Here are the books by and about Vito Russo that Philip Clark mentioned during Wednesday night's meeting.
Michael Schiavi's biography of Russo: Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo
Vito Russo's writings beyond The Celluloid Closet:
Out Spoken, Reel One:
Out Spoken, Reel Two:
Philip notes: "Sorry for the awful links from the awful Amazon, but they're the easiest ways to send info about these books. The two Out Spoken books are companions to an HBO documentary called "Vito."
Many thanks, Philip!
Sunday, February 8, 2026
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Some "Picnic" tidbits
A tip of the hat to Lee Levine, who advises that Turner Movie Classics will screen the movie version of William Inge's Picnic (the play we'll discuss via Zoom on Feb. 25) this Thursday, Feb. 5, at 8:30 p.m.
Lee, our movie maven, notes: "'Picnic' was nominated for six Oscars and won two. (Not for William Holden's chest, heh heh.) Having seen both the movie and play, I can attest that it depends upon the staging as to which medium stresses more the homoerotic elements of the material."
Lee also pointed me to the following 1992 commentary by actress Kim Stanley about the playwright: "Let me tell you something about Bill Inge. This is what I tell my students, most of whom arrive having decided that he's old and tired and out of style and dishonest. Inge is one of the most honest of playwrights--straight and simple in his style. This may make him seem less literary, less daunting, than some of his peers, but you cannot say that his plays are not honest. Are they fully honest in the presentation of his own autobiography? No. Bill could never be fully honest about his own sexuality, so I think a lot of people fault him for not writing an inverted character in his plays who could represent him, but I always point out that he DID write such characters in his plays, and the fringe witness that was Bill Inge is in those plays.
"You can knock Bill for his style, and you can knock him because the place from which he hailed wasn't a place that inspires your dreams, but the primary reason that people can't embrace Bill Inge or the primary reason that they chuckle and dismiss him is because he forces you to remember what physical attraction and physical love can and should do to you, and what the lack of this same chemical magic can and will do to you. We cannot go through this world alone, and the dreams and the fantasies will grow old and, like our prescriptions for drugs and alcohol, will have to be continually and dangerously raised in order for them to have any effect. We need other people--one wonderful other person--to make ourselves whole. That was his belief. That was his dream. That was what he never achieved.
"I cannot believe that this theme does not resonate within everyone, so I am always angry and amazed when Bill's plays are produced and there is this chorus of disbelief about the subject matter. Admit it: You lack the love or you lost the love or you destroyed the love. That's hard to do, but that's what you are confessing when you submit to the plays of Bill Inge."--Kim Stanley/Interview with James Grissom/1992
Lee, our movie maven, notes: "'Picnic' was nominated for six Oscars and won two. (Not for William Holden's chest, heh heh.) Having seen both the movie and play, I can attest that it depends upon the staging as to which medium stresses more the homoerotic elements of the material."
Lee also pointed me to the following 1992 commentary by actress Kim Stanley about the playwright: "Let me tell you something about Bill Inge. This is what I tell my students, most of whom arrive having decided that he's old and tired and out of style and dishonest. Inge is one of the most honest of playwrights--straight and simple in his style. This may make him seem less literary, less daunting, than some of his peers, but you cannot say that his plays are not honest. Are they fully honest in the presentation of his own autobiography? No. Bill could never be fully honest about his own sexuality, so I think a lot of people fault him for not writing an inverted character in his plays who could represent him, but I always point out that he DID write such characters in his plays, and the fringe witness that was Bill Inge is in those plays.
"You can knock Bill for his style, and you can knock him because the place from which he hailed wasn't a place that inspires your dreams, but the primary reason that people can't embrace Bill Inge or the primary reason that they chuckle and dismiss him is because he forces you to remember what physical attraction and physical love can and should do to you, and what the lack of this same chemical magic can and will do to you. We cannot go through this world alone, and the dreams and the fantasies will grow old and, like our prescriptions for drugs and alcohol, will have to be continually and dangerously raised in order for them to have any effect. We need other people--one wonderful other person--to make ourselves whole. That was his belief. That was his dream. That was what he never achieved.
"I cannot believe that this theme does not resonate within everyone, so I am always angry and amazed when Bill's plays are produced and there is this chorus of disbelief about the subject matter. Admit it: You lack the love or you lost the love or you destroyed the love. That's hard to do, but that's what you are confessing when you submit to the plays of Bill Inge."--Kim Stanley/Interview with James Grissom/1992
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
The Celluloid Closet online
Good news, friends: Robert Muir found a PDF copy of our next selection online: The-Celluloid-Closet.pdf. (Coincidentally, it’s the same edition I own.) Bless you, Robert!
Monday, January 26, 2026
LGBTQ+ Lit at home...
Several BookMen (Grant Thompson, Brian Doyle, Stuart Sotsky, Ted Coltman and moi) had the pleasure of attending Thomas Mallon's appearance at the Cosmos Club last Tuesday to promote his new memoir, The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994.
You may recall that last fall, I nominated the book for our current reading list. It got some votes, but didn't quite make the cut.
