Band of Thebes

Lambda Literary Award Winners

LGBT ANTHOLOGIES

      Juicy Mother 2, Jennifer Camper
      Vital Signs, Richard Canning
    * First Person Queer, Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel
      Men of Mystery: Homoerotic Tales of Intrigue and Suspense, Sean Meriwether & Greg Wharton,
      Baby Remember My Name, Michelle Tea

LGBT ARTS & CULTURE

      Media Queered, Kevin Barnhurst
      Art That Dares, Kittredge Cherry
    * The View From Here, Matthew Hays
      Feeling Backward, Heather Love
      Other Men's Sons, Michael Rowe

LGBT CHILDRENS/YOUNG ADULT

      Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, Peter Cameron
    * Hero, Perry Moore
      Saints of Augustine, P.E. Ryan
      Freak Show, James St. James
      Parrotfish, Ellen Wittlinger

LGBT DRAMA/THEATER

      Dose: Plays & Monologues, Dan Bernitt
      Niagara Falls, Victor Bumbalo
    * Return to the Caffe Cino, edited by Steve Susoyev & George Birimisa

LGBT EROTICA

      The Golden Age of Lesbian Erotica, Victoria Brownworth & Judith M. Redding
      Red Light, J. D. Glass
      Ardennian Boy, William Maltese & Wayne Gunn
      The Mammoth Book of New Gay Erotica, Lawrence Schimel
    * Homosex: 60 Years of Gay Erotica, Simon Sheppard
      Every Dark Desire, Fiona Zedde

LGBT NONFICTION

      Between Women, Sharon Marcus
      Pink Harvest, Toni Mirosevich
      Other Men's Sons, Michael Rowe
    * Gay Artists in Mondern American Culture, Michael S. Sherry
      Imagining Transgender, David Valentine

LGBT POETRY

    * Blackbird and Wolf, Henri Cole
      A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering, Dawn Lundy Martin
      Otherwise Obedient, Carol Potter
      Fata Morgana, Reginald Shepherd
      The Second Person, C. Dale Young
      Human Resources, Rachel Zolf

LGBT SCI-FI/FANTASY/HORROR

      Wicked Gentlemen, Ginn Hale
      A Companion to Wolves, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
      Spaceman Blues: A Love Song, Brian Francis Slattery
    * The Dust of Wonderland, Lee Thomas
      Ha'penny, Jo Walton

LGBT STUDIES

      Writing Desire, Bertram Cohler
      The First Man-Made Man, Pagan Kennedy
    * Between Women, Sharon Marcus
      Caribbean Pleasure Industry, Mark Padilla
      Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, & the Black American Intellectual, Robert Reid-Pharr

BISEXUAL

      Look Both Ways, Jennifer Baumgardner
      Becoming Visible, Beth Firestein, Ed.,
    * Split Screen, Brent Hartinger
      The Tourists, Jeff Hobbs
      Stray, Sheri Joseph

TRANSGENDER

   * Transparent, Cris Beam
      Male Bodies, Women's Souls, LeeRay M. Costa, PhD
      The Marrow's Telling, Eli Clare
      What Becomes You, Aaron Raz Link & Hilda Raz
      Nobody Passes, Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore

LESBIAN DEBUT FICTION

      Lockjaw, Holly Farris
      Dahlia Season, Myriam Gurba
    * Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking, Aoibheann Sweeney
      Breathing Underwater, Lu Vickers
      O Street, Corrina Wycoff

GAY DEBUT FICTION

      Tales from the Town of Widows, James Canon
    * A Push and a Shove, Christopher Kelly
      That Was Then, Michael Quadland
      SoMa, Kemble Scott
      Freak Show, James St. James

WOMEN'S FICTION

      Biting the Apple, Lucy Jane Bledsoe
    * The IHOP Papers, Ali Liebegott
      Greetings from Jamaica, Mari San Giovanni
      The Child, Sarah Schulman
      The Kind of Girl I Am, Julia Watts
      The Mandrake Broom, Jess Wells

WOMEN'S ROMANCE

      Sheridan's Fate, Gun Brooke
      The Road Home, Frankie J. Jones
    * Out of Love, K. G. MacGregor
      For Now, for Always, Marianne K. Martin
      When Dreams Tremble, Radclyffe

WOMEN'S MYSTERY

   

* Wall of Silence, Gabrielle Goldsby
      Mortal Groove, Ellen Hart
      In the Name of the Father, Gerri Hill
      Selective Memory, Jennifer L. Jordan
      Laura's War, Ursula Steck

WOMEN'S MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY

      Comfort Food for Breakups, Marusya Bocurkiuw
    * And Now We Are Going to Have a Party, Nicola Griffith
      An Army of Ex-Lovers, Amy Hoffman
      Two Lives: Gertrude & Alice, Janet Malcolm
      Waiting for the Call, Jacqueline Taylor

