A rediscovered Tennessee Williams play

The Dec. 24-31 issue of Metro Weekly reports that Spooky Action Theater is streaming its production of a virtually unknown early play by Tennessee Williams, "The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers," now through Jan. 14.

The play premiered at last year's Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival. Natsu Onoda Power, a multimedia stage artist and professor at Georgetown University who adapted and directed the work for the festival, has redesigned it for a virtual presentation by the local Spooky Action Theater. Dylan Arredondo, Melissa Carter and Jared H. Graham star in the work, presented by special arrangement with the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. 

An access link costs $10. Call (202) 248-0301 or visit www.spookyaction.org. 

The Origins of Gay Power

Next week, we begin an anthology that I am really looking forward to: The Violet Quill Reader: The Emergence of Gay Writing, edited by David Bergman. In conjunction with the first selection, a July 1969 letter in which Edmund White describes his participation in the Stonewall Riots, Patrick Flynn kindly shared the following photo he took at the Newseum's final exhibition on gay liberation:

Remembering Deb Price

Way back in November 2003, we discussed Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court by Deb Price and Joyce Murdoch. Today's Washington Post has an obituary for Ms. Price, who passed away last month at the age of 62. It notes that in addition to publishing several books, she was the first nationally syndicated columnist on gay life. Her column originated in the Detroit News (here is their tribute to Ms. Price, as well as the New York Times obituary), but was quickly picked up by hundreds of newspapers across the country and ran from 1992 to 2010. She is survived by Ms. Murdoch, her wife.

"Drag Queens and Beauty Queens"

Several members of BookMen DC have written or edited books over the years, but as far as I know, this is the first time one of us has garnered a photo credit. Congratulations, Robert! 

He explains: "I've always wanted to be mentioned in a book. However, I'm not so sure I had this title in mind! A professor from Stockton University wrote a book about the gay scene in Atlantic City in the '80s, '90s, etc. Someone showed her this picture of when I was visiting some friends there in 1981 and asked me if she could use it."

The author's name is Laurie Greene and the book is Drag Queens and Beauty Queens: Contesting Femininity in the World's Playground, published last year. I've just ordered it, and may nominate it for our next reading list.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt

Apologies for posting this after World AIDS Day, but if you haven't viewed the AIDS Memorial Quilt in a while (or ever), it is available online. As Washington City Paper notes, the quilt was first displayed on the National Mall in 1987 with 1,920 panels commemorating the dead; when it was last stretched in its entirety across the Mall in 1996, it has more than 39,000. COVID-19 made it impossible to exhibit portions of the quilt in locations across America, this year, but you can view all its blocks, categorized by state and curated by display hosts, online. Washington, D.C.'s representatives include the Library of Congress and the Whitman-Walker Clinic.

"Leading Men" is headed for the silver screen

Almost exactly a year ago, we discussed Christopher Castellani's Leading Men, a novel about Tennessee Williams and his longtime lover, Frank Merlo. My thanks to the intrepid Octavio Roca for alerting me to an article in Variety that reports Matthew Lopez (whose smash play, The Inheritance, we discussed back in July) has been tapped to write the screenplay for a Searchlight Pictures film based on the novel. 

Remembering Jan Morris

As many of you know, last week (Nov. 13-19) was Transgender Awareness Week. So it is perhaps fitting that Jan Morris, one of the most famous transgender figures in history, died on Nov. 20 at the age of 94. Matt Schudel's Washington Post obituary describes her beautifully: "Jan Morris reported on wars and revolutions around the globe, published dozens of elegant books exploring far-flung places and times, and was regarded as perhaps the greatest travel writer of her time. Yet the most remarkable journey of her life was across a private border, when she cast off her earlier identity as James Morris and became Jan Morris."

We have not read any of her many books (yet), but her 1974 memoir Conundrum (reissued in 2006 with a new introduction by the author) sounds intriguing. Here, from the New York Times, are an obituary and a tribute. Here is The Economist's obituary. And here is a tribute by a fellow travel writer in the Dec. 13 Washington Post.

This year's Man Booker Prize-winning novel

Back in January, we discussed Anna Burns' novel Milkman, which won the 2018 Man Booker Prize, during one of our "fifth Wednesday" sessions featuring non-LGBTQ books. (It actually does have gay characters, I should note, but we didn't realize that when we selected it.) A tip of the hat to our friend Robert Muir for reporting that this year's Man Booker Prize-winner (just announced), Shuggie Bain, is a largely autobiographical novel by Douglas Stuart, a gay Scotsman. (Here are writeups about the awards ceremony from Vanity Fair, the New York Times and Washington Post.) I just ordered my copy, but it certainly sounds likes a plausible contender for our next reading list.

Bryan Washington: An author to watch

Until I read the glowing tribute to Memorial, his just-published novel,  I must confess that I had never heard of Bryan Washington. (Here are the reviews from the Washington Post and New York Times.) But the 35-year-old gay African-American writer was already getting plenty of buzz before that for Lot, a short story collection that Barack Obama named one of his favorite books in 2019. Lot also earned Washington a 5 Under 35 honor from the National Book Foundation and won several other awards. I've just ordered both books, and if they live up to the praise, I expect to nominate at least one of them for our next reading list. If any of you have read either, let me know what you think.

