Band of Thebes

Mad World: Those "Secrets of Brideshead" Are Gay

Yesterday Paula Byrne's intriguing biography Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead was finally released here, so at last my post from August is relevant. In the spirit of recycling, it appears below. I can only add the habitual news that Harper has opted to degay Lord Beauchamp in their flap copy, calling him "unconventional" and timidly ending the copy about Waugh with, "brings us inevitably to the secret that dared not speak its name."

While at Oxford, Evelyn Waugh had an affair with classmate Hugh Lygon, son of the brazenly gay Lord Beauchamp, the Liberal Party's leader in the House of Lords who chose his "exquisite" male servants for their beauty and their sexual acquiescence. Eventually Waugh would use their story as the basis for his great novel, Brideshead Revisited. Hugh was blond, cute, rich, fun, and dumb, so you already recognize him as Sebastian Flyte even before learning that he drank himself to death at a young age. His father, dividing his time between Belgrave Square and the 1540-built Walmer Castle in Kent, expected to sleep with Hugh's male houseguests. If they didn't comply (often forewarned to lock their doors at night), he groused at breakfast, "He’s very nice, that friend of yours, but he’s damned uncivil."

Born March 30: Tracy Chapman

If you will, in the past two decades the music business has seen changes soaring several previously unimaginable octaves -- vinyl and cassette to cd to digital downloads; the death of the record store -- while the industry's attitude about stars' private lives has remained the steady, eternal drumbeat of closet, closet, closet. It was April 1988 when Cleveland native, Tufts graduate, awesome talent Tracy Chapman released Tracy Chapman, the surprise #1 album that would revitalize the folk rock genre and sweep three Grammy awards the following year. She wasn't out then and after seven additional studio albums and one more Grammy in 1997, she is just marginally out now; she has mentioned her past relationship with Alice Walker but I don't think she has called herself a lesbian. In 2002 she told an interviewer, "I have a public life that’s my work life and I have my personal life. In some ways, the decision to keep the two things separate relates to the work I do." On the other hand, when it most mattered in 2008, Chapman did come around from her policy of not giving money to political causes and for the first time she wrote three checks to defeat Prop 8 and discussed her decision with the media. Her eighth album was released a week after Obama was elected and the anti-gay measure passed by a wide margin. It's called Our Bright Future.

Lost Booker LGBT Nominees White, Renault and Spark Bio

The only thing more complicated than the logistics of the so-called "Lost Booker" prize (not awarded in 1970 due to a calendar change and now not to be awarded by judges but a public vote), are the complexities of the nominees' private lives. Openly gay Nobel Prize winner Patrick White almost never wrote gay characters in his novels and asked that he not be considered for any literary prizes after 1968 so why is he posthumously forced to be a finalist here; Mary Renault was a lesbian who was against gay pride; and Muriel Spark perhaps protested too much that she and Penelope Jardine, the woman she lived with for 38 years, weren't lesbians. Spark took lengthy legal measures to ensure that Jardine received her entire estate and that Spark's son Robin got nothing.

Renault's Fire From Heaven has the list's only gay storyline, young Alexander's abiding affair with Hephaestion. White's The Vivisector is about a womanizing male painter, and Spark's The Driver's Seat looks at the last day in the life of a murder victim. Remarkably, Shirley Hazzard has never been shortlisted for the Booker. The Transit of Venus was ignored and The Great Fire was only longlisted. Vote here for the winner, which will be announced May 19.

Nina Bawden, The Birds on the Trees

JG Farrell, Troubles

Shirley Hazzard, The Bay of Noon

Mary Renault, Fire from Heaven

Muriel Spark, The Driver's Seat

Patrick White, The Vivisector

Those of you interested in Muriel Spark's evolving inner life may or may not find it in Martin Stannard's embattled Muriel Spark: The Biography, finally published here on April 12. One gets the impression he was barred from saying what he wanted to. This is the inherent problem with biographies of living people: access only comes with approval. Openly gay Tom Mallon reviewing the book in this week's New Yorker says, "...Spark raised strong objections to the text submitted for her approval. The book's publication has been long delayed by negotiations with the artist Penelope Jardine, Spark's companion during her decades in Rome and then Tuscany and later her executor. Stannard gently avoids speculation about the nature of the women's relationship, which Spark insisted was an 'old-fashioned friendship'."

