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!

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:"

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 @

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 !!

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.