Meet a "Homo Historian"

My thanks to Octavio Roca for alerting me to this LGBTQ Nation profile of Eric Cervini, an award-winning historian of LGBTQ+ politics and culture who recently published The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America. Cervini is also the creator of "Magic Closet," a series of one-minute videos on Instagram exploring gay history, which are among the material available on his YouTube channel. 

Professor Pete strikes again

So far, we've discussed memoirs by Pete Buttigieg (Shortest Way Home) and, earlier this week, his husband Chasten (I Have Something to Tell You). To break the tie, Pete has just published Trust: America's Best Chance, which debuted at #11 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list. In case you were wondering what the former mayor is up to these days, he's teaching a course on trust in politics to 19 undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame--masked and standing behind plexiglass, of course. For more details on his new book and thoughts on the election, here's a transcript of Buttigieg's Oct. 9 Washington Post Live conversation with Robert Costa.

Meet Max Jacob

I must confess that even after 20 years as a proud BookMen member, there are still many lacunae in my literary knowledge. One of them is the subject of a new, critically acclaimed biography, Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters, by Rosanna Warren. Though highly accomplished, the French poet (1876-1944) had three strikes against him his whole life: he was from the provinces, Jewish (though he converted to Catholicism) and gay. Here are reviews of Warren's book from the Washington Post and New York Times. I obviously haven't read it yet, but it sure sounds like a good candidate for our next reading list.

Chasten's clever chapter titles

In the unlikely event you need an incentive to read Chasten Buttigieg's memoir, I Have Something to Tell You (which we'll be discussing on Oct. 21), allow me to offer some of his chapter titles as a token of his puckish sense of humor:

1. Not That Kind of Camp

2. "Did You Walk Your Steer Today?"

3. How Do You Say "I Think I'm Gay" in German?

5. How to Succeed in Wisconsin Without Really Crying

6. Ma'am, This Is a Starbucks

14. This Is Nuts, Eat the Nuts

Worth many thousands of words...:-)

As a group devoted to celebrating the power of the written word, BookMen DC has not ever discussed a photography book, so far as I know. (That's a cue for my fellow old-timers to weigh in if I'm mistaken!) But the Washington Post's In Sight photography blog reports on the imminent publication of a fascinating book that might be worth consideration for a future reading list: Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850s-1950s.

The Books in the Ban

Last month, Washington Post book critic Ron Charles decided to observe Banned Books Week by reading the "Top 10 Most Challenged Books" compiled by the American Library Association. Seven of them are LGBTQ-related: George; Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out; A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo; Prince & Knight; I Am Jazz; Drama; and what is probably the most famous title on the list: And Tango Makes Three. As Charles wryly observes:

"Nothing highlights the fragility of some adults quite like the campaign against this nonfiction picture book about two male penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo. Don't let their tuxedos fool you. According to complaints lodged at schools and public libraries, these little guys gave an agenda beyond just raising a chick on their own. But in fact, this adorable true story, with its perfect harmony of words and illustrations, will appeal to any child interested in the fascinating variety of nature. At the end, the authors write, 'Like all the other penguins in the penguin house, and all the other animals in the zoo, and all the families in the big city around them, they went to sleep.' Would that we could all let each other live and sleep in peace." Amen! 

"Boys in the Band" comes to Netflix

Four years ago this month, we discussed Mart Crowley's 1968 play, The Boys in the Band. (If you click on the March link under "Blog Archive" in the right-hand column of this blog, you'll find my tribute to Crowley, who died that month.) As many of you know, in 2018 the play was revived on Broadway with an all-star cast comprised entirely of out actors, directed by Joe Mantello and produced by Ryan Murphy. I'm pleased to report that a film of that production is available on Netflix starting today. 

In that regard, Patrick Flynn kindly alerted me to a fascinating article about the play/movie in the current issue of New York magazine. For its part, Metro Weekly's cover story is in an interview with Mantello. And here are reviews from the New York Times and Washington Post.

The 2020--2021 Bookmen 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. 

FICTION

A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale. Grand Central, 2016, $16, 384 pages.

A Saint from Texas by Edmund White. Bloomsbury, 2020, $24, 304 pages.

Find Me by Andre Aciman. Picador, 2020, $14, 272 pages. 

Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr. Grove Press, 1964, $13, 320 pages.

P.S. Your Cat Is Dead: A Novel by James Kirkwood. (Not currently in print, but available from booksellers.) Warner Paperback Library, 1973, 223 pages.

Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski. William Morrow, 2020, $20, 208 pages.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Penguin, 1982, $14, 304 pages.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Andrew George. Penguin, 2003, $14, 304 pages.

The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt. Bloomsbury, 1986, $17, 320 pages.

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone by Tennessee Williams. New Directions, 1950, $14, 160 pages.

