Band of Thebes

Joseph Olshan's The Conversion

Fans of Joseph Olshan's 1994 novel Nightswimmer will be glad to know his eighth book has just been published by St. Martin's. The Conversion is narrated by Russell Todaro, a young American translator visiting Paris with his much older boyfriend, Ed Cannon, a renowned poet who dies suddenly, hours after they are attacked in their apartment. While recuperating in a shabby chic villa in Tuscany, Russell realizes people are using him only to get to his boyfriend's long gestating manuscript, now missing. With his expatriates in Europe, literary intrigues, manipulative gentility, and epigraph from "The Lesson of the Master," Olshan seems to be aiming for Henry James territory. That sounds like a stretch; I haven't read it, but I know Henry James would sooner eat his cell phone than name a character whose poems are part of the literary canon Ed Cannon. Quibbles aside, the first mentions in PW and Vogue have been very good and The Conversion was chosen as a BookSense Pick for May.

Inside Madonna's New York Apartment

Because, apparently, there's more to life than great books and little movies, in honor of today's release of HARD CANDY, not buying, you're invited to a special look inside Madonna's Central Park West apartment. Twelve photos. Did you guess she would have three paintings by Tamara de Lempicka, one each by Dali, Léger, Picasso, Maxfield Parrish, a boxer by Claggett Wilson in the sound-proof gym; and photographs by George Platt Lynes, Laure Albin-Guillot, and André Kertész? Madonna says, "I get strength from my art--all the paintings I own are powerful." Her gay brother Christopher, "self taught," designed the Art Deco interiors. Hard to imagine where Guy Ritchie hangs out, other than the kitchen. And London. Look here.

Today and Tonight in Books

ON SALE TODAY:

You know from the media blitz that Augusten Burroughs' new memoir, A Wolf at the Table, is about his father. You also know it will be gay, creepy, funny, perhaps hard to believe, and totally riveting. Hours old, it is already an Amazon bestseller.

A top ten selection on many year end lists including the NYT and winner of the IMPAC prize, Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses is released in paperback today. It was my favorite novel of 2007 and although there's nothing gay in it, readers may identify with the summer friendship between two young teens. It is narrated by one of them fifty years later, living alone in rural Norway. A small masterpiece.

Louise Erdrich's thirteenth novel, The Plague of Doves, is published today, and the NYT's very, very exacting Michiko Kakutani loved it, saying, "She has written what is arguably her most ambitious — and in many ways, her most deeply affecting — work yet." In some of her previous novels Erdrich has included gay characters, although I intentionally know nothing about this one. I'm going to hear her read tomorrow night; more Thursday.

AUTHORS TONIGHT:

Augusten Burroughs at Union Square B&N 7:00. If you're going, go early.

Peter Cameron and Sherman Alexie at the Strand, 7:00 - 8:30.

Building up to the Lammy awards ceremony May 29, the Lambda Literary Foundation is sponsoring readings by finalists in seven cities. (Philadelphia was last week.) This is a tremendous idea, and if you can attend, please do so.

NYC, Tuesday, April 29
6 pm, free, LGBT Center, 208 West 13th Street
Featuring Jennifer Baumgardner, Cris Beam, Jennifer Camper, James Canon, Roberto Ferrari, Kenny Fries, Sharon Marcus, Perry Moore, Michael Quadland, Robin Reardon, Michael Rowe, Sarah Schulman, Kevin Sessums, Aiobheann Sweeney, and others.

SAN FRANCISCO, Tuesday, April 29
5 pm, free, Hormel Center, SF Public Library, 100 Larkin St.
Featuring Rhiannon Argo, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Michael Thomas Ford, Ali Liebegott, Mattilda, Toni Mirosevich, Kemble Scott, Ursula Steck, Steve Susoyev & George Birimisa, Jess Wells, among others.

And NEXT WEEK:

SEATTLE, Tuesday, May 6
7:00 pm, Richard Hugo House,1634 11th Avenue, Seattle
Featuring Nicola Griffith and Corrina Wycoff. Emceed by Ruby Kane.

CHICAGO, Tuesday, May 6
7:30 pm, Free, Gerber-Hart Library, 1127 W. Granville Avenue
Featuring Kevin Barnhurst, Bertram Cohler, Michael S. Sherry, Jacqueline Taylor.

LOS ANGELES, Thursday, May 8
7:30 pm, Free, Different Light Bookstore, 8853 Santa Monica Blvd
Featuring Victor Bumbalo, Kittredge Cherry, Myriam Gurba, Jeff Hobbs, Frederick Smith, James St. James, and others.

NEW ORLEANS, Saturday, May 10
Saints & Sinners Writers Festival -- details at www.sasfest.org.
Featuring Anthony Bidulka, Vincent Diamond, Mark Doty, Greg Herren, Marianne K. Martin, Robert Taylor, Michelle Tea.

