates himself. There may be all sorts of good answers. Still …

Exact dates may not be that important (and I may have not have all the years above exactly right), but consider: Michael is "twenty-three" (p. 380); Johnny is thirty years older ("thirty-year difference in age" p. 383); but in 2012 Johnny is "sixty years old" (p. 361).

Trivial to be sure (I think) and not worth much discussion (which is why I'm posting them here), but consider: Johnny drives a Volvo down to the Miserdens in Virginia Water (p. 362) but a page later it's become a Vulva. And both words are used elsewhere to identify the same object. Spell-checking would blanch at neither. Proof-reading, Knopf may believe, is obviated by its pretentious deckle-edging. Started down this road, however, one wonders whether it's Alan's colloquial habit to refer to Volvos as Vulvas—I've been know to do as much myself—and not to have written it entirely out of his system.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Stephen Pickles

In preparation for the next session, The Sparsholt Affair is dedicated to Stephen Pickles, a life-long friend of Hollinghurst and a careful reader of all his work, according to an interview Hollinghurst gave the the Philadelphia Gay News.  That whole interview is interesting to read, but a more informative review about Hollinghurst and his work to date (at that time) is in The Guardian presaging his winning of the Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty in 2004.

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Vargas at the Wharf, Friday, Sept. 21

Jose Antonio Vargas, a gay former Washington Post  reporter, will be speaking about his new book, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, on Friday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. at Politics & Prose at the Wharf (70 District Square SW: nearest Metro, L'Enfant Plaza). The event is free, no reservation required. However, space is limited and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Friday, August 17, 2018

"I think we are living in a science fiction novel."

Interesting post-Sparsholt interview with Alan Hollinghurst in Lambda Literary. Minor spoiler alert. And a typo that no spell check would ever discover (but anyone with a brain would, i.e. knowledge of spelling not required).

As for myself I didn't want to be rushed with our next book but am finding myself desperately trying not to rush (not to finish a week beforehand, not to forget). So in addition to a spoiler alert, perhaps a trigger warning is in order: this may be a book you find hard to put down!

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

"The Sexual Proclivities of the Black Community"

There is an interesting new series on HBO called Random Acts of Flyness. The last segment [about 18 minutes in] of the premiere episode is related to queer theory. I found it very interesting when the man being interviewed said, "I believe in fluidity in everything but race."

Sunday, August 5, 2018

derring-do

several people looked blank when I referred to the skating scene in "Modern Times" as a distant ally of duende … but I'm sure, once seen, all will remember it

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Pasa Nuevo @ GALA Theatre


FYI. One night only, this Friday (Aug. 3). What sounds like a pretty free adaptation, half in English, half in Spanish.  Performed by participants in Gala Hispanic's youth program, Paso Nuevo.

"This adaptation of  Blood Wedding includes gang prevention
and safety tips, as they are part of what affects youth today,
thanks to an interactive and productive workshop led by the
Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department."


Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Freud & P.E.

"Years of rigorous empirical research have finally confirmed that Freud was right about penis envy. Just wrong about which sex suffers from it."
— Carol Tavris

Monday, July 16, 2018

Why Reading Is So Addictive

From time to time, some of you "confess" at meetings that you just couldn't get into the title we're discussing that evening.  A few of you admit you can't imagine trying again, but most of you indicate you feel the call of duty to finish the book, or at least make a good-faith effort to do so.  (A Little Life is one recent example of this phenomenon.)

If you've ever wondered about the psychology of the decision to keep reading a book you don't enjoy, I commend the following short article to you: "Why It's So Hard to Stop Reading Books You Don't Even Like."

Sunday, June 24, 2018

"3 DEVIATES INVITE EXCLUSION BY BARS"

— New York Times  April 22, 1966 headline (p. 43). Headline surprised me while reading the Post 's obituary today, even shocked me (though it was the Sixties and the Times was very late to go "gay"). But recalls the New Yorker 's affectionate pre-obituary of just two months ago, which I'm finally linking to now that the party's over (and what a good dying he seems to have had!).


Dick Leitsch (rhymes with…) — Here's mud in your eye!