Tin Man by Sarah Winman. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017, $13, 224 pages.

NON-FICTION

I, John Kennedy Toole by Kent Carroll and Jodee Blanco. Pegasus Books, 2020, $18, 256 pages.

No House to Call My Home: Love, Family and Other Trangressions by Ryan Berg. Bold Type Books, 2016, $17, 320 pages.

BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR

Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery.  Little Brown, 2018, $25, 512 pages.

CIty Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara by Brad Gooch.  Harper Perennial, 1993, $13, 576 pages.  

Paris France by Gertrude Stein. Liveright, 1940, $12, 128 pages.

Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone by David Feinberg. Penguin, 1994, $16, 288 pages.

POETRY

Eros in Boystown: Contemporary Gay Poems about Sex, edited by Michael Lassell. (Not currently in print, but available

from booksellers.) Crown Press, 1996, 57 pages.

Live Oak, with Moss by Walt Whitman; illustrated by Brian Selznick. Harry N. Abrams, 2019, $7, 192 pages.

DRAMA

Tea and Sympathy by Robert Anderson. (Not currently in print, but available from booksellers.) Samuel French, 1955, 92 pages.

ANTHOLOGIES

Pages Passed from Hand to Hand: The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English from 1748 to 1914,

edited by Mark Mitchell and David Leavitt. (Not currently in print, but available from booksellers.) Mariner Press, 1998, 

480 pages.

The Violet Quill Reader: The Emergence of Gay Writing after Stonewall, edited by David Bergman. St. Martin’s Press, 1994, 

$18, 410 pages.

The New York Times on Walt Whitman

A tip of the hat to Octavio Roca for calling my attention to this Jesse Green essay in the Sept. 14 issue of T Magazine (published by the New York Times): "Walt Whitman, Poet of a Contradictory America." 

Green's thesis will not come as a surprise to most Bookmen, I imagine: "During the Civil War era, the writer emerged as an emblem of the country's dissonance. Now, in the midst of another all-consuming national crisis, his work feels uncannily relevant." But the way he harkens back to Whitman's life and work to make that point is highly effective. And as a bonus, the photo illustrations (mostly featuring young black men) were inspired by passages from the 1891-1892 edition of Leaves of Grass, chosen by the author and the magazine's editors.

Christian Cooper's comic book truly Represents

Back in May, I posted an item ("Chris Cooper, Gay Pioneer") here about the gay African-American birder who stood up to racist bullying in Central Park. That experience has inspired Cooper, who worked as an editor for Marvel Comics in the 1990s and later created an online comic, Queer Nation, on his own, to return to that world.

Cooper's 10-page comic book, It's a Bird, is illustrated by Alitha E. Martinez, inked by Mark Morales and colored by Emilio Lopez. It's the first installment in "Represent!," a digital series from DC Comics that will showcase writers and artists from groups that are under-represented in the industry. The series is available free on participating digital platforms, including readdc, comiXology, Amazon Kindle, Apple Books and more.

Andrew Holleran speaks!

I was disappointed to discover few reviews of In September, the Light Changes, the Andrew Holleran short story collection we began discussing tonight. (If you missed that session, fear not; we will return to it on Nov. 4.) But I did find this fascinating audio interview that the New York Times conducted in conjunction with the book's 1999 publication.

The Other Buttigieg

As you know, next month we'll be discussing Chasten Buttigieg's memoir (hot off the press), I Have Something to Tell You. But fear not, fellow fans of Mayor Pete! The Washington Post reports that next week, the former (and future?) presidential candidate will premiere a podcast, "The Deciding Decade," on iHeart Radio. 

Sat., Aug. 29, is Indie Bookstores Day!

My apologies for not flagging this event sooner, but Saturday, Aug. 29, is Independent Bookstore Day.  Yay!  (Some events are happening today and Sunday, as well.)

You can explore local book shops and virtual events like Zoom panels with authors such as Tayari Jones, Lauren Groff and Kat Cho, and classes with various illustrators.  Learn more about the Indie Bookstore Day events here. 

And here you’ll find a list of participating local bookstores.

"A Confederacy of Dunces" turns 40

Those of you who attended the discussion of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces I hosted at my place back in May 2019 (one of our fifth-Wednesday sessions) know how much I love that rollicking comic novel. I first read it in 1980 (hot off the press) during my senior year at Centenary College in my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana--which is about as different from New Orleans as you can imagine despite being in the same state--and have reread it more often than any other book (with the possible exception of the Bible). Although it is not a "gay novel," its protagonist, Ignatius Reilly, certainly does not come across as heterosexual, and at least one supporting character in it is clearly gay. There is also reason to believe (though no proof) that Toole himself was homosexual, and that was a factor in his 1969 suicide. 