MEN'S FICTION

    * Call Me By Your Name, Andre Aciman
      First Person Plural, Andrew W.M. Beierle
      Dark Reflections, Samuel R. Delany
      Fellow Travelers, Thomas Mallon
      The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, Manuel Munoz

MEN'S ROMANCE

   

* Changing Tides, Michael Thomas Ford
      A Secret Edge, Robin Reardon
      Right Side of the Wrong Bed, Frederick Smith
      Broadway Nights, Seth Rudetsky
      A Few Hints and Clews, Robert Taylor

MEN'S MYSTERY

      Double Abduction, Chris Beakey
      Stain of the Berry, Anthony Bidulka
      Pierce, Roberto Ferrari
    * Murder in the Rue Chartres, Greg Herren
      Mahu Surfer, Neil Plakcy
      Drag Queen in the Court of Death, Caro Soles

MEN'S MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY

      Forgiving Troy, Thom Bierdz
      Dog Years, Mark Doty
      The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein, Martin Duberman
      The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory, Kenny Fries
      What Becomes You, Aaron Raz Link & Hilda Raz
    * Mississippi Sissy, Kevin Sessums

Born May 30: Bertrand Delanoë, Colm Tóibín

The mayor of Paris who is widely considered a likely presidential candidate in 2012 and the brilliant critic and novelist who wrote The Master. Two superstars.

May-June GLR: Bérubé, Bette, Nureyev, Wittman & more

The May-June issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide is finally out, and two essays available online are John D'Emilio's appreciation of his friend the MacArthur winning gay historian Allan Bérubé and a young writer's newfound love for Bette Midler. The print edition includes major essays about Rudolf Nureyev, gay activist Carl Wittman, Jeannette Foster's 1950s search for lesbians, the film series that launched the Cockettes, and the current European exhibit called "Art and Homosexuality." The thirteen wide ranging reviews cover everything from Sundance to the fifth installment of the Russell Quant mystery series to the always insightful Andrew Holleran's nuanced look at Alan Ball's All That I Will Ever Be, yet another play about a hustler, a work of "unrelieved rancor" from the creator of American Beauty and Six Feet Under. The play sounds awful but read Holleran's essay for his (dispiriting) comparison to Boys in the Band forty years on.
    Readers wanting more than the glossy surface of mainstream gay magazines should seriously consider subscribing, a bargain at $19.75.

Born May 28: Patrick White

When you think of gay Nobel Prize winning novelists, do you only think of André Gide and Thomas Mann? Remember also the Australian writer Patrick White, born in 1912, who won the award in 1973 and lived with a former Greek soldier his same age, Manoly Lascaris, who was his ballast and partner for forty-eight years. Although he never forgave his parents for shipping him off to a detestable boarding school in England, White inherited their conservatism and did not discuss his sexuality nor did he include openly gay characters in his work until 1979's The Twyborn Affair, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize. (After winning the inaugural Miles Franklin Award for his enduring Voss, White declined that award a second time for Riders in the Chariot and refused all other prizes, asking the Booker judges to remove his name from their shortlist to give younger writers a chance. Obviously, he made an exception for the Nobel, but he sent his friend the painter Stanley Nolan to Stockholm to accept the prize on his behalf.) White finally came out when he was sixty-nine with the publication of his memoir, Flaws in the Glass. He died at seventy-eight in 1990, and Lascaris survived him thirteen years.

Wowi Unveils Gay Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

After the Allies liberated the death camps in World War II, American and British tribunals ruled that gay prisoners should be sent back to jail and that their time in the camps would not count toward their sentences. Later, gay survivors were denied pensions and reparations awarded to other groups, and the German government did not officially pardon the gay men imprisoned under Paragraph 175 until 2002. (That notorious law applied only to gay men, not lesbians.) So it was a mark of progress that the plan for a Berlin memorial to gay men in the camps was approved in 2003, the same year the government approved the plan for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by Peter Eisenman, which opened in May 2005. Ours finally opened today, dedicated by Klaus Wowereit, the city's first openly gay mayor, and designed by the international artists Ingar Dragset from Denmark and Michael Elmgreen from Norway (above). Complementing Eisenman's 2,711 stelae, their memorial is a single stele 11.8' tall by 6' wide. The pillar has an opening at eye level, through which visitors can see a 90 second film of two men kissing, directed by Thomas Vinterberg who made the brilliant, upsetting movie The Celebration. The movie will change in 2010 and every two years thereafter. The memorial includes the text

In many parts of the world people are still persecuted because of their sexual identity, homosexual love is a criminal offense and a kiss can spell danger.