Publishing Triangle Award Winners

(l to r: Rowe, Malcolm, Cameron, Liebegott, Forrest)

The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Joan Larkin, My Body (Hanging Loose Press)
Eileen Myles, Sorry, Tree (Wave Books)
Jennifer Perrine, The Body Is No Machine (New Issues)

The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Steve Fellner, Blind Date with Cavafy (Marsh Hawk Press) [tie]
Daniel Hall, Under Sleep (The University of Chicago Press) [tie]
Henri Cole, Blackbird and Wolf (Farrar Straus Giroux)

The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Myriam Gurba, Dahlia Season (Manic D Press) 
Bob Smith, Selfish and Perverse (Carroll & Graf)
James Cañón, Tales from the Town of Widows (Harper Perennial)

The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Janet Malcolm, Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (Yale University Press)
Amy Hoffman, An Army of Ex-Lovers (University of Massachusetts Press)
Sharon Marcus, Between Women (Princeton University Press)

The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Michael Rowe, Other Men's Sons (Cormorant Books)
Martin Duberman, The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (Alfred A. Knopf)
Michael S. Sherry, Gay Artists in Modern American Culture (UNC Press)

The Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction
Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (FSG)
Ali Liebegott, The IHOP Papers (Carroll & Graf)
André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Felicia Luna Lemus, Like Son (Akashic Books)
Brian Malloy, Brendan Wolf (St. Martin's Press)
Armistead Maupin, Michael Tolliver Lives (HarperCollins)
Sarah Schulman, The Child (Carroll & Graf)

The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement
Katherine V. Forrest

The Publishing Triangle Leadership Award
Carol Seajay
Richard Labonte

Last night's Publishing Triangle awards ceremony started with Kate Clinton telling jokes about recent politics, a state so dire she's been spending more time with novels: "I read Mrs. Dalloway. It was like reading The Hours in the original." The poetry winners present, Joan Larkin and Daniel Hall, were eloquent and brief. A woman who described herself as "so not Myriam Gurba" read her thank yous for her, and Ali Liebegott was moving as she cried, unable to speak, then recovered to express her deep gratitude and hint at difficult circumstances. She is clearly a writer to watch, having won a Lammy for her previous novel, The Beautifully Worthless, written in verse, and being nominated for another Lammy for this book. Now that Carroll & Graf has been shut down, a major publisher needs to sign Liebegott.

Peter Cameron's winning novel Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is also nominated for a Lammy, and, very seriously now, you must read it. Reviews were stupendous and you have no excuse: It's brief, inexpensive, funny, endearing, wise. Buy it for friends.. They'll thank you.

Janet Malcolm was very elegant accepting her award for Two Lives, and Michael Rowe claimed to be "much too Canadian" to stay cool about his win, which may have been the evening's surprise, beating Michael Sherry's widely praised Gay Artists in Modern American Culture and Martin Duberman's impressive The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein from Knopf.


Accepting her leadership award, Carol Seajay was the only person to criticize mainstream publishing outright, insisting they need to spend more money marketing to lgbt readers now that many gay newspapers and bookstores have gone out of business and no longer promote their books for them. Watch for her gay books blog coming soon. Richard Labonte told a great story about growing up in remote, northern Canada and his life changing discovery, in the town's small library, of classic gay novels discarded by the "bachelor officers" of the nearby military base. Ending the night, Katherine V. Forrest spoke about her career and the vital importance of fiction, especially work by Jane Rule, John Rechy, Andrew Holleran, John Preston, and Paul Monette. She quoted Monette as saying, "Gay men and lesbians belong in each other's lives and in each other's books." She gave Sarah Schulman (also nominated for a Lammy for her novel The Child)  a special shout out, to heavy applause. And she quoted another literary friend who said of gay people, "Ours are the only untold stories."
 

Thirty Years of Telling Women's Stories Truthfully

Carmen Callil founded the Virago Press in London in the mid-1970s and began publishing Virago Modern Classics in 1978. To commemorate that anniversary, she's written a rousing essay in the Guardian packed with reminders about what life was like in the 60s and 70s.

I remember my ambitions clearly. I started Virago to break a silence, to make women's voices heard, to tell women's stories, my story and theirs. How often I remember sitting at dinner tables in the 1960s, the men talking to each other about serious matters, the women sitting quietly like decorated lumps of sugar. I remember one such occasion when I raised my fist, banged the table and shouted: "I have views on Bangladesh too!"

Whether or not gay people were ever relegated to being "decorated lumps of sugar," we definitely know the importance of getting our stories told. It's fascinating/depressing how people assumed to be pro-woman was to be anti-male, and how a women-centric business brought out authors' fears of being thought lesbians.

The Classics became a sort of cultural game, one writer connected to another as in snakes and ladders. Snakes were few, though I became very tired of writers I was about to republish who would stare at me pointedly and say "I like men you know"

Read the essay here, and say a prayer of gratitude for Carmen Callil, who turns seventy this year.