I nominated it largely on the strength of his most famous novel, Fellow Travelers, which we discussed back in 2008. (It was later adapted into an opera and a Paramount limited TV series, both quite enjoyable in different ways.) Now that I actually have the book in hand (which the author kindly autographed for me after the luncheon), and have read the opening section (1983), however, I think we dodged a bullet.
That's not because the book is dull or flawed in any way; Mallon is a fine writer, and I have every intention of finishing it. Rather, I think it would have been difficult to conduct a satisfying discussion of a succession of diary entries--something I probably should have anticipated when deciding whether to nominate it. Mea culpa.
You may recall that last fall, I nominated the book for our current reading list. It got some votes, but didn't quite make the cut.
I nominated it largely on the strength of his most famous novel, Fellow Travelers, which we discussed back in 2008. (It was later adapted into an opera and a Paramount limited TV series, both quite enjoyable in different ways.) Now that I actually have the book in hand (which the author kindly autographed for me after the luncheon), and have read the opening section (1983), however, I think we dodged a bullet.
That's not because the book is dull or flawed in any way; Mallon is a fine writer, and I have every intention of finishing it. Rather, I think it would have been difficult to conduct a satisfying discussion of a succession of diary entries--something I probably should have anticipated when deciding whether to nominate it. Mea culpa.
...and Down Under
As most of you know, I was in Sydney, Australia, earlier this month. Wherever there is an LGBTQ bookstore in a city I’m visiting, I try to patronize it, but my timing was off in this case, alas. After 43 years, The Bookshop Darlinghurst, Sydney’s oldest gay bookstore, closed its shop last month, though it still operates online.
Fortunately, I found another option: Gleebooks, which doesn’t only purvey LGBTQ literature, but is primarily known for that. Like Kramerbooks here in D.C., it has a restaurant, Cafe Sappho, but that was still closed for the holidays despite the website’s assurance that it was open.
After perusing the shelves, I selected Typewriter Music, a 2007 poetry anthology by David Malouf. Malouf is one of the few names I recognized, though I can’t remember where I’ve read his “Seven Last Words of the Emperor Hadrian,” which is included in this collection. (Quite possibly, it was in one of the anthologies we've read over the years. If any of you recall, please refresh my memory.)
Comprised of short poems, the slender volume seemed like a good choice for the long trip home, and it was.
Fortunately, I found another option: Gleebooks, which doesn’t only purvey LGBTQ literature, but is primarily known for that. Like Kramerbooks here in D.C., it has a restaurant, Cafe Sappho, but that was still closed for the holidays despite the website’s assurance that it was open.
After perusing the shelves, I selected Typewriter Music, a 2007 poetry anthology by David Malouf. Malouf is one of the few names I recognized, though I can’t remember where I’ve read his “Seven Last Words of the Emperor Hadrian,” which is included in this collection. (Quite possibly, it was in one of the anthologies we've read over the years. If any of you recall, please refresh my memory.)
Comprised of short poems, the slender volume seemed like a good choice for the long trip home, and it was.
Monday, January 19, 2026
Hitching to Bowie
Lee Levine offers the following comment on "Betrayed by David Bowie," one of the short stories by Lev Raphael we'll be discussing this Wednesday.
"Of this set of short stories, my favorite is 'Betrayed by David Bowie.' Here's a gay Jewish guy bonding with another gay Jewish guy in the Seventies over David Bowie's music.
Well, my straight Jewish high school classmate, a Howard Lee like myself, published a paperback novel last summer called Hitching to Bowie: A 70's Road Trip Tale of Music, Miles and Discovery. In the book the author Howard Lee Kramer (then a college student) bonds with his identical twin brother (also straight) over Bowie's music. HL had hitched to the concert and got a lift from, among numerous types, a nascent gay activist who explains the budding gay rights movement to his straight passenger who admits to coming away enlightened.
I think the writings, the short story and the later novel, can be read as corollaries. The book does seem to supplement much of Lev Raphael's tale.
By coincidence, I bumped into this classmate just this afternoon in the cafe at Politics and Prose. We hadn't seen each other since before Covid, and we caught up. He tried to sell me a copy of the book, which the attached picture will prove I had previously purchased."
"Of this set of short stories, my favorite is 'Betrayed by David Bowie.' Here's a gay Jewish guy bonding with another gay Jewish guy in the Seventies over David Bowie's music.
Well, my straight Jewish high school classmate, a Howard Lee like myself, published a paperback novel last summer called Hitching to Bowie: A 70's Road Trip Tale of Music, Miles and Discovery. In the book the author Howard Lee Kramer (then a college student) bonds with his identical twin brother (also straight) over Bowie's music. HL had hitched to the concert and got a lift from, among numerous types, a nascent gay activist who explains the budding gay rights movement to his straight passenger who admits to coming away enlightened.
I think the writings, the short story and the later novel, can be read as corollaries. The book does seem to supplement much of Lev Raphael's tale.
By coincidence, I bumped into this classmate just this afternoon in the cafe at Politics and Prose. We hadn't seen each other since before Covid, and we caught up. He tried to sell me a copy of the book, which the attached picture will prove I had previously purchased."
Thursday, January 1, 2026
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