"Old-fashioned" wouldn't describe her relationship with her son Robin. She didn't raise him. The Scotsman reported, "In 1998, a very public row broke out between Spark and Robin over claims in her memoirs that her mother was not Jewish. Robin, who had been brought up by Spark's parents and had become an orthodox Jew, angrily disputed the claims. The author showed little sympathy for her son and accused him of seeking publicity to further his career as an artist." About his art, she said, "I don't think he's any good and nothing will make me say so." While he was in art college, she refused to accept a piece Robin had made for her. Toward the end of her life, asked by a journalist if she planned to see her son, she replied, "I think I know how best to avoid him by now."

Criminality to Equality: 40 Years of Canadian LGBT History in 6 Hours

Writing in the Feminist Review, Annette Przygoda takes a look at Nancy Nicol's six-hour documentary, From Criminality to Equality: 40 Years of Lesbian and Gay Movement History in Canada, available on DVD. In order, the four parts are: Stand Together (1967-87), The Queer Nineties (1990s), Politics of the Heart (queer families), and The End of Second Class (same sex marriage and equal marriage legislation 2005). Przygoda says,

"The most moving of the four DVDs for me was Politics of the Heart, which portrays lesbian and gay families in Quebec as they fight for equal parenting rights. Not only did it remind me of my own history growing up with two mothers, it also presented a perspective the other three films lacked. It reminded the viewer that even in times when lesbian and gay people didn’t have the same rights as heterosexuals, we found unique and often very creative ways to live our lives and live them well. Politics of the Heart shows that queer families existed in spite of not being recognized by law or the broader society. As one friend put it: 'I would have liked to have seen less about the fights and more about our alternative lives. We don’t just exist in opposition to heterosexuals.'"

Nicol has also made an hour long documentary called One Summer in New Paltz, A Cautionary Tale about Mayor Jason West's decision to marry same-sex couples in 2004. Those 302 marriages remain unrecognized.

YOWIE! This is a trailer. Watch two seconds. 

Born in March: Denton Welch

Even if you weren't part of the Shanghai scene in the 1920s, you'll feel like you're remembering and reliving it as you sink into the simple splendor of Denton Welch's autobiographical novel / fictionalized memoir Maiden Voyage. Born in China to English parents, the young aesthete Welch collected art objects as a child and intended to be a painter before, at twenty, a car struck him while he was cycling in Surrey and rendered him unfit for anything but the writing life. He broke his spine and the complications left him in pain until his death at thirty-three. (He did paint this self-portrait, which hangs in the National Gallery London.) His short novel In Youth Is Pleasure is essential reading, as is his vaguely unfinished A Voice Through a Cloud. Spoiler alert: Nothing happens. Artistic, sensitive Orvil Pym with athletic, bullying older brothers spends his fifteenth summer, um, having feelings? Noticing things? Against all logic he makes it absolutely compelling. As proof of Welch's alchemist talents to transform empty days into gold, here's William S Burroughs, who often cited Welch as his "greatest literary influence," explaining, "Whenever a student tells me he has nothing to write about I refer him to Denton Welch. He makes the reader aware of the magic that is right under his eyes..." When Peter Cameron inscribed my copy of Andorra he wrote, "Read Denton Welch." Other than David Hockney printing his phone number as he signed my Parisian friend Alain's book, that's the best inscription ever. Heed it.

Forget the Porn, Read Eastern European Gay Literature

Take a bow all of you who prayed the posting about Prague porn would be balanced by a subversive Eastern European gay lit novel. Neil Bartlett reviewed gay Polish writer Michał Witkowski's new novel Lovetown, just out from Portobello. 

A square gay journalist interviews two aging queens in Wroclaw who complain about all the contemporary openness ("it's all about having fun") and miss the old fashioned subterfuge ("No one has any sense of filth or wrongdoing") almost as much as they miss the cruel hot Russian soldiers who occupied Poland. 