I bring this up because I just got my copy of a new book by Kent Carroll and Jodee Blanco, I, John Kennedy Toole, that is a work of fiction but sticks to the facts about the writer. It turns out, for example, that, notwithstanding the tale of repeated rejection Toole's mother promoted, Simon & Schuster was seriously interested in publishing A Confederacy of Dunces. But Toole's editor, Robert Gottlieb (who had edited Catch-22), wanted him to trim the story and sharpen the plot, which Toole attempted to do. Years went by before Gottlieb finally rejected the novel, saying "It really isn't about anything." (Shades of "Seinfeld!") 

On a related (and belated) note: Back in April, our friend Octavio Roca kindly shared with me a delightful essay in LitHub titled "Finding Permission to Fail in A Confederacy of Dunces." I encourage any of you who share my enthusiasm for the novel to check that out.

The ONE to remember

Octavio Roca was kind enough to point out the following article in the July 15 issue of JSTOR (short for Journal Storage), a digital library founded in 1995: "ONE: The First Gay Magazine in the United States." Founded in 1952, the magazine was published by ONE, the first gay rights organization in the United States. Some of you will recall Lillian Faderman's discussion of the group and the magazine in her magisterial The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, which we discussed in 2018 and 2019 (we read chapters from it on third Wednesdays). But the JSTOR article not only contains lots of details to supplement Faderman's account, but ends with a very helpful reading list.

A Saint from Texas (and maybe NYC?)

Today's New York Times features a warm profile of Edmund White, whose latest novel, A Saint from Texas, comes out on August 4. It's full of tasty quotes from White, such as this: "People are looking for a canon because they want the absolute limit of books they need to read to be cultured. But real readers always want new books to read." Quotes about him abound as well, such as this one from novelist Alexander Chee, whose Edinburgh we read back in 2005: "He has received major recognition. But I think we are still in the process of learning how important he has always been."

The Decameron, Old and New

Some of you may recall that back in March, I posted a "Coronavirus Reading List" to which several of you appended helpful recommendations. I just finished the book that headed that list, Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, and while I can't truthfully say I enjoyed every one of the 100 stories (any more than would be true of any fiction collection), I now understand why it's been a classic work of literature for nearly seven centuries.

If you don't have the leisure to read the whole Decameron, I encourage you at least to check out the story that concludes the first half (Day 5, Story 10). Let's just say it's quite gay, in every sense of the term!

For those of you who already know the work and are looking for a fresh approach, Synetic Theater's first show in the COVID-19 era is a "designed for digital" take on 35 of the tales, each produced by a different artist. The production has an interactive element, allowing viewers to watch the stories in whatever order they wish, though they can also opt for pre-selected playlists or watch them serially over any 10-day period between now and July 31. Tickets are "pay what you can" with a $10 minimum.

Last but certainly not least, the current New York Times Sunday Magazine offers "The Decameron Project," a collection of 29 short stories it commissioned "for this moment," along with an introductory essay about Boccaccio's work by Rivka Galchen. I haven't yet read the issue, but I see that Colm Toibin and Margaret Atwood are among the contributors, so I'm optimistic it will be worth the time.

Andy Warhol tells all (well, most...)

Writing in the June 30 issue of the New York Times, Sophie Atkinson tells how helpful she found rereading Andy Warhol's 1977 autobiography: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back Again) during the pandemic lockdown. She quotes the book's editor, Steven M.L. Aronson, as saying: "Warhol told me that he felt the book could give people a way that they could think, too, and that they could use it to solve their own problems." And so it proved for her.

Those of you who read Olivia Laing's The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Living Alone, which we discussed last month, may be surprised to learn from Atkinson that Warhol, a partygoer who could rarely attend a happening without at least a six-person retinue, was an ardent disciple of puttering around his apartment solo. "If I only had time for one vacation every 10 years," he wrote, "I still don't think I'd want to go anywhere. I'd probably just go to my room, fluff up the pillow, turn on a couple of TVs, open a box of Ritz crackers."

Coincidentally, just a few days before Atkinson's essay appeared, the NYT featured Valerie Solanas, who shot Warhol (as Laing recounts), in its ongoing "Overlooked No More" obituary series. Bonnie Wertheim's profile of the "radical feminist" is not quite as detailed or sympathetic as Laing's, but she does usefully cites several works Solanas' sad life has inspired.

Do you love your fruit?

Back in September 2019, we discussed a provocative book: Nadine Hubbs' Rednecks, Queers and Country Music. A friend of mine was kind enough to share with me an amazing video by a 1930s country group officially called "The Prairie Ramblers," but better known as "The Sweet Violet Boys." Here is their rendition of a pretty risqué song titled "I Love My Fruit." (Disappointingly, the group's Wikipedia entry makes no reference to this aspect of their act.)

The Playwright Speaks

As we prepare to discuss Matthew Lopez's play, The Inheritance, this Wednesday, I'm grateful to Ken Jost for reminding me of an interview Lopez gave to the New York Times back in February on "What I Wanted to Say in 'The Inheritance'." Lots of good stuff, but this is perhaps my favorite passage: "In writing The Inheritance, I wanted to take my favorite novel and retell it in a way that its closeted author never felt free to do in his lifetime. I wanted to write a play that was true to my experience, my philosophy, my heart as a gay man who has enjoyed opportunities that were denied [E.M.] Forster. It was my attempt to explain myself to the world as a gay man of my particular generation."