Scary? Awesome? NYT Magazine on Young Gay Newlyweds

As you saw yesterday, Benoit Denizet-Lewis wrote an eight thousand word cover story on young gay couples who got married in Massachusetts. Much of the article is great, capturing universal human foibles  and some wry details specific to two grooms. At the end of their reception, Jason and Paul, the couple above, put on contrasting t-shirts: one's said "I Am the Wife" on the front and "I Am the Husband" on the back; the other's had the same messages with the placement reversed. Some of younger couples' concerns, while understandable, don't make interesting reading, but what's truly great and I hope lasting about the article is that it gives no voice to haters. None of the usual right-wing phonies are given any space to repeat their lies about gay marriage.
    However, other choices the writer made about who to exclude are disgraceful: No lesbians (even though twice as many young lesbians as young gay men have been married in Massachusetts), no blacks, Latinos, Asians, nor anyone of color. This unprecedented new world of young men hot to get permanently, publicly domestic with other young men makes the brand new future look a lot like the 1950s. Denizet-Lewis' point that lgbt couples who legalize their relationships "are overwhelmingly European American," isn't much of a reason to deny queer readers of color the right to see themselves represented, or indeed the right of all of us to affirm the richness and variety of our community. If you have time, you might consider a quick letter to the editor. The wingnuts are sure to write.

Adam Mars Jones' PILCROW

After a fifteen year wait, the sublime Adam Mars Jones has just published in the U.K. his second novel, Pilcrow, about a disabled gay boy named John Cromer coming of age in the 1950s. It is said to be wonderfully observed and short on plot, despite being 544 pages and the first of a trilogy. If you think it sounds like a longer version of Denton Welch, you're in good company; that's what James Wood said in his excellent LRB review. Read it here, for quotes and observations like this:

Look at the delighted way John describes his grandmother making scrambled eggs: ‘Nothing seemed to happen, and it kept on not happening for a very long time . . . Her activity seemed designed in fact to protect the contents of the pan from any changes that might be brought about by cooking.’ This is a funny description of watching eggs not cook, and an even funnier description of watching a novel not cook.

Because Cromer is sixteen and away at school by the end of the novel, it includes a lot of attempts at sex with his willing but vexingly disabled classmates. Their mutual disasters with wheelchairs and polio leg braces seem not much different from any other young teen's eager, ill-timed fumblings.

In an ideal world, someone would ask Welch's greatest champion Peter Cameron to review it. More to the point, if the world were even halfway fair, Pilcrow would have a U.S. publisher, but it appears not to. (Knopf published his stories and first novel in the early 90s, but they seem to have passed on Pilcrow. Unforgivable.) For now, top shelf literary readers here will need to import it from the likes of Amazon.co.uk.

The Telegraph offers a short interview with Mars Jones. The bits about the book are a little predictable, not so the author's personal details.

April 25: Day of Silence Meets with Same

Today is the twelfth annual Day of Silence, sponsored by GLSEN, to increase awareness about antigay name calling and bullying. This year's Day of Silence also commemorates Lawrence King, the free spirited, southern California 8th grader killed by a younger classmate in February. A record 7,300 middle and high schools nationwide are expected to participate, which would seem to make this a significant event, yet among the east coast newspapers not covering Day of Silence today are: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and the Boston Globe. The Miami Herald's gay columnist, Steve Rothaus, posted several GLSEN press releases on his blog.

Two Essential Olives

Last Friday on the streets of TriBeCa, Andy Garcia reminded me how really great literature seamlessly becomes part of your life. When I saw him shooting a movie, I didn't think, Oh, that damned Terry Benedict! (I wonder if Danny and Rusty are around?). Truthfully, I promise you, I thought, Oh, there's Andy Garcia from that story by Manuel Muñoz. I couldn't remember the superb story's title, "The Comeuppance of Lupe Rivera," because I'm lame and because the book's enormous power comes from Muñoz's evocation of an entire community through all ten interconnected stories more than the perfection of any single, standout tale. His collection, The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, most calls to mind Bobbie Ann Mason's debut, which is just about the highest praise possible, although she finds more humor in her views of working class whites in Paducah, Kentucky than Muñoz does in his explorations of working class Mexican Americans outside of Fresno. For the record, Andy Garcia isn't in the story himself, it's that Lupe's new boyfriend looks like him, according to the adoring young man across the street who has grown up in awe of Lupe's strength and independence and success with good looking men.   

That nine of the ten stories here are about gay men (sometimes seen only through a mother's or sister's point of view) adds another challenge to getting Muñoz the recognition he deserves. Earlier publishers told him Latino readers would reject it for being gay (wrong, it turns out), though his current publisher Algonquin has strenuously hidden any mention of gay content from the cover and copy; and, worse, gay bookstores have not carried the book either. So it's all the more heartening that the judges of the Frank O'Connor Story Prize, the world's richest award for short fiction at 35,000 Euros, chose Munoz as a finalist while passing over Alice Munro and William Trevor. Yes, he's that good. No, he didn't win. Miranda July did. He is also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, to be announced next month. Buy and read his remarkable book.