"The young man who is first shocked and then made jealous by these tales of love among the ruins finds that he has, by the time we reach the delirious final pages, been translated into a flaming old queen himself....The dark, postmodernist wit of this transformation places the reader in a quandary. Is she or he to join the party, or to watch it from a safe distance?"

Bartlett captures the queer culture clash:

"In one cruel and deliciously unreasonable passage a buffed-up muscle-boy (hobbies: monogamy and civil rights) corners the journalist and demands to know why he isn't writing the kind of novel that young gay men such as himself enjoy these days – socially responsible ones about monogamy and civil rights. Turning on this hapless representative of bourgeois "liberation" the full linguistic force of his anti-heroines' scorn, Witkowski makes it clear that contemporary culture abandons at its peril the heritage of survival tactics which his queens cultivated through the dark years. Faced with exclusion and brutality, they kept themselves alive through an unholy marriage of desperation and imagination, constructing an alternative reality that could teach the younger generation a thing or two about empowerment. Or, as a queen called Paula puts it more succinctly in the novel's closing pages: 'So take that darling, and put that in one pan of the scales, and in the other put all those gay bars of yours.' "

Since its debut in Poland in 2005, Lovetown has been translated into at least eight other languages.

Witkowski's 15-page short story "Didi" was selected by Alexsandar Hemon for inclusion in Best European Fiction 2010. 

Critic and theater director Neil Bartlett is the author of the novels Skin Lane and Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall, among others.

The Saddest Word in Gay Porn: Deflation

 With the Czech economy going down and unemployment shooting up over 10%, more than ever straight young men are willing to have sex with other guys on camera for quick money. Prague has uniquely liberal views; take new model "Justel" who says his girlfriend likes his job and the money but she would hate it if he were filming with a woman. Yet the glut in available models means the pay has shriveled. These days a solo scene earns the performer $168. Sex with a partner means around $300, give or take. The studio owns the scene forever and the model gets zero royalties. Also, because of low HIV rates, most Czech performers are pressured? agree to have sex without condoms, which viewers prefer. American porn actors complain they're getting screwed by outsourcing.

William Higgins, the Oklahoma native who decamped from California during the first wave of aids, pioneered the Prague gay porn industry because the guys were so easy and eager for money. He says he interviews about 120 new applicants a month now, and rejects 80 percent "typically for not having the look — too ugly or misshapen — or, more importantly, not being able to perform under pressure." Higgins turns a profit even off the losers because the auditions stream on his pay per view webcasts: "viewers from all over the world watch the footage live and provide their anonymous, real-time verdicts."

A six-page article in the Global Post reports:

"Higgins also likes to recruit men who have typically never done porn or had sex with men before and market their inexperience as an asset, not a drawback. To this day, he enjoys filming the first-timers, especially if they don’t really like it. He zooms in on their faces clenched in pain. It makes it real, Higgins says.

"He also prefers working with straight guys because they are not as picky about with whom they have sex. “If they are willing to do it with a guy, they’ll do it with any guy. It’s a job,” he says. 'We have one gay guy who always dictates who he’s going to do it with. I’d much rather work with straight guys.'"

If you still aren't uncomfortable, try this: "Many studios prefer to use prostaglandin shots, such as Caverject, injected directly into the erectile tissues of the penis. That causes immediate effect, without having to worry about the unattractive, Viagra-flushed faces on film."

(Pictured is Bel Ami star Kris Evans.)

Born March 28: Dirk Bogarde

After distinguished service as an intelligence officer in the Queen's Royal Regiment during WWII, Dirk Bogarde tried acting and became Britain's top box office draw of the 1950s. So it was big news in 1961 when he chose to play a closeted, married gay barrister in Victim, especially considering he was closeted himself. (He and his manager Anthony Forwood lived together for decades.) In 1963, Bogarde played the creepy, closety valet in The Servant, and later played the tragic gay lead of Death in Venice. Today, the courage of these choices can hardly be imagined. Even in 1971, two years after Midnight Cowboy, Warner Brothers was so terrified of Death in Venice being charged with obscenity in the U.S. they wanted to drop the movie altogether. They relented after Queen Elizabeth and Princess Anne attended the London premiere; it won an Oscar. Yet offscreen in his own life, Bogarde lacked the same bravery. After the anguish of watching his partner suffer a prolonged battle with Parkinson's and liver cancer, he became a vocal proponent of euthanasia. That was 1988, coincidentally the same year that John Gielgud came out quietly and Ian McKellan came out blazingly, as a founder of Stonewall. Bogarde never did. He retired in 1990 and lived till 1999, by which time he had written something like eight volumes of autobiography, none of which tells the full truth of his life. In fact, he destroyed much of his personal archives.

