New additions to our 2019-2020 reading list

I've already disseminated the winning titles from our most recent round of nominations for our next reading list to you via e-mail, but here they are for more general approbation. As always, Tim Walton enters the discussion schedule for upcoming selections in the right-hand column of the blog.

FICTION

Leading Men. Christopher Castellani. 2019, 368pp, Viking, $18.

A Brief History of Seven Killings. Marlon James. 2014, 704pp, Riverhead Books, $13

Martin Bauman. David Leavitt. 2000, 400pp, Mariner, $9

In September, the Light Changes: The Stories of Andrew Holleran. Andrew Holleran. 1999, 320pp, Hyperion, $20

Such Times. Christopher Coe. 1993, 336pp, Penguin, $15

The Lure. Felice Picano. 1979, 267pp, Bold Strokes Books, $17

Julian: A Novel. Gore Vidal. 1964, 528pp, Vintage, $14

Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli. Ronald Firbank. 1926, 47pp, New Directions, $28

NON-FICTION

Has the Gay Movement Failed? Martin Duberman. 2018, 272pp, U. of Cal Press, $17

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. Olivia Laing. 2016, 336pp, Picador, $13

And the Band Played On. Randy Shilts. 1988, 656pp, St. Martin's Griffin, $13

BIOGRAPHY

Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey. Mark Dery. 2018, 512pp, Little Brown, $20

City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara. Brad Gooch. 1993, 576pp, Harper Perennial, $17

MEMOIR

Shortest Way Home. Pete Buttigieg. 2019, 352pp, Liveright, $17
(NOTE: We will be discussing this book on June 5.)

POETRY

The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard. Joe Brainard. 2012, 576pp, Library of America, $19

Illuminations. Arthur Rimbaud (John Ashbery, translator). 1874, 176pp, W.W. Norton, $14

DRAMA

The Inheritance. Matthew Lopez. 2019, 350pp, Faber & Faber, $20

ANTHOLOGIES

Speak My Language, and Other Stories: An Anthology of Gay Fiction. Torsten Hojer, editor. 2015, 592pp, Constable & Robinson, $17

One of the many names David Plante drops...

In the course of making my way through the long middle section of David Plante's Becoming a Londoner, which we'll be discussing this coming Wednesday, I came across a reference that stirred a vague memory.  On pp. 267-268, Plante expresses angst over the apparent end of his friendship with a fellow American writer, also resident in London, named Rachel Ingalls.

Turns out the reason that name rang a faint bell was because Ms. Ingalls died in March at the age of 78, and the obituaries in the New York Times and the Washington Post both referenced the fact that her best-known novel, Mrs. Caliban, bears a striking resemblance to "The Shape of Water," Guillermo Del Toro's Oscar-winning 2017 film.  (Del Toro denied ever having read the book.)

It truly is a small world, after all!

Classic Literature on Goodreads

Following up on Steve's post here's a fun graphic and analysis from the Economist's  December/January issue of 1843

"None Ever Wished It Longer"

The sheer serendipity of search engines (try saying that  three times fast) never ceases to amaze me. In the process of confirming my vague memory that it was Samuel Johnson who observed of John Milton's Paradise Lost that "None ever wished it longer than it is," I came across a wonderful op-ed from the July 30, 1995, New York Times: "'None Ever Wished It Longer': How to Stamp Out Book Inflation."

In it, critic Terry Teachout deplores a trend that has only accelerated over the subsequent 24 years: mounting page counts without concomitantly greater pleasure for the reader.  He theorizes that this is rooted in the belief that "books about books are more important than the books they're about."

But Teachout does praise one book we've discussed: "John Lahr's 302-page Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton (1978), for example, is as good as literary biography gets.  Spoilsports who insist on pointing out that Orton didn't live very long or write very much should take a look at A.N. Wilson's C.S. Lewis: A Biography (1990), in which a man who published 38 books in his lifetime is summed up in 334 admirably pithy pages."

Just to be clear, I do not offer this commentary as any sort of pejorative comment about the many literary biographies we've read over the past 20 years—much less the three of them that have been nominated for our next reading list, one of which I've already read and enjoyed.  (The other two sound good to me, too.)  But I do subscribe to his main point.

See what you think.

Fifth Wednesdays

Almost twenty years ago our group was formed to discuss "gay literature (both fiction and non-fiction)". The term has been understood to include books whose subject matter is gay as well as those whose authors are. And "gay" has been comprehensively understood: certainly to include lesbians (or queers or bisexuals) and easily encompassing transgender or sexually transgressive works or authors.

Ten years ago some members expressed an interest in discussing books outside this remit. Rather than disturb the integrity of the group's original purpose we agreed to meet informally on the "extra" Wednesday of any month of which there were five. And the books we discussed:

      5/29/09  Beloved  by Tony Morrison
    1/3/2010  Life of Pi  by Yann Martel
  3/31/2010  "Mademoiselle O" by Vladimir Nabokov
  7/30/2010  The Way of All Flesh  by Samuel Butler
  3/30/2011  Confederacy of Dunces  by John Kennedy O'Toole
  5/30/2012  Things Fall Apart  by Chinua Achebe

Earlier this year the practice was revived with our discussion of Gogol's short story "The Overcoat". Other opportune dates this year await: May 29, July 30, and October 30. I think our past practice is still a good guide.

From Stage to Page

Dan Chiasson's New Yorker  review of Don't Call Us Dead  highlights the intricate transit of performance poetry from stage to page. Danez Smith broke into national attention when his poem "Dear White America" was featured on the PBS NewsHour (11/16/15). Of course he was already well known in the poetry slam world. In the PBS story there's a link to his Rustbelt 2014 reading of "DWA" but please take a look at it on the page first — page 25 of our DCUD  or online  (though it can be argued this approach is completely ass backwards).

Further readings and performances —
Split This Rock; Vintage Meets; Rotterdam 2018
— offer interesting contrasts and developments.

Finally a long PBS "Book View Now" feature from a year ago (3/9/18).