Friday, June 22, 2018

Man in An Orange Shirt / Aerodynamics of Pork

Last Sunday one of DC's PBS stations broadcast "Man in An Orange Shirt". Both Terry and I liked it. You may decide whether you might by looking at the trailer. Fortunately, Howard University's WHUT–Ch. 32 (the other PBS station) is broadcasting it next Tuesday 6/26 at 8pm (with rebroadcasts on Wednesday 6/27 at midnight and Sunday 7/1 at 4pm).

All this might seem a bit off topic except that the screenplay of the Masterpiece Theatre movie is written by Patrick Gale (his first!), whom many of us became aware of 33 years ago with his first novel The Aerodynamics of Pork. We read his short story "The List" in Edmund White's Fraser Book of Gay Short Fiction. And I just read his short story "Cooking", an appropriately delicious story of what happens to a homophobic father when his other children dump him on their "single" younger brother.

Patrick Gale has written several novels and a couple of short story collections. I think we might enjoy reading something by him. Maybe others have already and can help with recommendations.

Monday, June 11, 2018

"The End of Eddy" ends in "A History of Violence"

As referenced in John's post below, Édouard Louis' third book Qui a tué mon pere has occasioned quite a stir in Paris. Coincidentally, his second book A History of Violence has been translated and appears in America next week. How many of us will be able to not read it right away!?

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Édouard Louis in today's Post

"How a 25-year-old writer became France’s most outspoken advocate for the working class."

Thursday, June 7, 2018

The Gay Novel is Dead

I think as such it has had its day. It rose in the Seventies, Eighties, Nineties in response to these new opportunities and new challenges and the two big clarities — the one of liberation and the one of Aids — and there was an urgency, a novelty to the whole thing. In our culture at least those things are no longer the case. I observe that the gay novel is dissolving back into everything else and we are living increasingly in a culture where sexuality is not so strongly defined.

—Alan Hollinghurst quoted in The Times, 4.6.18.  Matthew Todd disagrees.

Thursday, May 31, 2018

"The Long Black Line"

… postulants, novices, brothers — it's all there, what you'd expect in a first-year Jesuit seminary including a "manuductor" (clue: not man-uductor) and more, or rather less, some things that don't happen — in John L'Heureux's short story in the May 21 issue of The New Yorker  (L'Heureux author of The Medici Boy  which we read almost two years ago and whom I continu- ally think I may have short-changed).

In the same issue a review of Jeffrey C. Stewart's new biography of Alain Locke The New Negro, whose life was so interesting and influential that I thought we must put it on our reading list until I came to reviewer Tobi Haslett's final conclusion of the book (not the man):

At more than nine hundred pages, it's a thudding, shapeless text, despotic in its pedantry and exhausting in its zeal, marked by excruciating attention to the most minuscule irrelevances.

Nine-hundred pages would pretty much have done it (doomed it) for me, but don't pass up the chance to learn about the dandy philosophe of the Harlem Renaissance and more.

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

"The Unseen Guest"

One of the first books I read as a member of our group, way back in 2000, was Mark Merlis' second novel, An Arrow's Flight.  It made such a profound impression on me that I've reread it several times over the years, most recently last week.

As we prepare to discuss Martin Duberman's Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill and the Battlefield of AIDS next week, I'd like to share the following passage from the final chapter of the Merlis.  (The names of the characters won't resonate unless you've read the book or are fluent in Greek mythology, but I'm confident you'll see the connection anyway.)

The future grew a little murky. Pyrrhus hadn't been tested. After his year in the city as—practically a public utility, and then whatever new adventures he'd found in the intervening years, he hadn't been tested. Maybe Leucon wouldn't have, either, not if he'd had Pyrrhus' career; maybe he wouldn't have wanted to know, either. Because there wasn't much chance, was there, that Pyrrhus was fine?
    Even I don't want to know. I suppose he probably wasn't. I mean, if it were possible to trace the course of things, the most direct chain would surely be: snake to Philoctetes, Philoctetes to Pyrrhus, Pyrrhus to Corythus, Corythus to the HUNDREDS OF US he glimpsed that night at Pterelas's, the great world that waited to embrace him when he got out of the navy and into civvies for good.
    That would be the simplest tree: Philoctetes the root, Pyrrhus the trunk, all the myriad branches traceable finally to Corythus, who stepped off the ship one day and, with his innocent, bucktoothed smile, brought the unseen guest to the great party that was still going on in the city.
    Perhaps this was all written down somewhere.  But all Destiny's scribblings, if compiled into one unimaginable volume, would not yield a message.  She has no point to make.  Corythus was innocent. Even the snake was innocent.  Philoctetes innocently misstepped, the snake innocently bit.