Funny they should mention the trouble a same sex kiss can still cause "in many parts of the world." Try Berlin. The federal commissioner for culture, Bernd Neumann, refused to allow an image from the film's kiss to appear on the official invitation to the unveiling. Spiegel has the story here.

    We visited Auschwitz in December 2005. The old, rather bad orientation film does not mention any gay persecution. My partner planned ahead and brought from home two pink triangle buttons for us to wear during the tour. Halfway through, our very austere Polish guide said, in her strict accent, something like, I see some of you are wearing pins to commemorate other victims. Yes, that happened. But let us be clear: the camps were created to exterminate Jews. We didn't argue. My photos are below.

Born May 23: Allen Barnett

The absolutely terrific writer Allen Barnett, who died of aids at thirty-six in 1991, is in danger of being lost. His only book is out of print and he has no entry on Wikipedia. His New York Times obituary said:

Mr. Barnett was the author of The Body and Its Dangers (1990), a collection of stories in which many of the characters are afflicted with AIDS. The book was a winner of the PEN/ Ernest Hemingway Citation. Mr. Barnett worked for the Gay Men's Health Crisis, helped to establish the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and taught AIDS education to students of English as a second language at the 23d Street Y.M.C.A.

He is survived by his mother, Margaret Barnett of Joliet, Ill.; four sisters, Debby, Cindy, Donna and Rhonda, and two brothers, Dale and Ricky.

This is woefully inadequate for someone so talented. In addition to the PEN award, his book also won the Lambda award for fiction. Publishers Weekly said,

Barnett's willingness to venture into explosively emotional terrain with empathy, candor and balance is perhaps best revealed in his stunning "The Times As It Knows Us," where men sharing a summerhouse appear to have created family within the gay community--yet even this proves illusory.

Reviewing it for the Times Meg Wolitzer wrote,

The urgency of Mr. Barnett's characters, and their simple good will toward all that is human, carry considerable weight. He portrays their awareness of fragility with such candor and melancholy that they almost seem to be holding their own hearts in their hands.

You may be able to find a used copy here.

"A Jihad for Love"

Tired of your queer movies being about white Pottery Barn gays in Los Angeles? Get into the lives of devout gay Muslims trying to reconcile their faith and their sexuality in Parvez Sharma's documentary A Jihad for Love. Nathan Lee, writing in the New York Times, noted the film "ranges from Johannesburg to Istanbul, from doubt to despair (with a happy detour among the drag queens of India). He does manage to locate a headstrong lesbian in Paris, albeit one whose face, like those of many of the subjects here, has been digitally blurred." Playdates into September are:
New York   IFC Film Center   May 21 - June 4
Salt Lake City   SLC Film Center    June 15
Norfolk   Naro Cinema    June 18 - 22
Houston   Angelika Houston    June 20 - 26
Ft. Lauderdale   Sunrise Gateway    June 27 - July 3
Brookline    Coolidge Corner Theatre   June 27 - July 3
San Francisco   Frameline Film Festival   June 28
Los Angeles   Outfest    July 17
Santa Rosa  Rialto Lakeside July 17
Chicago   Siskel Film Center     July 25 - 31
Columbus   Wexner Center     July 25 & 26
Los Angeles    Laemmle Sunset 5   August 1 - 7
Palm Springs    Camelot Theaters   August 1 - 7
Denver    Starz Denver    August 1 - 7
San Diego  Landmark Ken   August 8 - 14
San Francisco   Landmark Lumiere   August 22 - 28
Philadelphia  Landmark Ritz at Bourse   August 22 - 28
Washington DC   Landmark E Street   September 5 - 11
Seattle  Landmark Varsity     September 5 - 11
Berkeley    JCC of the East Bay     September 18, 2008

Born May 22: Morrissey

Cue Unhappy Birthday, for the 49th time. The bible of British indie music, NME, called Morrissey's band The Smiths  "the most influential artist ever."  Can't argue with facts.  They released four studio albums and three compilations between 1984 and 1987 and pretty much changed the world with the songs This Charming Man, William It Was Really Nothing, Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, The Boy with the Thorn in His Side, Sheila Take a Bow, Shoplifters of the World Unite, Ask, Panic, Unlovable, Girlfriend in a Coma, Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before, There Is a Light that Never Goes Out and How Soon Is Now?  Morrissey has released eight solo albums since then, not all of them as good as the life-changing Viva Hate, Bona Drag, or Vauxhall & I. The ninth is said to be coming in late 2008 or early 2009. Even sooner, June 2, he will release his new single, All You Need Is Me. The song will be available with two new b-sides Children in Pieces and My Dearest Love, both recorded with Gustavo Santaolalla, whom you know for his (haunting? much-parodied?) music for Brokeback Mountain.