Last month, the terrific writer Elizabeth Strout published her third book, Olive Kitteridge. Its thirteen stories also form a portrait of a small town, in a more affluent, all white Maine, though half of them are about Olive specifically and in the other half she appears with varying degrees of prominence. Odd, but it works. Be warned, Olive can be unlikable, pushing New England flintiness too far, though even at her worst, Strout keeps our sympathy for her protagonist's frustration and rage. One gay man appears in the story about a boozy piano singer, and, later in life, a widowed Olive shouts at her aging suitor to love his lesbian daughter and support gay marriage. Many readers revere Strout for her first two novels, Amy & Isbabelle and Abide with Me. On Sunday, The New York Times Book Review's critic said this was her best book. Get it.

Verbatim

Doctor: "Oh, and your toes may turn purple. Don't worry."
Me: "Orange and purple. Together. On me. And I'm not supposed to 'worry'?"

LGBT Online Museum Sort of Launches

Later this year, June if all goes as planned, the UK-based Proud Heritage online museum could be rather awesome. They say they "launched" two days ago, but what is a museum without any galleries? They do have a spiffy, Google Earth lgbt London walking tour, and they wisely want lots of feedback on their ideas for upcoming exhibits. The main reason why the site warrants a mention now is that they are already collecting memories from the likes of you. Start thinking.

Born April 22: John Waters

He's a visionary, he's unique, and his bizarro, vulgar yet sweet movies are part of the permanent collection at MoMA, so of course you think of John Waters as a filmmaker. But he's more: He has written three books, published three volumes of photographs, and his artwork has been shown in many museums and galleries internationally. As for the movies, he has made sixteen, with his best work clustered from 1972 to 1988: Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Polyester, and Hairspray, starring the incomparable Divine who was his special ally since childhood. Johnny Depp fans might insist on including 1990's Cry Baby, but the four movies since then seem like lesser efforts, or at least they are more mainstream. Hope rebounds with next feature, which, I swear, is a children's movie called Fruitcake.

Marc Acito's Guest Blog, New Novel

The many readers who loved Marc Acito's debut comic novel How I Paid for College will want to check out his guest blog this week on Powells' website. Today he writes about his abiding admiration for Jacqueline Susann's gargantuan self promotion, though not her books. Of course, the Powells gig is by way of promoting his new novel, Attack of the Theater People!  which goes on sale Tuesday. Apparently it's a sequel, with Edward Zanni and his crew stepping up from high school musicals to the big time of petty jobs in Manhattan. Greasing the laugh meter, it's set in the 1980s. He lists his big, coastal book tour dates here, with Los Angeles on May 7 and New York on May 12.

Isn't That Queer? Another Look at "Dictation"

When, a week ago tonight, I asked Cynthia Ozick about "any lesbian or gay characters" in her work, I specifically put lesbian first, as I always try to do, but she must have not heard it. How else to explain her extremely generous help about gay characters, and her not mentioning that the protagonist of the title story of her new book, Theodora Bosanquet, who types for Henry James, is described by a fictional Virginia Stephen [soon to be Woolf] as, "A sapphist, I wager." Virginia more than wagers; she makes out with her! Theodora has previously caressed and kissed, deeply and romantically, Joseph Conrad's secretary Lilian Hallowes, who submits to the affections uncomfortably, then calls them off.

"Teddie," she said faintly, and let Theodora kiss her again in her strange new way. She did not really like this--she did not like it at all--but she had a secret trick, a hidden lever at the back of her brain that she could raise or lower, nearly at will, whenever Theodora kissed her with that wary slow incautious kiss, as though unlatching a forbidden room.

Later

Soon enough, Theodora had no further desire for Lilian's clandestine lips. She had Miss Stephen's. And when Miss Stephen became, of all things, engaged to a penniless Jew, she had them still.

And there's more, with Virginia Woolf intimately calling her "Teddie" and Theodora calling her "Ginny." The story is very positive, matter of fact in its sexualities, and ultimately sides with Theodora over the straight and narrow Lilian.

In tone, Ozick's Dictation is closer to Edmund White's Hotel de Dream about Stephen Crane, including two crucial scenes with a closeted James, than Colm Tóibín's richer, fuller novel of a deeply repressed James, The Master. And the James fixation lives on. My cherished friend and publishing star, Liz Maguire, who died in 2006, made "Harry" a central character in her novel about Constance Woolson, The Open Door, which will finally be published on June 10. Watch for it.

Born April 21: John Cameron Mitchell, Steve Nesselroth

Today the whirling mass of originality known as John Cameron Mitchell turns forty-five. He's been exceptional at least since eleven, when he made his stage debut as the Virgin Mary. Later, his New York roles included Huck Finn (Big River), Dickon (The Secret Garden), and The Young Thing (Hello Again). Then came Hedwig. Born of childhood memories and the queer rock energy of Squeezebox, Hedwig and the Angry Inch premiered on February 14, 1998 with music and lyrics by Stephen Trask and directed by Peter Askin. It won multiple awards, played for two years before the original team took it to Boston, Los Angeles, and London. Since then Hedwig has been mounted hundreds of times throughout the world, spawning eight different recordings (most recently by the Peruvian, Korean, and Australian casts) and two tribute albums. Mitchell directed the film version himself, then made Shortbus, which is constantly referred to as his authentic sex movie but is just as much his valentine to alt New York. It premiered at Cannes in 2006, was released in twenty-five countries, winning several festival awards, and grossed just under two million dollars in the U.S. He has directed at least two music videos: The Scissor Sisters' "Filthy/Gorgeous" which proved too hot for MTV, and the simple, adorable "First Day of my Life" by Bright Eyes.