Saturday, May 26, 2018

Setting Bookmen DC's historical record straight (so to speak...:-)

Earlier this week, I posted an item hailing our group’s 19th anniversary.  In response, Tom Wischer and Tim Walton have both kindly provided useful details that I inexplicably had forgotten.  (Thanks, guys!)  To wit:

The original incarnation of our group, then known as the Potomac Gay Men’s Book Group, met for the first time on May 11, 1999.  Not long after that, we began informally calling ourselves Boys & Books, which quickly got shortened to BoysnBooks.

In 2007, we “grew up” (as Tim, then our facilitator, put it in a notice to members) and changed our name to Bookmen DC (initially, and briefly, rendered as Book Men DC).  And so we have remained ever since!

Early next year I’ll invite your ideas for marking our 20th anniversary.  In the meantime, here's wishing you all a relaxing holiday weekend and good reading.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

The Votes Are In!

Thanks to everyone who voted on the titles collectively nominated by our group for the next iteration of the reading list.  Below, you’ll find the list of “winners” that will be slotted into our discussion schedule beginning this fall and going into next year.

FICTION
The Sparsholt Affair  by Alan Hollinghurst.
Lily and the Octopus  by Steven Rowley.
Very Recent History  by Choire Sicha
The Immoralist  by André Gide

NON-Fiction
Rednecks, Queers and Country Music  by Nadine Hubbs
Masked Voices : Gay Men and Lesbians in Cold War America
by Craig M. Loftin
Insult and the Making of the Gay Self  by Didier Eribon

BIOGRAPHY / MEMOIR
True Homosexual Experiences: Boyd McDonald and Straight to Hell
by William E. Jones
Becoming a Londoner  by David Plante

POETRY
Don’t Call Us Dead  by Danez Smith
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror  by John Ashbery
(All the poems before the title poem, which we discussed 3/17/18.)

ANTHOLOGIES
The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle  by Lillian Faderman

Happy 19th Anniversary to Us!

The exact date of our group's first meeting is lost in the mists of history, but it was in May 1999.  Tim Walton, our blogmaster extraordinaire, has diligently maintained the running list of the 271 (and counting) books we've read over that period (thanks!), which you'll find at the bottom of the homepage.

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

LOC celebrates Gay Pride Month!

In honor of LGBT Pride Month (June), the Library of Congress is putting on two free events featuring authors whose novels have been turned into successful films. You'll find full details at this link, but here is the basic info.

Unfortunately, the first event, featuring Call Me by Your Name author Andre Aciman, is on Wed., June 6, at 7 p.m., when we'll have our regular meeting. Darn! However, the second presentation, featuring Becky Albertali, whose young adult novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda was the basis for the movie "Love, Simon," is the following night, Thursday, June 7, also at 7 p.m.

Tickets are not required for either event, but are recommended.

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Looking Back on 100

Filmmaker Paul Oremland, a gay man of a certain age, reflects on four decades of gay history and culture by recalling 100 Men of his sexual encounters in his native New Zealand, Britain, the United States, and other points in between. Netflix subscribers will find the 94 minutes well spent: entertaining, informative, and insightful.

Remembering Donald Britton

Last August, we discussed In the Empire of the Air, a collection of Donald Britton's poetry edited by our very own Philip Clark.  If you've joined Bookmen since then, or happened to miss that session, I warmly encourage you to check it out—though I see that the paperback is currently sold out on Amazon.😊

Whether you've already read the book or are waiting to order it, you may find this tribute to Britton on the Poetry Foundation website of interest:    "The Only Immortality Is in Not Dying".  I certainly did!

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Our Mammograms

I had thought of including Hazmat on some earlier nominating list but failed to for reasons I can now not only not remember, but even not imagine. The next nominating list will contain Plundered Hearts.