Candy Everybody Wants by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Working in advertising, Josh Kilmer-Purcell has won a slew of awards (Emmy, Clio, Cannes Lion, more) and his ability to make a point quickly, vividly seemed to carry over to his much praised memoir, I Am Not Myself These Days, which became a bestseller in 2006. You may also know Kilmer-Purcell for his column in Out, or for the organic goat's milk soap he and his partner make on their weekend farm. Last week, Harper Perennial published his first novel, and so far I can find only three reviews, which are... well, they're below. Alison Hallett, writing in the Portland Mercury, said this:

Unfortunately, Kilmer-Purcell's new book, Candy Everybody Wants, is terrible, awful, make-a-yucky-face-when-you-think-about-it bad. It's a Marc Acito knockoff, a less funny, less deft coming-of-age novel about a young gay man who just wants to act, complete with wacky plot twists and the requisite hat tip to AIDS (called "gay cancer" in Kilmer-Purcell's book, and handled incredibly poorly). Unless Kilmer-Purcell plans to appear on the Bagdad stage in full drag, complete with water-filled breasts in which live goldfish swim (for real: his drag name was Aquadisiac) -- €”unless he, in other words, manages to distract the audience from his clunky prose and unlikely, unlikeable characters -- €”his reading is awfully hard to get excited about.

Ari Spool, writing in The Stranger, said this:

There's so much more to hate than just the characters. There's also the plot! And the setting! And, most of all, the writing!

But Spool's review obsesses about the characters' gayness, presumably reflecting the book's tone. More reasoned is the Publishers Weekly review, which is entirely plot summary except for the last line:

...leads to a seamy romp through the gay semicelebrity scene of New York and L.A as AIDS emerges. And when Jayson actually does get his big Hollywood break, it is no surprise that his connection to his mother deteriorates further. Kilmer-Purcell certainly has interesting and tough-minded things to say about being young, gay and celebrity-obsessed in the 1980s, but the characters aren't strong enough to withstand the rollicking plot.

These first three could be wrong. You can still buy it and decide for yourself.

Born May 21: Raymond Burr

It wouldn't take Perry Mason to figure out Raymond Burr was "acting" when he invented heterosexual details about his life in order to hide his gay relationships. He claimed to have had three wives and a son. His alleged first wife, "Annette Sutherland," was supposedly a British actress who died in the plane crash that killed Leslie Howard, but, as you've already guessed, British Equity has no record of an actress with that name and the fatal plane had only three women on it, all of them otherwise accounted for. Later Burr claimed to have had a son who died at ten of an incurable disease, possibly leukemia, and he even said he took a year off to travel the country with him as his dying wish. Yet his publicist at the time said Burr was working steadily that entire year, 1953, and that Burr "never mentioned any wife or son." One marriage, short-lived, can be documented. Happily, Burr did have a very long relationship with fellow actor Robert Benevides. They met on the set of Perry Mason, together bought an island in Fiji where their passion for orchids eventually became a business back in California, sold their Fiji land in 1983, and spent their time on their farm in Sonoma, where they later started a vineyard. Among his many movie roles, his menacing turn as the killer in Rear Window came three years before his beloved television series Perry Mason, which ran for 271 episodes from 1957 to 1966, and remained so popular it was later revived in 26 tv movies. Burr's next series, Ironside, ran for 195 episodes from 1967 to 1975 and it too spawned a tv movie comeback in 1993, the year Burr died of cancer. One of his nieces fought with Benevides over Burr's vast estate, questioning his right to it. They were together thirty-one years.

The Bishop's Daughter by Honor Moore

You probably remember Honor Moore's personal history essay in the March 3 New Yorker in which she revealed her father, formerly the Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of New York, had sex with men throughout his life. Her essay generated an unusual number of letters to the magazine and, rare for them, they dedicated the entire letters column to it and directed readers to even more letters online. Most prominent was a group letter by some of the nine Moore children who decried Honor's telling the truth about what they feel should be a private matter for eternity. That frightened me. If the straights succeed at preventing us from writing honestly about the dead, we are in grave trouble. That would be another big step toward erasing our history.  Luckily, the Reverend Martha N. Macgill also wrote a letter, which seems to me much wiser:

The legacy of grief, anger, and suffering that sexual secrets cause in the institutional Church are legion and legendary. This story illustrates the necessity for our church to struggle honestly with the issue of healthy sexual behavior—gay or straight. The courage of the Right Reverend Gene Robinson, of New Hampshire, and the reverberations from his consecration as a bishop in our church show that we people of God still have a good deal of work to do in this area. More important, secrets—particularly sexual secrets—in the life of an individual and his or her family are deeply harmful to wholeness and to health.

Read her whole letter here. Or read the siblings' complaint here. If the subject interests you, get the full story in Honor Moore's memoir, The Bishop's Daughter, which Norton published yesterday.
 