Speaking of capturing the full magic of New York, no one embodies  it more than Steve Nesselroth, long reigning champion as the best and most discerning reader in the East Village and beyond.

        I Dream'd in a Dream (1855)

I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth,
I dream'd that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.

Saturday Afternoon in the Emergency Room

Never mind about the fracture, finally here's scientific proof that I have two left feet! Apologies to all who suffered through my "dancing" before this important medical discovery. Also, if you ever do have to visit an emergency room in Manhattan, I highly recommend doing so during a Papal visit hours before Passover begins. The place was empty, the staff was relaxed and extremely helpful, especially the magical realist Dr. Marquez.

So yes, I'm on crutches again. The last time was Freshman Days of college when, lacking any discernible personality or looks, I stuck in my new classmates' minds as The Boy On Crutches. My foot healed; I began walking around; no one knew me.

Movie Roundup: Nim, Counterfeiters, Band, Blindsight

A word of warning to the Jodie Foster fans who haven't yet gotten around to seeing her new movie Nim's Island: Strong, Rope-Swinging Jodie appears on the island for the final four minutes. During the ninety-two minutes before that, the story concentrates on the beach life of Nim (Abigail Breslin) and her scientist dad (Gerard Butler) who gets lost at sea, then the movie crosscuts with Jodie as a reclusive adventure novelist given to panic attacks and unable to leave her apartment in San Francisco. Her many fears and phobias are exaggerated for laughs because this is a kids' movie, but it may or may not make Jodie fans uncomfortable to see her hamming up being weak, helpless, and screaming at the sight of a spider, while her male fictional alter ego is a brave hardass who gets to wear knock-off Indiana Jones costumes even when it's not Halloween in the Castro. Also, she does a lot of product placement for Progresso Soup and Purell hand sanitizer. On the plus side, Nim is a fairly awesome tomboy/science nerd who swims with dolphins.

If you can remember back to February, you know the The Counterfeiters won the Oscar for best foreign language film. It's well done, well acted, and effectively told, aiming for greatness and just missing the mark. Public intellectuals can debate whether or not there's something inappropriate about a happy ending Holocaust movie that shows well fed, relatively well dressed, marginally well housed prisoners -- because the Nazis needed them in good form to counterfeit pounds and dollars, based on a true story -- as if studio executives knew audiences wouldn't pay to see skeletal victims tortured by hunger, cold, and labor. A gay man is included in a Wiemar  bar scene, but the camera never fully shows any prisoner with a pink triangle. (It's possible that one pink triangle appears fleetingly, for a nanosecond in a busy scene, but it's much too fast to know, and frankly it's not enough.)

Enough complaining. If it's still in your area, make sure to see the wonderful, wonderful feature The Band's Visit, about eight musical Egyptian policemen stranded for one day and night in the wrong town in Israel. And, definitely, no matter what, when it comes to your favorite art house, go to the documentary Blindsight, about six blind Tibetan teenagers climbing a mountain in the shadow of Everest with sighted guides, their hero, Erik Weihenmayer (the first blind person to climb the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each continent), and their teacher, Sabriye Tenberken. She went blind at twelve in her native Germany, moved to Tibet, invented braille for the Tibetan language and founded the country's first school for the blind by the time she was twenty-six. As the climb progresses into more demanding terrain, some of the kids clearly won't be able to make it to the 23,000 foot summit, and the adults split into opposing views on what to do. Of the 396 films shown at the Berlinale in 2007, Blindsight was voted the audience favorite. Please watch the trailer.

Stephen McCauley's Author Updates

Please, do yourself a favor and regularly check Stephen McCauley's website for what he calls "Author Updates" (which others might call an online diary, or even a blog). Because he only posts when he has something intelligent and funny to say, it's always a delight. Read it here, and enjoy the sample below:

A. has finally come out to his wife, with predictably disastrous results. X., with whom he had been having an affair, so freaked out from feeling responsible for the marital mess, called off affair with A. Now A. left with prospects of nothing but random hook-ups and a grim, lonely life in a condo in Waltham.

B. in love with man she met in a Starbucks. Felt compelled to report news to husband BEFORE SLEEPING WITH NEW MAN. Starbucks seems to be focus of husband’s ire. (Have suspicion that B. actually met new guy on Craigslist, but keeping mouth shut on that.) Now more difficult for B. to actually sleep with new man. Warned her about this, but she never takes advice.

C. – 52 years old – fending off multiple offers from assorted 20-somethings looking for “daddy.” (Looking-for-daddy phenomenon in gay community mystifying, perhaps owing to own complicated feelings about father.) C. really wants age-appropriate boyfriend, but impossible to find at 52, especially in Boston, rife with colleges. Feels he must “settle” for a 23-year-old. Had to let his hair go back to gray in order to salvage sex life.