Supplemental reading?

A tip of the hat to Octavio Roca for passing along this essay from Literary Hub: "Rabih Alemeddine Recommends Some Gay Books You Might Not Have Known Were Gay." As it happens, we read the first title on the list, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian, back in 2017, but none of the others (yet)—though we have discussed other selections by some of the authors. But we've never discussed any works by Australian novelist Patrick White—nor, so far as I can recall, has anyone nominated any of them for our reading list—even though, as Alemeddine observes, White "was an openly gay man who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, for crying out loud." (He recommends starting with The Twyborn Affair.) Sounds like an oversight we might want to rectify this fall when we conduct our next nomination process...:-)

"where tension and presence is story"

Poetry, our oldest (?) poetry journal (American), has been an intarissable fountain of material since the Ruth Lily bequest of 2003. My earlier post on the "poem before it became the title of a book" linked to its publication (as well as, indirectly, to a reading by its author). In the April 2020 issue, Ocean Vuong's latest poem (or most recently published in Poetry) appears — "Not Even This", as well as his reading it, as well as the foundation's April 27 podcast (one of many), as well as … (intarissable, as I said).

The podcast (about eighteen minutes long) consists of two editors interviewing Vuong and his giving another reading of "Not Even This."

Don Share: This was Vuong's first return to poetry after writing the novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. That novel employed a Japanese narrative form that Vuong says he carried through to the poem, "Not Even This."
Ocean Vuong: The great credo in Western narrative is no conflict, no story. And this Japanese form called Kishōtenketsu is kind of the antithetical maneuver to that where tension and presence is story.

I recommend the Wikipage on Kishōtenketsu, the poem (my new favorite), the discussion of lineation in the podcast, and another way to read this wonderful autofiction.

The latest from Olivia Laing

Just days before we will meet online (June 17) to discuss British critic Olivia Laing's The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Living Alone, she has a new book out that explores some of the same themes: Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. In particular, as the Washington Post review notes, Laing continues her exploration of David Wojnarowicz, the artist and activist who died of AIDS in 1992 at the age of 37.

OutWrite Chair Dave Ring speaks

The new issue of Washington City Paper features an interview with Dave Ring, current chair of the annual OutWrite festival--which will celebrate its tenth anniversary this summer, most likely as an online event for the first time. In addition, last year Ring founded Neon Hemlock Press, which focuses on highlighting LGBTQ writers. Ring says Neon Hemlock has two goals: "telling the stories he always wanted to read himself and adding depth to D.C. literary and publishing communities."

"Only Connect!"

Serendipitously, E.M. Forster's famous exhortation finds fertile ground in our current reading list. Our friend Octavio Roca was kind enough to pass along word that Matthew Lopez (whose play, The Inheritance, we'll be discussing on July 1), pays tribute in Variety to the late, great Larry Kramer, Terrence McNally and Mart Crowley. Octavio also notes that our July 15 selection, Forster's science fiction short story, "The Machine Stops," is available in The Eternal Moment and Other Stories.

"On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous"

Originally a poem before it became the title of a book. A poem in his first collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Actually, originally, a poem that appeared in Poetry  which gratefully we can still link to. Something we'll discuss next Wednesday, I'm sure: how this poem relates to that book.

"Let me begin again …"

Whether you've begun or finished or like(d) or dislike(d) Ocean Vuong's
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, click on the link and then on "Listen"

below the cover photo to hear his voice — at one with his autofiction!

Chris Cooper, gay pioneer

By now I trust most of you have heard the story of Chris Cooper, who earlier this week stood up to the far less admirable Amy Cooper in Central Park when she called the police on him because he was a black man who'd had the temerity to ask her politely to leash her dog. What none of the reporting I've seen disclosed is that Mr. Cooper is a prominent gay editor. But thanks to this Metro Weekly article, I now know "the rest of the story" (as broadcaster Paul Harvey used to put it). I won't spoil the fun by disclosing two of his professional claims to fame, but do check out the article for yourself.

R.I.P., Larry Kramer

The Washington Post and New York Times are reporting the passing of LGBT author and activist Larry Kramer, at the age of 84. Although we have only discussed two of his many works so far—Faggots (November 2002) and The Normal Heart (May 2006)—he has been a prominent figure in dozens of other books we've read. In addition to those obituaries, here is Michael Specter's New Yorker Postscript, "The Benevolent Rage of Larry Kramer," and Dr. Tony Fauci's touching New York Times tribute, titled "We Loved Each Other." No doubt there are dozens of other reminiscences and assessments of Kramer's life and work out there, with more on the way; but unless I come across something truly extraordinary, I'll trust that those of you who are interested will find them on your own.