Bedroom Visitor

Tin Hearts France, Hates Homophobia

Here's a two-fold reminder of how small actions can reverberate worldwide: On Friday, prior to Saturday's International Day Against Homophobia [IDAHO] French activist Louis-Georges Tin and a few colleagues protested without a permit outside the presidential palace in Paris. They were arrested and jailed for two hours. Progressive parties and NGOs criticized the arrest. The next day, the State Secretary in charge of human rights, Rama Yade (at thirty-one, the youngest member of Sarkozy's cabinet; born in Senegal; awesome) met with Tin and other lgbt activists. As a result, she has secured France's official recognition of IDAHO and has promised that in July when France takes over the rotating six-month presidency of the EU, she will push for “a European initiative calling for the universal decriminalization of homosexuality” that they will then submit to the United Nations. One of Tin's longterm goals is a UN declaration that would decriminalize homosexuality throughout the world. Currently, seventy-five countries outlaw homosexuality, including Uganda where it is punishable by life in prison, and eight countries where the penalty is death: Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
    IDAHO was started as a national day in Quebec in 2003 and Tin took it global in 2004. You can sign his petition here.
    Proving that change is possible: This year Cuba officially participated in IDAHO, showing Brokeback Mountain on state-run television and sponsoring the country's largest-ever gathering of lgbt activists and government officials. That meeting was chaired by Raul Castro's daughter Mariela, director of the country's Center for Sexual Education. The AP reports that the Cuban legislature is reviewing plans to institute civil unions.
    Proving that homophobia often wins: Microsoft forced gay Xbox player Grant to change his gamertag from The Gayer Gamer because they said the word gay is offensive to "the greater Xbox community" and because upon reviewing the name "The Gayer Gamer" Microsoft "determined that it did indeed contain sexual innuendo." Full story here.

Born May 19: Daniel Guérin

Ah, France, where strange bedfellows make good politics. Born in 1904, the upper class Parisian Daniel Guérin became an ardent leftist and socialist in part by having sex with tough guys. He said, "It was there, in bed with them, that I discovered the working class, far more than through Marxist tracts." In the 1930s he became a political and union organizer after hating the colonialism he saw during his travels in Southeast Asia and the Mid-East. In the late 1940s he lived in the United States and was appalled by the treatment of black Americans and, back in France, he fully supported the Algerian drive for independence. Of his many books best known is Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, published in 1965, with later editions carrying an introduction by Noam Chomsky. He did not begin his activism on behalf of gay rights until the 1970s, especially as part of the Front Homosexuel d'Action Révolutionnaire [FHAR], a group from which he later broke. People discouraged by today's apolitical comsumerist gays may do well to remember that a quarter-century ago Guérin was disgusted by the apolitical hedonist gays whose "superficial pursuit of pleasure" was "a million miles from any conception of class struggle." Which is not to say he became anti-sex in his later years. Mais non, pas de tout! His last significant relationship was with a man sixty years his junior. He died at eighty-three in 1988.

Gay + Yay = Marriage

As I said yesterday, Democrats have a special talent for getting great news and dancing in the streets. Enjoy Yahoo's 128 photos of bliss.

Born May 16: Adrienne Rich, Liberace

Here.

Calif. Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban; Dems Panic

Democrats have a special talent for getting great news and seeing doom. In part, this comes from years of getting bad news, and it's compounded by always having to make excuses for Democratic candidates. Today's decision by the California Supreme Court to overturn the state's ban on same-sex marriage provides prime examples. Here are the candidates' official statements:

Hillary Clinton believes that gay and lesbian couples in committed relationships should have the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans and believes that civil unions are the best way to achieve this goal. As President, Hillary Clinton will work to ensure that same sex couples have access to these rights and responsibilities at the federal level. She has said and continues to believe that the issue of marriage should be left to the states.

Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as President. He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage. On the issue of constitutional amendments, Senator Obama has been on record for some time: He opposes all divisive and discriminatory constitutional amendments, state or federal. That includes the proposed amendments in California and Florida.

First, notice how neither one can even say the word gay. Second, if they really are for civil unions, what are they doing about the states that have outlawed them? Third, this is another example of the gay exception. Can anyone believe that Clinton would argue racial equality should be left to individual states or that Obama would claim gender fairness is best achieved by allowing each state to create its own rules?

People! Gay marriage only worked as a wedge issue when the economy was okay. Right now the GOP can't win their longtime seats in GOP strongholds. The past three special elections haven't even been close. California allowing same sex marriage is not going to swing the 2008 election. Voters are deeply dissatisfied and, regardless of their views on marriage, they will still be voting on the economy and Iraq.