Obviously, you need to read all the books, starting with True Enough, then The Object of My Affection. Once you're hooked, read the other four novels in whichever order you like.

Colm Tóibín on Hart Crane

The reading world's gratitude to Colm Tóibín will never end. Now he offers an excellent refresher on Hart Crane and the importance of his poetry in a 5,000 word essay reviewing the Library of America's new 849 page volume of Crane's work and selected letters. Tóibín covers the whole sweep of Crane's abbreviated life, including his fraught relationship with his parents, his wanderlust, and his struggles to finance and finish his masterpiece "The Bridge." Throughout the essay, Tóibín naturally folds in the gay details of Crane's life, from his first published poem, at 17, about Oscar Wilde's trial to his three-year love affair with a merchant marine named Emil Opffer. The essay is called "A Great American Visionary," which gives you some sense of why you need to read it. A week from Saturday is the 76th anniversary of Crane's suicide at 32. You'll recall Tennessee Williams was thwarted in his wish to have his ashes scattered in the Gulf of Mexico where Crane jumped overboard.

Born April 17: Thornton Wilder

Redux.

Cynthia Ozick on Dictation

Tomorrow, literary powerhouse Cynthia Ozick turns eighty but you wouldn't know it from the thoughtful fire of her remarks Monday night. She called the label "woman writer" stupid, foolish, confining, nonsensical, and anti-feminist. She politely scoffed at the notion that she was a public intellectual. When asked if there was one overriding emotion that drove her work -- love, motherhood, envy, etc. -- she said all of the above, repeated the list, and threw in "hatred" twice. She hasn't been to any theater since 1996 and hasn't gone out to a movie since 1997. Several individual women wanted to be photographed with her, and she obliged each of them with a smile. During the long wait to get books signed, many of us agreed our favorite of hers is The Puttermesser Papers. The new book, Dictation, is a collection of four stories, which sounds small, but the ideas are big and intriguing: The title story is about the chance acquaintance between the secretaries to Joseph Conrad and Henry James. As she signed books for me, I asked if she had ever included a lesbian or gay character in her fiction and without pausing she said, Yes, in my first novel. A gay man, he's just a minor character, but yes. She said that novel, Trust [1966], is the best thing she's ever written but she has yet to find someone who can prove to her they've read it to the end. I said, The best? She said, Absolutely. At her asking, I explained why I wanted to know about her gay characters and she said, "Do they have to say they're gay?" I said no, and she immediately launched into helping me, as if my problems were hers, to the increasing alarm of the people behind. She said, "Ansell in E.M. Forster's The Longest Journey! He's Jewish, a draper's son, obviously gay, it's a wonderful novel, even if it lacks the structure of the later work." The event was a terrific welcome back to New York.

Born April 15: Leonardo Da Vinci

He was denied a university education and a white collar profession because of his low birth out of wedlock, yet he still became the world's greatest polymath, mastering anatomy, architecture, botany, engineering, mathematics, science, sculpture, sketching, and, of course, painting. Two defining moments in his life came early, ten years apart: At fourteen he was apprenticed to Andrea del Verrochio, an artist tight with the Medici, and at twenty-four he was arrested for sodomy. After the charges were dismissed on a technicality, Leonardo became increasingly secretive about his personal life, but there is no question among his biographers that he was gay. For thirty years he was involved with a scapegrace named Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, known as Salai, and for thirteen years, until his death, he had a relationship with Count Francesco Melzi, whom he met at fifteen. Leonardo painted The Last Supper when he was forty-three to forty-six and the Mona Lisa about ten years later. His notebooks covered five thousand pages and foretold inventions or discoveries to come centuries later: bicycles, calculators, military tanks, helicopters, hang gliders, the double hull, solar power, and plate tectonics. When he died at sixty-seven in May 1519, Leonardo bequeathed the Mona Lisa to Salai, who was killed in duel or murdered in 1525. Just curious: Does Dan Brown's novel acknowledge that Leonardo was gay or mention Salai in any way? It would be great if those hundred million readers had gotten some accurate gay history.

Postcard from Vieques

Click to enlarge.


Pristine, a little rustic, friendly. We met gay guys from San Diego and lesbians from Maine and everyone praised Vieques. The beaches are mostly empty, and the water is exceptionally clear. Mosquito Bay has the world's highest concentration of bioluminescence; at night the blue green glow is dazzling. (Plan your trip around a new moon; avoid the full moon.) The open hillsides are dotted with egrets and wild horses. The  food is very, very good especially at El Quenepo in Esperanza.  The 75-minute ferry ride from mainland Puerto Rico costs $2. Go.

On Vacation

Band of Thebes will be even briefer than usual through Monday.

(Kayaking in Vieques to celebrate our fifth anniversary. Yay gay relationships. Quick stopover in spiffy Old San Juan, which is painted in stupefying colors. Our hotel, too, is a marvel. Built in 1695, it is filled with dark wood ceiling beams and gigantic doors, marble tiles, balconies overlooking the sea, harbor, mountains, and an open courtyard five stories high containing several huge trees that rained little leaves on us during lunch. If I succeed in making a slide show, I'll post it.)