Lost in Translation

We had 15 participants for tonight's Zoom discussion of Albert Camus' The Plague, which I hope they all enjoyed as much as I did. One question that came up was about translations of the novel, and Matthew Zipf was kind enough to share a recent London Review of Books article titled "Pointing the Finger: Jacqueline Rose on The Plague." Matthew recommends reading both the article and the letters it discusses; together, they're a good starting point for analyzing the different translations.

On a much less exalted analytical plane, I just discovered a handy cheat sheet, I mean student guide, to the novel, courtesy of Shmoop.com.

Paris and "The Plague"

I'm looking forward to our online discussion of Albert Camus' The Plague tonight! To prepare for that, you might want to take a look at Steve Coll's Daily Comment, "Camus and the Political Tests of a Pandemic" in the May 19 New Yorker. (I tip my jaunty beret to Bruce Dunne for flagging that.) Coll discusses the novel's roots in the author's work for the French Resistance, and closes by quoting historian and Camus biographer Robert Zaretsky's observation that while The Plague has been criticized ever since its 1947 publication for "being heavy and overly moralistic," that criticism "has not aged nearly as well as the novel."

A Plague of Hockey Sticks

Everybody's reading it, I guess, and we will too — Camus' The Plague. Some are even having to read it, students who may have hoped "distance learning" would be time spent playing hockey on the trampoline. 🤨 Reading … or listening to it, like Nathaniel, walking through the snow
(recalling the last scene of Fahrenheit 451).

                (Mercy me — what happened to the snow!?) 😳

Many, like the students and we ourselves, will also be discussing it. "A computer screen filled with 30 faces" … I wonder, will we get so many? (For those for whom this post has been insufficiently high-minded, squirrel out the link within the link for Alain de Botton's thoughts on Camus' plague in our time.)

BMDC Attains Its "Majority"

On May 11, 1999, Potomac Gay Men's Book Group, the original incarnation of our intrepid band, met for the first time. And 21 years later, we're still going strong. (For a good overview of our illustrious history, here is the profile Metro Weekly published a year ago.)

This year's anniversary celebration, perforce, will be subdued indeed, particularly in comparison with our big 20th-birthday bash. But on behalf of myself and previous facilitators, I'd like to thank each of you for your participation in discussions, book suggestions, blog postings, and encouragement and support. Here's to the next 21 years!

Bookmen Zoom!

As current Bookmen members already know, we are going to try meeting virtually, using the Zoom platform. On Wednesday, May 20, from 7:30-8:30 p.m., we will gather online to discuss Albert Camus' The Plague. Then, two weeks later, on June 3 (same timeframe), we will discuss Ocean Vuong's novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. 

If you're interested in joining us for either of those sessions but are not on our mailing list, click on the "contact Steve" link you'll see about halfway down the right-hand column of this page (right above the Reading List header) and I'll be happy to send you details. The more, the merrier!

Lonely City, Unlonely Painting, Today's Post

As you know, we were scheduled to discuss Olivia Laing's The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone last month, before ...stuff happened. Depending on how our Zoom experiment fares (see separate posting for details) I will reschedule that discussion for sometime this summer; stay tuned.

In the meantime, Lee Levine points out that the May 10 Washington Post Sunday Magazine includes a two-page story by Menachem Wecker—"Those who say Edward Hopper is the artist of social distancing may be wrong"—that includes a color reproduction of "Nighthawks", perhaps his most famous painting. (Laing discusses Hopper in Chapter 2.) As Lee notes, "What the article and the book have to say about isolation in a city is all too current."

I Sing the Body Electric

Thanks to Ken Jost for flagging Holland Cotter's commentary, "John Singer Sargent's Drawings Bring His Model Out of the Shadows," in the May 7 New York Times. It's an essay, rather than a review, since the show he writes about is at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which remains on lockdown, but the site offers some highlights in a short video.  The Gardner has extended the exhibition, "Boston's Apollo: Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent" (which opened in February), through September--so perhaps some of you will get to see it in person. (I'll content myself with the video and the handsome catalog, which I just ordered.)

Canada apologizes for its "Lavender Scare"

The report in today's Washington Post that Canada will build a monument in honor of the victims of that country's Cold War "gay purge" (which ended in 1992) immediately called to mind David K. Johnson's pioneering book, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, which we discussed in April 2012. (Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's address to Parliament formally apologizing for that history is well worth watching in its own right, by the way.)

Johnson briefly alludes to that history in this passage (pp. 143-144):

"The British, Canadian and Australian security agencies had all studied and copied, to varying degrees, the antigay policies and investigative procedures developed by the United States government. Whether or not they subscribed to the same beliefs about homosexuals, each feared that the disclosure that one of their secret agencies employed a homosexual would jeopardize their close relationship with American intelligence officials. When Canadian officials discovered a homosexual working in a highly secret agency monitoring radio signals from the Soviet Union in 1992, they immediately sought his resignation. As a Canadian intelligence expert explained, 'If countries like Canada did not conform to American standards of security, they risked being cut off from America's intelligence-gathering apparatus. Once the model for the rest of the federal government, the State Department's antigay policies and procedures had become the model for much of the NATO alliance.'"