Bill Cunningham New York

When you hear that you must see a documentary about an 81 year-old single man living in a tiny 57th Street room crammed with filing cabinets, without a kitchen or a bathroom, or a proper bed, or a table or a chair, you might not recognize it's a movie about one of the current and longest standing style lords of fashion. Bill Cunningham lives only for his work, photographing interestingly dressed people on the street during the day and at charity events in the evening hours for the NYT. He doesn't care about celebrity, he shoots what he likes. He has the eye of an artist. You can see why so many fashionistas say they didn't feel like they lived here until they appeared in his pages. Anna Wintour claims, "We all dress for Bill." She says he identifies trends long before fashion editors do, and confesses the deathblow she feels when Bill sees her clothes and doesn't lift his camera. His photographs are hack work but curators consider the sum of his decades of output to be cultural anthropology. In 2008, the French Culture Ministry awarded him L’Ordre National des Arts et des Lettres.

So, why does he live like a pauper? In his ripe Boston accent he claims he's too busy to think about anything but the "mahvelous" clothes he sees. It might be an extension of his thrift. He wears the bold blue smocks of French garbage collectors and repairs his cheap rain ponchos with layers of duct tape, refusing to buy new ponchos because they'd only tear, too. He eats a single dish of carry out Chinese for dinner before covering the night's high society events where, on principle, he refuses to accept even a glass of water. His method of transportation is always his Schwinn and after fifty years of photographing for WWD and the NYT he's on his twenty-eighth bike, because twenty-seven have been stolen. But would a thrifty person refuse years of payment from the original Details because it was fun moonlighting work after his day job? The emotional poverty of his home life might be an extreme of his mantra that as a journalist he should be anonymous and invisible. In eighty-one years he has never had a romantic relationship.

Bill Cunningham New York was made by the husband and husband team of Richard Press (director) and Philip Gefter (producer). They tiptoe into his privacy. Bill cheerfully laughs, "Do you mean, Am I gay?" and says his family must have worried about their son making women's hats. (His clients were Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe. He thought they "weren't stylish.") The documentary took Press and Gefter ten years, eight to get Bill to agree and two to film and edit. The result is like a visual version of a John McPhee profile, enthralling for its unique personality even if you don't care about the topic. (Actually, Lauren Collins profiled him.) On camera interviews fondly capture famous and unknown peacocks, unequal in style but united in their admiration of Bill. It's a moving portrait. You won't soon forget the glimpse of his pillow, sheets and blanket on a few narrow boards between filing cabinets of his negatives. Or his joy and ebullience in pursuing beauty with a singular focus.

(Until the movie, listen to him narrate his work each week via the NYT fashion page.)

CLAG's 2nd Annual Rainbow LGBT Book Fair: "Largest in US"

Reader Chris says the 2nd annual Rainbow Book Fair is tomorrow, March 27, 11:00am to 5:30pm at 365 Fifth Ave. Their website claims it's the "largest LGBT book event in America." Free.

Click the flyer. A few key participants:

Nathaniel Frank, Unfriendly Fire

Sarah Schulman, Ties That Bind

G Winston James, Shaming the Devil

Joan Schenkar, The Talented Miss Highsmith

Brad Gooch, Flannery

Jessica Max Stein, Richard Hunt bio coming

Mike Luongo, Gay Travels in the Muslim World

Pamela Sneed, KONG And Other Works

Martin Wilson, What They Always Tell Us

WGA Panel on Black LGBT Characters in Hollywood

"Heterosexism is like racism," said Jasmine Love, a writer on The District, who dislikes the term homophobia. She was one of nine panelists at Tuesday's WGA forum Flipping the Script: Beyond Homophobia in Black Hollywood. Love's assessment of institutionalized bias affecting jobs and advancement may be familiar news but a recap of the panel has provoked much angry comment on Deadline Hollywood. The majority complain about the "whining" on the "idiotic issue" because "the fact is no one would go see a black gay comedy -- except Sean Penn." Many commenters, while professing respect for everyone, argue that because lgbt people comprise such a small percentage of the population we shouldn't expect visibility. I repeat them as a reminder of what agents of change are up against. Happily, the panel attracted a capacity crowd. WGA described it as examining "issues involving African-American gay and lesbian characters on the big and small screens. Discussion of both the positive and negative portrayals of such characters; the recurring homophobia (within black society as well as among black filmmakers and producers) that has limited or informed such portrayals; stereotyping controversies and contradictions; and the positive gains that have been made — and need to continue to be made."

Born March 26: Tennessee Williams

Is it a coincidence that the gay playwright the straight world most celebrated in the twentieth century was the one who presented the most tortured view of homosexuality? As academics have pointed out, in Tennessee Williams'  plays, gay life is equated with death: by alcoholism (Skipper in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Pulitzer Prize, Tony nomination, six Oscar nominations), suicide (Blanche's first husband in A Streetcar Named Desire; Pulitzer Prize, two Tonys, four Oscar wins of twelve nominations), murder and cannibalism (Sebastian in Suddenly, Last Summer; three Oscar nominations). Whereas his later work, dealing openly with gay relationships, was not praised, not prized, not adapted, and is not perpetually brought back to Broadway in a major revival! Does this say more about Williams, who might have needed the safety of the closet and the art of indirection, or about society's comfort levels pre, post, and post-post-Stonewall?

Granted, straight life in his work is no picnic either. The sole exception is The Rose Tattoo, his only happy ending in twenty-five plays. It's a heterosexualized version of his romance with Frank Merlo,

Precocious Not Precious: Gertrude & Alice in Two New Picture Books

Tired of hearing your precocious young friends exaggerate that NO ONE else in daycare gets Max Jacob and Guillaime Apollinaire? Celebrate the upcoming International Children's Book Day (Apr 2) by reading them Joan Yolleck's lovely debut children's book Paris in the Spring with Picasso, on sale this week. The story unfolds on a Saturday as people anticipate the evening salon in Stein and Toklas's apartment. Readers meet Apollinaire and Marie Laurencian, Max Jacob, Picasso and his girlfriend Fernande, and the dog Frika. Sprinkled with a few easy French phrases, the text also namechecks Parisian highlights Luxembourg Garden, 27 rue de Fleurus, Lapin Agile, Notre Dame, and the Circus Medrano.

Yolleck's story shows Gertrude and Alice (who is described as her "best friend," though they call each other "birdie" and "lovie") content in domestic bliss -- reading, preparing party food, fixing flowers -- before, while, and after their guests join them. Marjorie Priceman's loose, festive drawings are wonderfully inviting. (Don't judge her vivid colors by the washed out sample above.) The book ends with a spread of brief biographies and b&w photos of the five main figures where Toklas is described as "Stein's lifelong companion" and her own talents are championed.

At once more playful and more sophisticated is Jonah Winter's Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude, one of six picture books recently chosen for the ALA lgbt Rainbow List. As his title suggests, Winter's work vaguely echoes Stein's writing style. To the glee of a certain kind of child and the outrage of another type, the flap copy warns, "some words may appear, uninvited, but delighted in spite of their lightbulbs. But, but, but, but -- that doesn't make any sense! Yes!" The "simple" text employs artful repetition, often in ascending font sizes, as it focuses on Gertrude and Alice as well as Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, and the poodle Basket. Abstract in its sense of time, the story shows the couple at home, introduces their famous friends, conveys the excitement of their salon. Surprisingly, it ignores Paris but also depicts their summer days in the country, vegetable gardening, and driving a big pink car. Exactly matching the text's direct indirection and wit, Calef Brown's illustrations are elegant and quirky in a colorful, slightly subdued palette (lost in the quick snaps below).

Both books claim to be for ages 4 to 8, a too-low cut-off for two timeless treasures.

