Newseum Commemorates Stonewall Riots

Our friend Ernie Raskauskas has attended a new exhibition at the Newseum, "Rise Up: Stonewall and the LGBTQ Movement," and highly recommends it.

The show explores key moments of gay rights history, including the 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk, one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials, the AIDS crisis, Rep. Barney Frank’s public coming out in 1987, the efforts for hate crime legislation, the implementation and later repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and the fight for marriage equality.

“Rise Up” also examines popular culture’s role in influencing and reflecting attitudes about the LGBTQ community through film, television, sports and music, and explores how the gay rights movement harnessed the power of public protest and demonstration to change laws and shatter stereotypes.

A yearlong program series, launched in June 2018, focuses on historic and contemporary topics from “Rise Up” and features journalists, authors, politicians and other newsmakers who have led the fight for equality. The exhibit includes educational resources for students and teachers.

The installation will be displayed through Dec. 31, when the Newseum will vacate its current location. But the exhibition will then travel around the country.

From Page to Stage, Part II

Back in December, I posted an item on behalf of Ken Jost in which he reported that a play based on Andre Gide's The Immoralist  ran on Broadway in 1954.

Guess what?  The couple responsible for that adaptation, Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz, had rendered a similar service to Henry James several years earlier by adapting his 1880 novel, Washington Square, into "The Heiress." I saw that play at Arena Stage last month and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I wish I had posted this notice before it closed last week.  Mea culpa!

Bookmen at the Cosmos Club

Our friend Brian Doyle, a Cosmos Club member, was kind enough to invite me to address the LGBT book club he co-founded there a couple of years ago on "Landmarks in LGBT Literature." There were about a dozen of us at today's luncheon, and we had a most enjoyable, wide-ranging discussion. With luck, we might even get a new member or two out of it.

Since I'm tooting my own horn here, I thought some of you might like to see the list of "must-reads" I presented.  As you'll see, every selection comes from the list of 300+ books (which Tim Walton regularly updates on the blog) we have discussed over two decades (our 20th anniversary will be in May), with just two exceptions:

I went with Armistead Maupin's original Tales of the City series (which I have nominated a couple of times for our list with no success) instead of either of his later books which we have read.  And I chose Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On (which we have not read, for some unaccountable reason) instead of The Mayor of Castro Street (which we have).

During my presentation, I sang the praises of Mark Merlis' An Arrow's Flight, still one of the finest novels I've ever read.

Just for the record, I made clear that this is my personal list, and does not necessarily reflect the position of anyone in Bookmen DC.  But I think it is both fairly representative of what we read and a good sampling of LGBTQ literature.

Feedback welcome!

MUST-READS IN LGBTQ LITERATURE

Compiled by Steven Alan Honley (March 2019)

Fiction
James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
Michael Cunningham, The Hours
E.M. Forster, Maurice
Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
Christopher Isherwood, Berlin Diaries
Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City
Mark Merlis, An Arrow's Flight
Mary Renault, The Persian Boy
Colm Tóibín, The Master
Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Non-Fiction
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
John D'Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Sturggle
David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare
John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
Deb Price, Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court
Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On
Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Poetry
C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems
Philip Clark (ed.), Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS
Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Plays
Tony Kushner, Angels in America
Tarell Alvin McCraney, Choir Boy
Moisés Kaufman, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Useful Reference Works
Christopher Bram, Eminent Outlaws: Gay Writers Who Changed America
Richard Canning, Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read
Tom Cardmone, The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered
Gregory Woods, A Hiostory of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition

Whoa, Nellie's!

Regrettably, I was unable to attend last Wednesday's discussion of Choire Sicha's Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual History of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City—my thanks to Robert Muir for facilitating in my stead. But I did read the book, and while I have no doubt Mr. Sicha can write, I never quite adjusted to the slipperiness of his particular blend of fact and fiction. (I gather that factor also turned off those who were present for the discussion, so I'm in good company.)

Here's an example of that sloppiness which may seem trivial, but I would contend is emblematic. On p. 88 in the paperback edition, John asks Edward where they're going that evening. The reply:

"I'm taking you to the sports bar," Edward said. "It's called Nellie's and it has an outdoor smoking section."

Longtime Washingtonian that I am, this reference naturally puzzled me. Online sleuthing confirmed that we remain the only "large city" with a sports bar called Nellie's. There actually was a Nellie's in New York City as late as 2012, but it was a restaurant in the Village, not a bar. (It appears to have closed since then.)

Since there's no indication that Edward (or any other major character in the book) ever lived in D.C., why does Sicha reference "our" Nellie's here? Especially since the bar was about to close and literally nothing happens to either character during the hour they spend there.

Surely there are plenty of bona fide sports bars in the Big Apple he could have chosen. Or bars with outdoors smoking sections, at least back in 2009. Curious and curiouser...

United in Anger

Book group members might be interested in this insightful article in The Harvard Crimson by staff writer Jensen Davis about gay students coming out and coming of age at Harvard in the 1980s, with little if any support, as the AIDS epidemic spread. Kevin Jennings' recollection at the end is especially poignant:

"What if your roommate, one of your best friends, and your first partner all died from a disease which didn’t even exist as far as you know when you’re a freshman?” says Jennings. “That’s what happened to me. I think of them all the time — whenever I’m at Harvard, whenever I’m at a reunion, I think of these guys who were killed in their very early adult lives by HIV."

[posted on behalf of our friend Ken Jost]