Born April 9: Cynthia Nixon

Well, she's lasted longer than Anne Heche. After a fifteen year relationship with a man who fathered their two children, Cynthia Nixon fell in love with a woman. Some might say she was a little late in the self discovery department considering that her first movie role was in Little Darlings with Kristy McNichol and Tatum O'Neal as tomboy/baby dyke softball players back in 1980. She won an Emmy in 2004 (the third time she was nominated for Sex and the City) and a Tony in 2006 (for her leading role in Rabbit Hole). She's a breast cancer survivor, and she is still with her partner Christine Marinoni.

TIME's "Most Influential" Poll Is 3.38% Gay

Don't even try to decode the "reasoning" behind the nominees for TIME's 100 Most Influential People list or why in the world there are 207 of them. A very quick glance that no doubt missed many relevant names found six gay men and one lesbian. It's not Ellen, even though she recently trounced Oprah (#25 here) in a poll of favorite talkshow hosts.

Given how utterly preposterous the whole list is, it's pointless to become enraged over our exclusion. But still. Influence is one of the things we do best as original thinkers and early adopters, yet they think we comprise 7 of 207 or 3.38% of the possible list? And seriously do hang onto to something solid and immovable when you read that one of the nominees is graphic designer Chip Kidd. He's dead last, or two below Eliot Spitzer.

Did I mention #1 is Rain? Yes, Rain. You can't fault TIME for the voting, which clearly proves fansites are sending their readers directly to their nominee page, but you can criticize the editors for their very lame and sloppy choices and for not offering the option of write-ins.

I don't want to fight about this, but of course Carine Roitfeld deserves her spot.

Read the whole list here. Rankings as of Tuesday:

7. Perez Hilton
74. [Ang Lee]
88. David Sedaris
134. Adam Moss
139. Suze Orman
151. Matt Drudge
203. Nick Denton
207. Chip Kidd

Born April 8: Robin Tyler

O, Canada. In 1959 when Arlene Chernick was seventeen and fired up, she stood on a street corner and waved a sign reading Gay Is Good. And what did the nice folks in Winnipeg do? Tooted their horns and waved back, thinking she meant Happy Is Good! Well, her family didn't think so, and she knew she was meant for bigger places. She moved to Toronto, changed her name, and became a comic. She was the first out lesbian to appear on a U.S. variety show (hosted by Phyllis Diller) and the first out lesbian to record a comedy album. She never stopped being an activist, and helped organize the first three glbt marches on Washington. Her company, Robin Tyler Productions, was in charge of the fourth march too, until she was forced out. Another successful company, Robin Tyler Tours, leads trips for women to exotic locations worldwide. She is the Executive Director of the Equality Campaign, fighting against FMA, and she and her partner of fourteen years, Diane Olson [inset, left], are plaintiffs in the current California lawsuit for gay marriage.

You know, you think Anchorman is a joke -- genius, but a joke nonetheless -- and then you see a clip like this from 1979. Robin appears to be channeling MLK Jr at 1:20. "Ron Burgundy" appears a half minute later. Worth it.

2008 Pulitzer Prizes

The Pulitzer board doesn't publicly reveal the two finalists in each category until they announce the winners, which happened this afternoon. Two openly gay writers whose books were mentioned here multiple times have been selected as finalists. In biography, Martin Duberman's The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein was honored and in the very crowded  general nonfiction category, the debut book from The New Yorker's music critic Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise, was recognized.

Born April 7: Harry Hay

He was born in England, came to America at seven, and, in his twenties, had an affair with Grandpa Walton when that actor was in his thirties: Even now there's so much we don't remember about Harry Hay, who started The Mattachine Society in 1950 in Los Angeles. To understand the terror and bravery of such an act, remember, it was illegal for homosexuals to gather in public. A woman accompanied them for cover, or they met in private. Along with Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen, and Frank Kameny, Harry Hay is one of the major reasons we have what we have today. Depending on your view, Hay is the most interesting or the most difficult of the movement's founders because he was permanently opposed to gay assimilation. He was a cofounder of Radical Faeries, and, drawing on his leadership as an eighteen year member of the Communist Party, he was a founding member of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. Often he is wrongly reported to be a founder of the most problematic gay group, but he did speak on their behalf and march supporting them when they were banned from gay pride parades. He met his life partner when he fifty-one and died at ninety in 2002. To learn more, read a collection of his own writings, Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of its Founder or his biography, The Trouble with Harry Hay, and do watch the fifty-four seconds below. He is in his late eighties here and extremely articulate, especially when explaining the complications of quick sex in an era before zippers and briefs. Audio NSFW.