A little "A Little Life" quote

A tip of the hat to Lee Levine for spotting this quote in the April 2 edition of "The Aesthete" profile in the Financial Times. Paul Andrews, the creative director of Salvatore Ferragamo, was asked what he's currently reading:

"The book on my bedside table is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It was recommended to me by two avid reader friends, Tommy Dorfman and Jacob Bixenman. With its length and heavy subject matter, it's not an easy read, but it's such a powerful book. It engages with queer aesthetic modes, emotional truth, self-indulgence, addiction and, ultimately, death. You can't imagine there is going to be another turn and suddenly you're bawling your eyes out again."

(We discussed the novel on Feb. 7, 2018.)

Mark Doty on Walt Whitman

Today, W.W. Norton released poet Mark Doty's latest book—What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life. My thanks to Octavio Roca for passing along this excerpt, which Literary Hub has published. Here's one tidbit:

If [Whitman] sometimes changed his pronouns, or shifted the order of poems in order to blur the nature of a particular allegiance, and if he betrayed his own sexuality when confronted head-on, it would nonetheless be absurd to expect him to have been any more radical than he actually managed to be.

Support your local bookstores!

When the Capital Fringe Festival notified supporters that it was, reluctantly, canceling this summer's festival, the message included a very useful set of links to local bookstores. Though their physical doors are closed, they are all open online for business. You might also consider purchasing gift cards from them, which not only boosts their income but constitutes a vote of confidence in their futures.

Capitol Hill Books | Loyalty Books | Potter’s House | Politics & Prose | Busboys & Poets | Lost City Books | Charm City Books  |

Kramers Books | MahoganyBooks 

Who Killed Whose Father!?

We've read Édouard Louis' The End of Eddy. I've read and expect we'll eventually discuss his second "autofiction" A History of Violence. Both of these and the life that lies behind them (and it's not merely completist to exclude no sense of "lie"!) are interestingly discussed in Elizabeth Zerofsky's feature article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

I haven't read his third "work" Who Killed My Father  and though it's mentioned in the article—even featured in this photo

A scene from the stage adaptation of Louis’s novel ‘‘Who Killed My Father.”

—it's barely mentioned. Or maybe not. Much of the second half deals with his political actions ("Louis sees literature to a large extant as a political project"), his alliance with the Eribon-Lagasnerie "factory", and the rise of the gilets-jaunes. All of this very interesting to be sure, and complicated in the typically French way, but hanging out or over like some burst appendix.

Bookmen DC will not meet in May...:-(

As I've already notified current members via e-mail, the extension of "stay at home" procedures means our group will not be able to meet until June, at the earliest.  Once we have a firm date for the reopening of libraries and other D.C. government facilities, I'll revise our discussion schedule.  In the meantime, keep calm and keep reading!

A book that is/is not a book

A tip of the beret to Octavio Roca for flagging this fascinating article from Hyperallergic.com about the first English translation (by Sylvia Gorelick) of Stephane Mallarme's La Livre (The Book), a long poem that Octavio notes is not in the Pleiade edition of the poet's works. Mallarme (1842-1898) famously declared that "Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book," and he spent 30 years compiling this sprawling, unfinished visual poem to prove that point.

Viewing "Every Act of Life"

The PBS "American Masters" program linked in Steve's "Remembering Terrence McNally" post below is for a short time easily viewable! I heartily recommend it for anyone interested in theater or gay life or American culture in general.

Remembering Terrence McNally

The Washington Post and New York Times are reporting the death of playwright Terrence McNally at the age of 81, due to complications from coronavirus. The winner of four Tonys, McNally was a prolific dramatist throughout his long career, but is probably best known for his plays, Love! Valor! Compassion! (1995) and Master Class (1996), and his books for the musicals Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993) and Ragtime (1998).

I'm chagrinned to see that the list of 300+ books we've read (faithfully updated by our blogmaster, Tim Walton) does not include any of McNally's works. Perhaps that's an omission we might wish to rectify when we conduct our next nomination/voting process? I was planning to do that this spring, by the way, but since we still have plenty of titles from our last balloting left to schedule, and Lord only knows when we'll be able to resume meeting, I'm inclined to wait until the fall.

Our friend Ken Jost notes that "Terrence McNally: Every Act of Life," a documentary about the playwright's life and career, aired on PBS on June 14, 2019, as part of the network's "American Masters" series. And here are Post theater critic Peter Marks' lovely tribute, and a roundup of some
Times reviews of McNally's creations over the years.

None but the Lonely...

Several of you have told me you've finished, or at least started, the selection we were scheduled to discuss on April 1: Olivia Laing's Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone.  

If you haven't checked out that book yet, here's an op-ed by Ms. Laing from today's New York Times to whet your appetite: "How to Be Lonely." 

Bookmen DC will not meet in April

Mayor Bowser has extended the current state of emergency through April 27, so that knocks out both our meetings next month.  I'll revise the schedule once there is a firm date for reopening D.C. government facilities.