Gay Visibility Deathmatch: Sue Sylvester vs. Stewie Griffin

Cultural studies grad students can spend the rest of the day deconstructing 1) an out lesbian actress 2) playing a homophobic coach 3) arguing for greater lgbt visibility 4) so that she can oppress them. In this teaser for Glee's second season starting April 13, Sue Sylvester complains about "sneaky gays" blending in with the rest of society. She demands they "swish it up." In short, more like Stewie.

Born March 25: Elton John

250 million albums sold, more than 50 hits in the Top 40, 60 performances at Madison Square Garden (a world record), five Grammys, one Oscar, one CBE, and four decades of work totaling nearly 500 songs: Statistics can't begin to convey the phenomenon that is Elton John. When he was eleven, and still named Reginald Dwight, he heard a four-page piece by Handel at the Royal Academy of Music and promptly sat down at the piano and played it like a "gramophone record." In 1970, when he was twenty-three, he recorded his eponymous second album, which included the worldwide smash Your Song written in twenty minutes. By thirty-three he had released nineteen albums. In the 80s he slowed his output to exactly one album annually. In the 90s he reinvented himself yet again and, with Tim Rice, wrote the songs for The Lion King, propelling it to become the highest grossing 2-D animated film of all time and winning an Oscar and a Grammy for Can You Feel the Love Tonight? 

Blessing-Miles Tendi on Africa's Homophobia

A frequent writer on topics relating to his native Zimbabwe, Blessing-Miles Tendi has a brief essay in yesterday's Guardian about the origins of Africa's widespread but not unanimous homophobia. He argues that although a standard argument is Europeans introduced gay sex to Africa with colonialism,

"late 19th-century records on Africa and African oral history show that homosexual practices existed in pre-colonial Africa. One case in point are the Azande people in the north-east of modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where it was acceptable for kings, princes and soldiers to take young male lovers."

Tendi suggests the more accurate depiction is that Europeans brought homophobia, criminalizing same sex relations that had been legal before. Imported religion has and continues to further vilify homosexuality there.

Africans males' emasculation by colonialism and slavery also complicates the issue, says Tendi. He explains,

"The response of many Africans and African-Americans to European colonialism, racism and slavery was the construction of a black masculinity pitted against white supremacy. The enduring legacy of this is that black Africans and African-Americans often interpret homosexuals and white males alike as synonymous with femininity and vulnerability. From my experience as a black boy growing up in a white Zimbabwean neighbourhood and during my higher education in the west, I am all too conscious of how my masculinity is partly formed by continuing racial stereotypes of black men as sexually rapacious solely towards women. There is no scope for black male homosexuality in this pigeonhole."

Gawker: Regent / Here Media "Colossal Deadbeats"

Tough times. Last week and this, Gawker has run two stories about the ongoing claims that Regent / Here Media is not paying its bills. The parent company of Out, The Advocate, Alyson Books, Gay.com and other entities won't comment on the articles, which compile numerous complaints from freelancers who still haven't received checks up to six and seven months past their contractual payment dates. Each example adds "and the company has not volunteered any timeline for when it might pay up" or "the assigning editor is not returning emails." A typical grievance:

"I'm still owed over $3,000 from the company for work I did for Out.com last year. I also received sympathetic emails at the end of last year saying that they're doing their best to get payments out. I was told there was a 'priority' list of writers to be paid and I was on that list — this was in January, and I've still seen nothing from the company."

One former employee (who was laid off, so not neutral) likens the entire company to a Ponzi scheme:

"Basically, they aren't paying people because they don't have the money to pay them and they are putting them off over and over again until they do. It's like a Ponzi scheme. Your content is bringing them traffic and advertising money that they are using to pay the freelancers for content they produced six months ago. When they get too behind, they fire staff or close down a property to 'produce' money rather than listening to ways they could do things more profitably and more efficiently."

The second story, a week later, ends, "The company still has not responded to our message." 