As for McCain, he's in a miserable spot. The AP said it best: "McCain rejected the will of the state's high court even as he tried to maintain his long-held stance that the issue should be left to the states." Furthermore, California's Republican governor, who would be a much more popular ally than the country's lame duck Republican president, holds the exact opposite views as McCain: He endorsed the court's decision and is against a state amendment.

For anyone who remembers gay people's sense of humor, can't one same sex couple in California return the favor and tell CNN they refuse to marry until Brad and Angelina do? For everyone else, weddings can begin June 15.

Born May 15: Jasper Johns

Coincidently, Jasper Johns turns 78 today. Two years ago his False Start from 1959 became the most expensive painting by a living artist at $80 million. Maybe he's never discussed his relationship with Rauschenberg, but Johns has kept his sense of humor. He appeared as himself on The Simpsons and was revealed to be a raging kleptomaniac.

Rauschenberg Obits: Shades of Degayed

People seem to love controversy and attacks, but let's start with the good news: Christopher Knight's Rauschenberg obituary in the Los Angeles Times is exactly what all the other write-ups ought to be. Knight immediately makes clear that Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns were lovers, he acknowledges that Rauschenberg's companion Darryl Pottorf also collaborated with him on his work, and he naturally cites the gay aspects of Rauschenberg's art and why they are important.

The candidly titled "Monogram" is also an unconventional declaration of identity. Western art has used goats as a symbol for priapic sexual energy ever since the Dionysian satyrs of ancient Greece -- half man and half goat, always merrily drinking and dancing. The outrageous interlace formed by the goat and the tire astride a landscape of cast-off debris dates from the conformist social atmosphere of the Eisenhower years, when an anti-Communist "Red Scare" was accompanied by an anti-homosexual "Pink Scare." Critic Robert Hughes described the unforgettable "Monogram" as "one of the few great icons of male homosexual love in modern culture" -- the complement to Meret Oppenheim's famous Surrealist sculpture of a phallic spoon in a fur teacup.

Unfortunately, Knight stands alone. At the other end of the spectrum is Matt Schudel's obit in the Washington Post. Schudel includes Johns but degays their relationship, omits homoerotism in his flat analysis of Rauschenberg's work, and only cites "companion" Pottorf in his final sentence. Yet while ignoring Rauschenberg's homosexuality, Schudel does discuss the artist's alcoholism, writing, "he consumed more than a bottle of whiskey a day for many years." (No other paper stooped to that.) Likewise, although Mark Feeney writing in the Boston Globe does say Rauschenberg and Johns "became lovers," he disregards the ramifications of that fact and spends more time on Rauschenberg's dyslexia than his homosexuality. In the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman mentions Pottorf midway but disingenuously dances around sex with Johns:

The intimacy of their relationship over the next years, a consuming subject for later biographers and historians, coincided with the production by the two of them of some of the most groundbreaking works of postwar art.

At least Kimmelman has the sense to examine how an artist's private life informs his work:

The process, used for works like “34 Drawings for Dante’s Inferno,” created the impression of something fugitive, exquisite and secret. Perhaps there was an autobiographical and sensual aspect to this.

But, really, in 2008 being closety about gay art isn't postmodern, or po-pomo, nor is it understandable or excusable. It's a disgrace.

Born May 14: Magnus Hirschfeld

The German Jewish physician began advocating for gay rights in 1896. In 1933, Nazis destroyed his institute for sexual research, burning the thousands of books in his library, filmed for widely seen newsreels. He is a colossus. Last week, Berlin officials renamed a portion of the promenade along the Spree River in his honor.

Flying Today

Click to enlarge and see the scale of the clouds vs. the plane. Taken in March, approaching Miami.

Born May 13: Bruce Chatwin

The only contemporary heir to Patrick Leigh Fermor's genius in travel writing, Bruce Chatwin's literary talent was matched by his personal panache. So brilliant, so handsome, so acclaimed, so willing to buck British convention, yet so tormented by his own prejudices. Unable to admit he was gay, he married a woman in 1965, when he was twenty-five, and pursued men throughout their fifteen years of marriage. (She was English; she didn't mind, though she did ask for a separation in 1980.) Many episodes in his travel books only make sense if you realize he is sleeping with the men he meets, and his much loved first novel concerns two long-time bachelor brothers who sleep in the same bed for decades. Yet even when he was dying at forty-eight in 1989, he remained so closeted he said he had a rare, fatal blood disease contracted in China from a bat bite, rather than say he had aids. One of his lovers was Jasper Conran; Chatwin died in the South of France in a house owned by Jasper's mother, Shirley Conran, and his ashes were scattered near Patrick Leigh Fermor's home in the Peleponnese. If you've never read him, you must. Start with In Patagonia or The Songlines [aborigines in Australia], if you want travel, or On the Black Hill, if you want a wonderful Welsh novel.

