"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.'"