Meanwhile here's a poem from a quarter century ago that harrowed my midlife masculinity:  My Mammogram

Remembering J.D. McClatchy

The Washington Post reports that J.D. McClatchy, "a tireless champion of verse who taught, edited, criticized and wrote poetry for more than four decades," died on April 10. He is survived by his husband, Chip Kidd.

Although we have never read any collections of McClatchy's poetry, back in 2002 we did read a book he edited, Love Speaks Its Name.

Harrison Smith's obituary in the Post quotes the opening lines of McClatchy's last published poem, "My Plot":

  It seemed as good a time as any to buy
  A cemetery plot. The price is bound
  To spike, the local real estate being what it is
  For both the living and the dead, and seeing
  How few opportunities to make a sound
  Decision are left as our debilities multiply,
  I signed up for a double bed.

Rest in peace, Mr. McClatchy.

Friday, April 6, 2018

"that pachyderm's ear" and other things

No one, I think, who has read Black Deutschland  will have forgotten this (p. 95). For all the meanderings in this picaresque novel, when things do happen, they can happen fast; for example, this other bout of heterosexuality (p. 191). Jed's a big boy now (on the wagon) and can bring a glass of wine to a "thin older woman" he used to drink with. She compliments him on how much his German has improved and asks him if he's reading his favorite authors in the original.

I was flattered that she remembered that I liked Heinrich Mann. Two hours later my joker was wrapped and I was balling her. To stay interested I had to pretend I was commanding her with that fat one of Manfred's I'd never seen.

On another topic, someone commented derogatorily on "Dad's" opinionatings but I found them usually indicative and often spot-on:

"He loved the flashlight more than he did the hearth," Dad said of guys he'd heard had left their wives.

And the short section on and ending page 107 summons and sums up the strength of this family's life:

"Now we must put our finer feelings to bed as the great task of sleep devolves upon us," Dad laughed on the stairs.
   "Sleep for America," I heard Mom say.
    In the book of my heart, pages keep falling out, many of them marked "Mom and Dad."

"a stream of consciousness without a stream"

Participants in last night's meeting will find in James Wood's review of Darryl Pinckney's Black Deutschland an interesting counterpoint to our discussion. (He also comments on Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You, which we read early last year.)

big-boned & half-crazed

(I really do like this line so I decided to rework it a little)


I'm sitting in the Friedrichstraße Station sulking because Isherwood's Berlin no longer exists when some big-boned, East Berlin woman comes at me with a half-crazed smile and says, "You have heartbreak for Judy Garland, too? Ach so. A friend of Dorothy. I know this expression. To frighten the bones of each song."  Now Greta and I have our own nightclub act.

Saturday, March 31, 2018

For Easter?

In 1976 the British publication Gay News published James Kirkup's "The Love that Dares to Speak its Name". Gay News was successfully prosecuted and the poem banned as "blasphemous libel", under a statute enacted in 1697. I don't much admire blasphemy myself, or the poem, but it is certainly remarkable, and puts a new spin on "resurrection".

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

NO Bookmen meeting tonight (March 21)

I already notified current Bookmen of this via e-mail, but just in case anyone else out there was thinking of attending tonight's meeting, don't!  We'd love to have you join us, but our venue is in a municipal building that is closed due to the weather.

Monday, March 19, 2018

A "History" more Superficial than Graphic

Since I was unable to attend the discussion of Queer: A Graphic History, I wanted to offer a few comments here. It’s a topic I know a little bit about, since “queer theory” was coming into full bloom during the last decade of my academic career. I even knew some of the contemporary luminaries mentioned in the book, such as Teresa de Lauretis.

As valuable as this book may seem at first glance to the lay person, I am disappointed by the superficiality of its treatment of nearly everything. Perhaps the problem lies in the very concept, that complex theory might be summed up in cartoons and bubble blurbs. In cases such as Foucault or Judith Butler, this problem is particularly vexing. I was thinking all the time to myself that these treatments prove "a little learning is a dangerous thing."

I do not particularly like the outsized illustrations. Rather than illuminating the text, too often they drag it down. And those lead balloons capture little of what the theoreticians have propounded in detail. For example, the "social construction of gender," elaborated by Butler, is never spelled out. Related ideas, such as "performing gender," are similarly left murky.

