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.