Since I'm tooting my own horn here, I thought some of you might like to see the list of "must-reads" I presented. As you'll see, every selection comes from the list of 300+ books (which Tim Walton regularly updates on the blog) we have discussed over two decades (our 20th anniversary will be in May), with just two exceptions:
I went with Armistead Maupin's original Tales of the City series (which I have nominated a couple of times for our list with no success) instead of either of his later books which we have read. And I chose Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On (which we have not read, for some unaccountable reason) instead of The Mayor of Castro Street (which we have).
During my presentation, I sang the praises of Mark Merlis' An Arrow's Flight, still one of the finest novels I've ever read.
Just for the record, I made clear that this is my personal list, and does not necessarily reflect the position of anyone in Bookmen DC. But I think it is both fairly representative of what we read and a good sampling of LGBTQ literature.
Feedback welcome!
MUST-READS IN LGBTQ LITERATURE
Compiled by Steven Alan Honley (March 2019)
Fiction
James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
Michael Cunningham, The Hours
E.M. Forster, Maurice
Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
Christopher Isherwood, Berlin Diaries
Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City
Mark Merlis, An Arrow's Flight
Mary Renault, The Persian Boy
Colm Tóibín, The Master
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Non-Fiction
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
John D'Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Sturggle
David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare
John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
Deb Price, Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court
Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On
Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Poetry
C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems
Philip Clark (ed.), Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS
Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Plays
Tony Kushner, Angels in America
Tarell Alvin McCraney, Choir Boy
Moisés Kaufman, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Useful Reference Works
Christopher Bram, Eminent Outlaws: Gay Writers Who Changed America
Richard Canning, Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read
Tom Cardmone, The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered
Gregory Woods, A Hiostory of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition
3 comments:
Any such list would be inauthentic if not somewhat idiosyncratic. Even so, and with all quibbling—and even serious objection—aside, I deprecate the choice of The Persian Boy (the weakest of the Persian trilogy) in place of The Charioteer.
Absolutely right, Tim. As I thought I made clear, my list was completely idiosyncratic, intended to give a broad overview of some seminal (so to speak) LGBTQ works, as well as some undeservedly obscure ones, in each category.
I bow to your preference for "The Charioteer" over "The Persian Boy." To be blunt, I'm not a big fan of that whole sandals and swords oeuvre, but I felt it important to include at least one example of it.
Cheers, Steve
As for her Ancient Greece novels (of which of course The Charioteer is not one) the outstanding work, unsurprisingly, is her first: The Last of the Wine (1956). The Persian Boy (1972) was her first post-Stonewall novel and so received huge gay press. People who attended our 2007 meeting had to admit that their initial enthusiasm for discussing the work depended on their thirty-five year old remembered glow.
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