Another troublingly superficial treatment is that of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, which the authors say "argues that we need to disentangle sexuality and gender, otherwise heteronormativity remains in place" (p. 94). This is certainly an underlying premise of Sedgwick's book, but it scarcely begins to suggest what the book is really about: how prominent authors like Henry James and Proust coded in their writing what at the time was considered deviant sexual object choice.

All that said, there are certainly values to this book. It acquaints the average reader with key names (from Kraft-Ebbing, Hirschfeld, Ellis to hooks and Sedgwick) and with a very general chronology from the late 19th century to the present. It introduces key concepts, such as heteronormativity and queer biology. It also includes a short list of further readings in queer theory. To the extent that it claims to be no more than introduction, the book succeeds.

But again, I'm troubled by the authors' throwing around of important concepts, only to move on to the next cartoon. For example, Foucault's "panopticon" is cursorily described as a prison with a central tower (it actually refers only to the tower) that presages a society, much like our own contemporary one, in which people might be watched at all times. Actually, the point is not to beware mass surveillance but rather to avoid the self-policing that such surveillance fosters.

Similar name-dropping occurs with the authors' desire to include every other contestatory movement of the last 75 years. We get a dash of existentialism, a splash of feminism (which of course is deeply embedded in early queer theory), references to poststructuralist and postcolonial theory, etc. I think this weakens the book. The suggestion that queer theory is actually linked to all these other modes of thought, if true, dilutes queerness itself.

This brings me to another concern: focus. I'm told the book is about queer theory; but, rather than providing a clear outline of that theory, the book regularly changes focus to talk about "queer" people and how gender and sexual categories are lived out in our society. The latter is a fine topic, but again it dilutes the idea of queer theory. There is a difference between talking about the performativity of gender and talking about the lives of Oscar Wilde and Gertrude Stein.

Anyway, for a short book with little print, I found it hard to slog through it. For those who can infer from a buzzword a fully elaborated theory, the book could be handy. For those seeking guidance in the study of queer theory, help must lie elsewhere.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Young John among the Fruit Trees


Thought this photo—a selfie avant la lettre—would be a welcome change from the old patriarch we've become so accustomed to in the last year. It's the cover of a biography we'll have a chance to vote on for the next list. Author Karin Roffman lists her "ten best" in an accompanying Publishers Weekly article.

Friday, March 2, 2018

A lovely reflection on "Angels in America"

We discussed Tony Kushner's masterpiece, "Angels in America," way back in 2002, but it has come up many times since then in other titles we've read. The latest entry in the crowded field of books on that topic is The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of "Angels in America," an oral history of the play by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois that came out last month.

With that in mind, I'm pleased to note that Alyssa Rosenberg's Act Four blog in the Washington Post features a thoughtful commentary on the book in which she reflects on the continuing significance of the play--which debuted about a quarter-century ago (depending on which production you use as your reference point).  I warmly commend it to you all.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Gay Theater, in Three Acts


"On the return of

  The Boys
in the Band


and why it
matters more
than ever."

Sunday, February 25, 2018

When Bubbles Collide

1978 — on the Amtrak Colonial to Providence after two separately gay wild weekends in Manhattan: a 19 y.o. student pot-head and a 39 y.o. boozy actor … each with a past. No trigger warnings needed for this recent New Yorker story "Bronze" by Jeffrey Eugenides, whose sprawling Middlesex we read twelve years ago. Everyone comes out ahead in this tight little drama (though neither necessarily with the head they started in on). Eugene's little secret:

    He wanted to be beautiful. If that didn’t work, noticeable would do.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Who (or what) the heck is a Fupista?

The six of us present for last night's discussion of Luis Negron's Mundo Cruel all enjoyed the stories (to varying degrees, of course), and I warmly recommend the book.  Even if you don't "get" Negron's humor, there are also a couple of heartfelt selections, such as "The Garden," that pack a lot of emotion into a few pages.