New York's NewFest 2008 Announces 200+ Films

In June, New York's LGBT film festival now known as NewFest and celebrating its 20th Anniversary, will include adaptations of Sarah Waters' Affinity and Jim Grimsley's Dream Boy, but where is Michael Downing's Breakfast with Scot? (Click, watch, love.) Opening night June 5 is the lesbian movie Tru Loved, starring Jane Lynch and Marcia Wallace, and the closing night film June 15 is Were the World Mine, an expansion of the short Fairies. Were the World Mine earlier this spring closed Miami's LGBT film festival (when the Miami Herald gave it two and a half stars), and goodness knows I hope you like the idea of a high school musical version of Midsummer Night's Dream but, golly, did I have a tough time getting through the minute and a half of breathy crooning: What angel wakes me from my flowery bed/I pray thee gentle mortal sing again. Several of the documentaries look great, especially the recent TriBeCa Film Festival's SqueezeBox!, the Iranian Be Like Others, and, most of all, the awesome, Oscar winner Debra Chasnoff's update It's STILL Elementary. The NewFest website is stuck on the 2007 schedule, but this year's list of features can be found here. All films will be shown at the AMC Theater on 34th Street.

Born May 12: Ross Bleckner

Writing in Vanity Fair, Edmund White called Ross Bleckner, the New York neo-abstractionist who turns fifty-nine today, "the first serious painter since Degas to be all at once so social, so relentlessly frivolous, and so gifted." The New York Times called him, among many other things over the years, "the gay powerbroker and ubiquitous partygoer." Look at a gallery of his paintings on his website, and read the full Edmund White profile of Bleckner here. Yes, Dolly Parton is a fan. 

Chaiten Volcanic Ash Cloud Engulfed in an Electrical Storm

I keep telling you Brian is so much more than an improv and design god. He sent this link to a staggering slideshow of 35 images like the one above.

Sixth Annual Saints & Sinners Literary Festival

If you happen to be near New Orleans this weekend, check out the sixth Saints and Sinners LGBT writers conference. All star participants include (those in bold are being inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame): Dorothy Allison, Maureen Brady, Mark Doty, Jim Grimsley, Aaron Hamburger, Joan Larkin, Paul Lisicky, William J. Mann, Stephen McCauley, Tim Miller, Carol Rosenfield, Michelle Tea, and Patricia Nell Warren. A great lineup, though at first glance the festival's long roster seems notably lacking in Latina/o writers. Not sure if they will be posting video like the fantastic TED conference clips, but you can check the Saints and Sinners site over the weekend.

The Onion: Local Bar Comes Out as Gay

Funnier than their last gay piece, not as funny as their best humor. A little bit worth it for the last paragraph. Here.

Born May 9: Alan Bennett

The Uncommon Reader author, Alan Bennett.

Bookvideos.tv: You'd Rather Be Reading

At first I thought something was very, very wrong when a search for anything gay on Bookvideos.tv yielded zero results. After all, the site launched nearly a year ago with lots of hoopla (that a lot of publishers seem to have swallowed) that the way to get Americans to read again is to get them to watch more tv-like clips on the web. But then I realized the problem is much larger: The site still only has 47 entries in Fiction and a mere nine in Literary Fiction, some of which are absurdly misplaced, such as Jodi Picoult's 19 Minutes. In Non-Fiction they claim to have 46, but the actual number is smaller because many titles are loaded more than once. (As for gay books, they ought to have tagged Marc Acito's new novel and Marianne Wiggins' The Shadow Catcher.)
    In any event, these clips aren't going to sell books. On YouTube, the Bookvideos.tv channel gets relatively little traffic, with even a major bestselling author like Philippa Gregory promoting a movie tie edition garnering only 7,800 views, and I would wager most of those are people who have already read the book. Many of the other titles' videos have a couple hundred views after 10 months. These book trailers mainly succeed at reducing the amount of time readers spend reading. On Monday, HarperCollins announced the formation of an in-house production department that annually will create 500 book videos, most in a Q&A format with the writer. In an age of fewer and fewer book reviews, author videos will be the new way people who have neither read nor bought the book can talk about them knowingly.

Born May 8: Tom of Finland

The king of male erotic drawings.

Mr. Uriel Gomez, Not Your Average Wisconsin Prom Queen

It's prom season again, which guarantees big dresses, bigger hair, and the biggest gap between students' and school officials' views on gay participation. Uriel Gomez, an 18 year-old senior at Park High in Racine, Wisconsin (pop. 81,000), came out to his classmates four years ago as a freshman and now got enough votes to appear on the final ballot for Prom Queen. His buds said, more or less, "Uriel! No way!" and the school administration said, more precisely, "Uriel, no way." A popular kid, Gomez was also voted onto the boys ballot for Prom King. He told a teacher he definitely wanted to stay on the girls list for Prom Queen. The teacher said talk to the student activities director, Mr. Kirkvliet. The local paper, the Journal Times, reports Mr. Kirkvliet and other officials "weren't thrilled," and removed his name from the ballot for queen because, “It’s the same for everything. Boys are boys. Girls are girls.” Students totally disagree. Amanda Peterson, for one, doesn't want democracy shushed.