Saturday Morning Democracy

Have you done your civic duty over at the Ford Models website to choose their next star from the 400+ wannabes? It's surprising how many young men use their brief statement about why they want to be a model to discuss their low self esteem. Ryan Holbert (above left), who actually has better, more sensitive but undownloadable pictures on his own site, says, "Being a kid picked on in high school I know what it means to not have self esteem. It's time for the nerds to shine." He is currently ranked #58 and you can vote for him here. Right now the #1 vote getter is Chris Turk (right), age 19, who says, "I have struggled my whole life with my self image and I want to show people that I am able to do this." Sustain Chris's lead here. Or find your own insecure hopeful here. You can vote once every day.

Born April 4: Graham Norton

Debate among yourselves if the best thing BBC America ever gave us was The Office or Graham Norton. Born in Bandon, County Cork, Ireland, he popped over to London to train as a drama instructor but justly wound up on stage and in front of the camera himself. His success as a presenter and interviewer was instantaneous, like champagne uncorked. Effortlessly fun and engaging, he often outshines his guests. His easy outrageousness can get his celebrities much more relaxed than they are on American talk shows. Spend ninety seconds watching an adorable, pre-Pirates Orlando Bloom lose it, giggle, and announce, "I'm partial to a bit of spinach, actually." Here. (As ever, Cher proves the exception: She is physically incapable of relaxing because a) her face cannot move and b) she appears to live in terror of desk drawers. Not kidding. Watch here.) Norton is more than just a big laugh. Swear to God, he auditioned to play Sam in Lord of the Rings. Watch him with Frodo here in which they look at fan fiction gone wild, photoshopped images of the hobbits engaged in softcore with one another, here. His childish delights ought to be embarrassing -- as he says, "Now, this isn't big or clever,"--but those antics are often very, very funny, especially when he employs his best telephone manner. Watch him call a sheriff's office in a Midwestern state about their law prohibiting intercourse with live fish, or, with Roseanne as his witness, ring the Austrian tourist board about visiting the north central village called Fucking here. It oughtn't be funny, you know that, but just try to remain stone faced during his interview with speed daters. Frodo laughs so hard he kicks his feet up in the air and rolls off the couch.

"A Vocal Surprise:" Julie Andrews at B&N

After standing listlessly, stuporishly for more than half an hour among a massive throng of fans of all ages who did not get lucky yellow wristbands, I perked up when the B&N events coordinator approached the podium to make some announcements.

1. Only people with yellow wristbands could get books signed. Only yellow wristbands, not green wristbands. Only books, not movie memorabilia.  Only signed, not inscribed. Only two.

2. All you people in the back with no wristbands, I'm sorry. No standby lines, no additional signing.

3. Julie Andrews will not read from the book.

4. Julie Andrews will not answer questions.

5. Julie Andrews will not be interviewed on stage.

6. Julie Andrews will not address the public in any way.

7. Julie Andrews will only sign copies of the book, then leave. She's on a very tight schedule.

8. Julie Andrews has asked that there be NO PHOTOGRAPHY.

In response, the people around me had some announcements of their own.

"As a fan, a former fan--"

"--the stupid book, anyway--"

"If she doesn't sign it, I'll return it. I'll return it!"

"I'm gonna write them a letter!"

"I'll buy it someplace else."

"--sue B&N--"

"She's lucky she's wealthy."

"I might just 'forget' to pay!"

"You'll go to jail."

At that point it was 6:40, twenty minutes until her appearance. No one budged. Several voiced their belief that the events coordinator must be wrong and that she would sign more books.

7:00 No Julie Andrews.

7:10 Still no Julie Andrews. People begin to announce to one another, "She's late."

7:15 Mr. Announcements returns to the podium to say Julie Andrews is "on her way."

7:20 No. Julie. Andrews.

7:26 If you've ever been at Lourdes when the Virgin Mary appeared, in person, to give autographs, then you don't need me to describe what comes next.

Applause breaks out in the back, rolling wave-like through the crowd. OMG JULIE ANDREWS!!!! She strides briskly, smiling, amid a small pack of B&N security and publishing staff. Approx. eight million flashbulbs go off. She waves. Cheers of "We love you, Julie!" Followed by, "Sign Our Books!"

She makes her way to the front where a very, very smiley B&N girl grins and beams from the podium. Blessedly brief non-introduction and Julie Andrews takes the stage and walks to the podium. (She's going to break Rule #6! See, she really is as impetuous and free and anti-authority as Maria!)

Meltingly charming, she avoids any sugary gushing over the crowd and immediately speaks about the book. She found she couldn't write it and tried to give her advance back to Hyperion. Then she found she couldn't break her contract and buckled down to try to give some impression of what it was like in the days of British vaudeville theater and her early years in general.

A new man reminds the crowd that they really do request No Flash Photography, at which Julie Andrews smiles tightly and says, "Too late!" That smile says, They've already taken my vocal chords, why not my retina too?

The maniacal smiler reappears to say she would now ask Dame Julie four questions submitted earlier from fans. (Doublekill, breaking Rule #5 and Rule #4.)

1. Which event from the book is your favorite memory?

[Elegant stalling,] then says "too many" and emphasizes how lucky she's been, how blessed, fortunate. She mentions only one film by name,