Born March 24: Grethe Cammermeyer

Resistance and duty might be twin strands of Col. Grethe Cammermeyer's DNA. After all, she was born in Nazi-occupied Norway, where her parents smuggled weapons and housed rebels of the underground. Following her father's winning a Rockefeller fellowship as a doctor, the family immigrated to the US when she was nine, bad timing for a very tall science buff and jock girl in 1951. (She tried to cool her face by putting poison ivy leaves on her eyelids.) After graduating from the University of Maryland, she did her required basic training as part of the Army Student Nurse Program and within two years had married a serviceman. The next year, 1966, they both volunteered for Vietnam; Cammermeyer went first and was Head Nurse for a division. As their toured ended,

LGBT Ally Sherman Alexie Wins PEN Faulkner Award

Yay. Sherman Alexie has become the first Native American writer to win the nation's richest peer juried fiction prize, the PEN Faulkner Award. His fourth novel War Dances beat Barbara Kingsolver's story of a closeted artist in The Lacuna, Lorraine Lopez's Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories (from the University of Missouri press BkMk), Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs, and Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor.

Alexie identifies as straight yet his "semi-autobiographical" film The Business of Fancydancing, adapted from his first book of poems, is about a gay Native poet, Seymour Polatkin. In his public appearances and interviews, Alexie is an outspoken ally on lgbt rights and homophobia in the Native American community. Several of his books feature queer or two spirit characters, most prominently in his story collection The Toughest Indian in the World. When he ventured into YA territory and wrote The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian he won the 2007 National Book Award for young people's literature.

The three-person PEN Faulkner jury praised this novel saying, "War Dances taps every vein and nerve, every tissue, every issue that quickens the current blood-pulse: parenthood, divorce, broken links, sex, gender and racial conflict, substance abuse, medical neglect, 9/11, Official Narrative vs. What Really Happened, settler religion versus native spirituality; marketing, shopping and war, war, war. All the heartbreaking ways we don't live now — this is the caring, eye-opening beauty of this rollicking, bittersweet gem of a book."

The judges were Rilla Askew, Kyoko Mori, and Al Young.

Born March 23: J.C. Leyendecker

In the early 20th century when Arrow had 94% of market share, much of their success could be laid with illustrator J.C. Leyendecker -- he used his chiseled boyfriend as the model for the archetypal Arrow Collar Man. Born in Germany in 1874, Leyendecker moved with his family to Chicago when he was eight. He and his brother enrolled at the city's Art Institute before studying art nouveau at the Académie Julian in Paris. They returned to Chicago early in 1899 and by May Leyendecker received his first commission for a cover of the era's most famous magazine, The Saturday Evening Post. Throughout his career he would draw 321 more covers for them, creating the genre of "adorable" domestic chaos, stirring patriotism, family holidays, lovers' foibles, and youthful high spirits (with scrawny nudity) that today we associate with his Eve Harrington protege and successor Norman Rockwell. Leyendecker was slight and disliked confrontation; when his friends warned him Rockwell was stealing his style, he didn't protest. (Being a gay man and an immigrant in the early 20th century may also have amplified his instincts to avoid trouble.) One area in which he maintained preeminence was the blatant homoerotic. Leyendecker's men eternally give one another penetrating looks inside, outdoors, and on deck, and they're always thrusting elongated objects at happy angles from their bodies. He never met a muscle that didn't need to beef up, ripple, or glisten under his expert touch. As his biographers   explain, “Neighboring artists shared models with the brothers, which meant a seemingly endless train of attractive Greenwich Village lads parading through their chilly studio in the buff.” One was named Charles Beach. He was 17 and Leyendecker was 28. By all accounts Beach was both hot and not, given to self aggrandizing claims that he did Leyendecker's work (despite not being able to draw), along with the more typical fits of jealousy, insecurity, and tyranny. Margo Channing Norman Rockwell complained he never heard Beach say anything intelligent and called him "stupid." Nevertheless, Leyendecker and Beach moved into a New Rochelle mansion together and threw luxe parties attended by the jazz age set including Scott and Zelda. Inevitably, times changed, the commissions dwindled, and the money ran out. They had to dismiss their staff yet they stayed together a total of 49 years, until Leyendecker's death in 1951 when he instructed his private papers be destroyed. For more, read J.C. Leyendecker.

Leyendecker's artist brother F.X. Leyendecker also had an eye for masculine muscle, as with this barechested blacksmith, and for strategically placed missiles between shirtless swabbies (compare below). He became addicted to drugs and killed himself at 47.