A Coronavirus Reading List

I'm not sure whether it's the imp of the perverse that put the idea into my head, but I've ordered four books that I hope will give me some perspectives on the current crisis:

The Decameron  by Giovanni Boccaccio

A Journal of the Plague Year  by Daniel Defoe

The Plague  by Albert Camus

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Epidemic in History
by John M. Barry

I welcome other suggestions.

Learning from History?

Politico has published a fascinating roundup of 30 short (1-2 paragraphs) responses by experts to the question, "How will the coronavirus change the world permanently?" They're all worth reading (IMHO), if not equally compelling. But Jonathan Rauch's take, harkening back to our recent discussion of Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On, stands out for me:

"One group of Americans has lived through a transformational epidemic in recent memory: gay men. Of course, HIV/AIDS was (and is) different in all kinds of ways from coronavirus, but one lesson is likely to apply: Plagues drive change. Partly because our government failed us, gay Americans mobilized to build organizations, networks and know-how that changed our place in society and have enduring legacies today. The epidemic also revealed deadly flaws in the health care system, and it awakened us to the need for the protection of marriage--revelations which led to landmark reforms. I wouldn't be surprised to see some analogous changes in the wake of coronavirus. People are finding new ways to connect and support each other in adversity; they are sure to demand major changes in the health care system and maybe also the government; and they'll become newly conscious of interdependency and community. I can't predict the precise effects, but I'm sure we'll be seeing them for years."

Bookmen DC will NOT meet on Wed., March 18

The DC Center just notified us that it has closed until further notice, so the discussion of the Joe Brainard anthology scheduled for this Wednesday will now take place on June 17. (I've sent an email to those of you on the mailing list.)

The D.C. library system is tentatively set to reopen on April 1, the date of our next meeting. Keep your fingers (and toes and eyes) crossed that happens, and stay tuned.

Boys in the (Heavenly) Band

Mart Crowley (full name: Edward Martino Crowley), best known for his 1968 play, The Boys in the Band, died on March 7 at 84. Here are obituaries from the Washington Post and New York Times, along with Clive Barnes' review of the original production. Barnes praised the production lavishly, though his wording (e.g., references to "queers" and "fag") and insistence that he himself is not a homosexual definitely reflect the era. But I think the review's final paragraph is a fitting epigram for the playwright:

A couple of years ago, my colleague Stanley Kauffmann, in a perceptive but widely misunderstood essay, pleaded for a more honest homosexual drama, one where homosexual experience was not translated into false, pseudoheterosexual terms. This, I think, "The Boys in the Band," with all its faults, achieves. It is quite an achievement.

O Lammies of God (sorry)

Octavio Roca was kind enough to share the list of nominees for this year's Lambda Literary Awards, which Oprah Magazine just announced. They include Ocean Vuong, whose On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous we'll discuss on May 6. Check it out!

Going Gothic

In his March 5 Book World column in the Washington Post, reviewing two reference works surveying science fiction and horror fiction, respectively, Michael Dirda references a book I'd never heard of: Vincent Virga's Gaywyck (1980), the first openly gay modern Gothic novel.

Armistead Maupin (whose first name the Amazon page misspells, aargh) urged: "Read the son of a bitch! You'll love it!" And The Advocate declared it "an extraordinary tour de force that merits special praise." It's still in print, and I intend to check it out as a candidate for our next reading list.

Felice Picano reflects on "The Lure," 40 years later

As a follow-up to last night's discussion of Felice Picano's The Lure, here is an interview the author did with The Guardian  back in December. (Since it's Lent, I may as well confess that I'd intended to post this as soon as I read it, but got sidetracked.) Anyway, it's still a lively read, as is the novel.

"The First Queen of Drag"

The Feb. 17 issue of The Nation celebrates Black History Month by telling the story of William Dorsey Swann, known to his friends nearly 150 years ago as "the Queen." Born in Maryland in 1858, Swann "endured slavery, the Civil War, racism, police surveillance, torture behind bars and many other injustices." But sometime in the 1880s, he also became the first person known to dub himself a "queen of drag"—or, more familiarly, a drag queen.

Author Channing Gerard Joseph is writing a book about Swann, and begins his article by explaining what led him to take on that project. Back in 2005, he came across a Washington Post  headline from April 13, 1888: "Negro Dive Raided. Thirteen Black Men Dressed as Women Surprised at Supper and Arrested." According to another news account, a dozen attendees escaped as the officers barged in because Swann intervened, boldly telling the police lieutenant in charge: "You is no gentleman." In the ensuring brawl, the Queen's "gorgeous dress of cream-colored satin was torn to shreds."

If that tidbit doesn't make you eager to read "The First Drag Queen Was a Former Slave," nothing will!

Come to Stay

For those of you who enjoyed Bryan Washington's "Waugh", The New Yorker has just published a rather different story about a young man who receives a surprise visit from a man who grew up with his now dead dad when they were both boys in Jamaica. Stays for a week  😳  "Visitor"  😱

Lot  is his first collection of short stories. They'll definitely be worth reading if they're equally good!