Most of the stories don't require knowledge of Puerto Rican history or culture, but you will get more out of "La Edwin," in particular, if you at least skim Luis Orlando Gallardo Rivera's "Youth Sub-cultures of Puerto Rico, an Observation."  Here, for instance, is his explanation of what a Fupista is:

Fupistas – “Fupista” is a very uncommon term that I have only heard a few times, which literally translates into members of the FUPI, a pro-independence group that is quite popular within the public universities. The FUPI group has its own music tastes (ranging from reggae root to Latin American nueva trova) and its own clothing styles. Untrimmed beards and mustaches and at many times dread-locks or Che Guevara-style hair is common among males, while females usually will keep hair long and lose (sort of similar to the style commonly used by the last generation’s hippies) or in a bunion. Clothing might include camouflage or politically motivated shirts among males, long multi-colored dark-skirts for females, and leather-sandals for both sexes.

While this group is generally limited to the universities, they have a strong voice for they are the most active among Puerto Rican youth in political and social movements. Ideologies, both religious and political are generally more radical in this sect, ranging from communism to anarchy and Rastafarianism to atheism. Despite their social activeness and radical thought, this group tends to be the most non-violent (to other Puerto Ricans – it’s a different story with North Americans), healthiest, and even through many of their traits are imported, the most active in culture and the arts. Craft making, usually involving beads or hemp, is popular among females, who you can see during many sunny days sitting on colorful clothe sheets making bracelets and necklaces for sale. Incenses, Taino memorabilia, poetry and literature, protests (including plena music) and wide-scale reading are other common fupista pastimes.

Friday, February 16, 2018

Much at the Morgan

Two exhibitions just opened at the Morgan Library and Museum that should be of interest to any Bookman headed to the Big Apple in the next few months.

The first, Tennessee Williams: No Refuge but Writing (through May 13), is a natural follow-up to the John Lahr biography of the playwright we read back in 2016—Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh.

And the second, Peter Hujar: Speed of Life (through May 20), highlights a New York-based photographer whose name has come up in several books we’ve read—most recently, Philip Gefter’s Wagstaff (not to mention the cover photo for Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life).


Of course, you don’t have to leave town to see Hujar’s oeuvre. He figures prominently in a new show at the Hirshhorn, Brand-New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s (through May 13).

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

John Ashbery in The Economist

As we look forward to our March 7 discussion of John Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, I'm happy to report that the Library of America has just issued John Ashbery: Collected Poems, 1991-2000, the second such compilation of his poetry. (The first volume appeared in 2008, and contains his first 12 books of poetry, including the one we will be discussing. It also marked the first time the Library of America had ever published the work of a living poet.)

Reviewing this new anthology, which brings together Ashbury's last seven volumes of poetry, the Jan. 25 issue of The Economist pays glowing tribute: "His ideas are both inscrutable and sublime. ... Searching high and low through the English language, he appears to have lifted stone after stone until there was nothing left hidden."

Friday, February 9, 2018

Book Tar-Baby — Revisited

Unfortunately, in the event, not so "divergent" as I had hoped. So once again Daniel Mendelsohn's "A Striptease Among Pals" to give Yanagihara fans something to chew on. Also, what I've only recently come across, Elif Batuman's "Cultural Comment" which accurately characterizes A Little Life as "a mélange of misery and lifestyle porn" but finds it ultimately more successful than either I or DM did. (I have to pass on an eminent gay writer's opinion that A Little Life is best sped-read as a "gay Gothic novel" … perhaps a wise middle ground.)

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Happy Birthday, Langston Hughes!

As Black History Month gets underway, it seems appropriate to note that Langston Hughes was born 116 years ago today.   With that in mind, I commend this Renee Watson commentary in the New York Times to you: "Remember Langston Hughes's Anger Alongside His Joy."

Although Ms. Watson does not address the poet's sexuality, she does offer this Hughes quote that should be highly relevant to LGBTQ Americans:

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

M. John Harrison's "The Crisis"


My gaydar set off on this one immediately. False positive? Read for yourself (it's a really good short story all on its own). And for those of you like me unfamiliar with "mercuric sulphocyanate" — voilà  pharaoh's serpent!

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

— a History!

transferring this to "Books We Have Read" I realize we didn't comment on the subtitle "A Graphic History". May mitigate some of our criticisms of the book … or not?

Monday, January 1, 2018

"No Sex Please, We're Gay"

Tip of the hat to Ken Jost for calling our attention to this critical review of Call Me by Your Name in last week's Post. A complementary critique from The New Yorker also appeared last month. (Complimentary critiques of course elsewhere abound.)