“I don’t think the student voice should be shushed just because (the school) doesn’t agree with it,” said Amanda Peterson, a Park senior and one of Gomez’s friends. “Prom is supposed to be fun, anyway. I don’t see what the problem is.”

Senior Mark Harris agrees.

“I don’t understand how people can be offended by this when it’s not their prom,” Harris said. “King and queen is the tradition and people don’t like it when you mess with a tradition. If anything, we’re accepting the tradition. We’re just kind of putting a 2008 tweak on it.”

Holy cow! Just learned that prom is a ginormous deal in Racine, "a city that for the past 50 years has been annually gripped by prom mania!" Park High was the subject of an 80 minute documentary in 2006 called The World's Best Prom, and they have the footage to prove Racine's passion. Bleachers! Townspeople line up to watch the kids walk the red carpet into the dance. Televised locally! NOW how much do you want Uriel Gomez to be queen?

The Best Book of the Booker Winners

To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of what is now the Man Booker Prize, a special panel chaired by Victoria Glendinning will select one of the past winners as the Best of the Bookers. Their shortlist will be announced later this month. The online search engine ABE Books is conducting their own survey, and you can cast your vote here. As you know, the only gay novel ever to win a Booker is The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. It was not in the top ten as of this morning:

1) Life of Pi by Yann Martel (12.4%)
2) Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (10.5%)
3) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (8.8%)
4) The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (8.5%)
5) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (6.9%)
6) The Bone People by Keri Hulme (5.5%)
7) Possession by AS Byatt (5.4%)
8) The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (5.2%)
9) Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (4%)
10) The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (3.3%)

Maybe it's not even worth noting that the list, full of brilliant novels, lacks a white male writer from the U.K. As for what the judges will pick, oddsmakers are split between Life of Pi and Midnight's Children, with other contenders The English Patient, The Blind Assassin, and Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth.

Born May 7: Tchaikovsky

The original Nutcracker, poor Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Elizabeth Strout at B&N

Last night Elizabeth Strout traced back the origins of her life as a novelist to a sleepover when she was twelve where the neighbor mom made French toast, cut it diagonally, and sprinkled it with confectioners sugar. Hearing her enraptured report, her own mother was not impressed. Not only did she ignore the hint that this was how every breakfast should be, she said, "Elizabeth, you don't know." It stunned her at twelve and took her years to understand she really didn't know why people do what they do, and has spent her adult life pondering such mysteries.
    She said she knew Olive Kitteridge, her blunt Maine heroine, was "a lot for the reader to deal with," and one of the reasons she told this novel in episodes, sometimes not directly about Olive, was to give the reader a break from her. Strout said as she's writing she thinks "a great deal" about the readers and what they need to make the story work. She also said ambivalence about her characters is "helpful" because it's "so freeing not to be responsible for their actions." Queried whether the difficult moms in all three of her books reflect issues with her own mother, she said, "Yes." I asked if her two minor gay characters came to her unbidden as she wrote or if she inserted them intentionally, to suggest a more universal aspect to the romantic troubles of her protagonists and she said they "just rose up," adding that she is in no way a political writer. She admitted she had not intended the ending to her previous novel, Abide with Me, but had planned for Tyler to "wander away and become a librarian in a seminary." The new novel continues to garner stellar reviews. Buy it.

Sewn in Tragikstan: Dresses at the Met's Costume Institute Gala

Is it becoming a habit to get depressed each Tuesday by women who could have anything making sad choices? Last week, Madonna's apartment. Today, the photos from the Costume Institute's party. As with any tragedy, you'll have to work your way through denial, anger, despair, and survivor guilt in order to find the few high points. The theme was Superheroes. For any budding comic book writers out there, what the world needs is not Ironman, god knows, but an action figure who saves celebrities from their stylists. At left, Stephanie Seymour. Look at that! And where is FEMA?

Paul Rudnick's The New Century

Long ago, DNA testing revealed that I lack the theater gene, so maybe it means something when I say you must go see Paul Rudnick's play The New Century. It's sort of hysterical, unlike his last four movies. As the critics have said, it's jammed with sweet one-liners but hearing them in isolation might be like eating a spoonful of flour, then a raw egg, then sugar, then butter, and hoping that tasted like cake. Let's try:

"Helen Keller would know you're a lesbian!"

"Muslin terrorists? They used cheap cotton?"

"In