Fellow Travelers on Stage

Some of you may recall that we read Thomas Mallon's Fellow Travelers, set in D.C. during the Lavender Scare, back in 2008. Ernie Raskauskas has kindly alerted me that Virginia Opera will present Gregory Spears' musical adaptation of the novel on Feb. 4 and 5. While I have not seen the opera (and can't make it to either of these performances, alas), I do have a recording of it and highly recommend the music--as well as the source material, of course. Spears has also given Willa Cather's novella, Paul's Case--which we discussed back in 2011--an operatic treatment, and I recommend that CD, as well.

Kinky Kafka

A tip of the hat to Octavio Roca for alerting me to this New York Times review of the first-ever unabridged edition of The Diaries of Franz Kafka, which the novelist kept from 1909 until 1923, not long before his death. Translated by Ross Benjamin, the diaries contain many passages that Kafka's friend Max Brod cut from the original publication to protect Kafka's reputation. These include a line in which Kafka notices "a large bulge" in another man's pants on a train, and a sentence that Brod ended at the comma: "2 beautiful Swedish boys with long legs, which are so formed and taut that one could really only run one's tongue along them." (Oh my!)

Happy 75th Birthday, Kinsey Report!

Washington Post Book World Editor Ron Charles does a marvelous free weekly newsletter, Book Club, that I highly recommend. The most recent edition notes that this month marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, by Alfred Kinsey and his research associates at Indiana University, Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin. As Charles notes, "serious questions have been raised about how truly representative and reliable Kinsey's data was. ... But in the aftermath of World War II and the advent of the atomic age, Kinsey's explosive research was referred to as 'the K-Bomb.' When it blew away the covers, Americans suddenly knew more about what Mr. and Mrs. America were up to--and it turned out that Mr. America was sleeping with other Mr. Americas a lot more frequently than anybody knew."

Charles goes on to observe: "The book-banning craze raging across America is, in some ways, a continuation of the fight over Kinsey's 75-year-old claims about the varieties of sexual experience. About 40% of the titles condemned today by conservatives feature main characters who are LGBTQ+. There is a concerted effort to repress such representation on the grounds that it's fundamentally inappropriate or corrupting." Yet, as Kinsey wrote, "There is an abundance of evidence that most human sexual activities would become comprehensible to most individuals, if they could know the background of each other individual's behavior."

Alternatives to Amazon.com

For those of you on a budget, keep in mind that an excellent source of LGBTQ literature is the Montgomery County Public Library system, which often has multiple copies of titles we discuss. You don't have to be a resident of the county or state to borrow them; they're available free of charge of anyone in the DMV with a library card, via interlibrary loan. As a bonus, the more often LGBTQ titles are checked out, the stronger the case libraries can make for acquiring more. 🌈

If you prefer to own your books, ABE Books carries a wide selection of used titles at affordable prices. And many Amazon selections are available on Kindle, which tends to be significantly cheaper than print formats.

Good timing (for us, anyway)

Ted Coltman just shared the sad news that DC Noodles has closed after 13 years on U Street NW. That was one of our favorite restaurants for dinner following our meetings at the DC Center across the street, and I have many fond memories of their food and hospitality. So I guess it's fortuitous that we'd already decided to return to the Cleveland Park Library, our new (and old) home for first-Wednesday BookMen meetings. Lots of dining options in that neighborhood! 😋

A New Year, a "New Life"

Both the Washington Post and New York Times have given rave reviews to Tom Crewe's just published novel, The New Life. Set in Britain in the late 1890s, it's based on the story of real-life figures John Addington and Henry Ellis, who meet (as the title implies) through the New Life Society and "decide to collaborate on a book, grounded in Greek philosophy and arguing against homosexuality's status as a crime." The Post review is headlined "The spirit of E.M. Forster hangs over [it]," and the reviewer cites several of Crewe's nods to the latter's fiction to make that case. Since we're going to be discussing Forster's  Aspects of the Novel on Jan. 18, that connection further whets my curiosity about this new novel. Perhaps yours, as well?