Band of Thebes

Peter Cameron Posts Book Blog

Lucky us. Peter Cameron has made public his book blog, Extreme Legibility, collecting brief thoughts on recent readings since January 2011. Much to his credit, he posts even his disappointments. But the biggest thrill is seeing a great novelist assess his equals. Naturally, the other thrill is discovering unknown books. Beyond her NYRB Classic The Vet's Daughter, Barbara Comyns makes two appearances here with Mr. Fox and The House of Dolls. And Peter finds another extremely intriguing work by G.F. Green. Of The Power of Sergeant Streater he writes:

"An amazing book.  Beautifully written, first of all -- as atmospheric and lush as Green's In the Making, but with a stronger narrative and more clarity. A novel in three distinct parts, set somewhere in southeast Asia during or after WWII. Malaysia? Ceylon? I'm not sure. The book concerns three British civil servants who are all almost fatally attracted to the beautiful, sweet, sarong-wearing local boys who are their servants and/or catamites. The men are also attracted to one another, but unable to act on these desires, and so channel this repression into foiling one another's romances. The frankness of homosexual attraction and desire in this nearly all-male world, which seems to permeate everyone and everything, is both startling and tremendously exciting and erotic. It is never questioned or judged, and in this way this book seems revolutionary. I can think of no other book that is so overtly and unapologetically queer."

Born April 30: Alice B. Toklas

Born in 1877 in San Francisco, educated in Seattle, Alice Babette Toklas’s life might be said to have started when she was thirty and went to Paris, where she met Gertrude Stein the day she arrived. They were inseparable for the next thirty-nine years, surviving two world wars, the heyday of the Lost Generation, and all their famous friends. Their love made them truly partners, with Toklas as Stein’s secretary, editor, critic, and muse. Although a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, their books' titles could be deceptive: Stein’s bestselling The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is really about Stein and Toklas' immortal The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook is as much a reflection on how the French eat and a memoir of feeding Flanner, Picasso, Hemingway, Wilder, Thomson, et al, as it is a collection of recipes, of which there are over three hundred. (The famous brownie recipe was contributed by Brion Gysin, a gay Brit who got a Fulbright to the Sorbonne, developed William Burroughs' "cut up" technique, owned a nightclub in Tangier, and had his ashes scattered in the Caves of Hercules. The recipe was edited out of the US edition but appeared in the UK.) Toklas also wrote an autobiography, What Is Remembered, which self-effacingly, almost self-erasingly, ends with Stein’s death even though she outlived her by two decades. In those final years Toklas was plagued with financial difficulties. She had no recourse after Stein’s heirs took all the famous paintings left to her, and she had no willpower, as a newly converted Catholic, to resist the church's extortion promise that with large enough donations, Toklas could buy Stein's soul out of purgatory and into heaven. Happily, the Jewish lesbians are buried adjacent to each other in Père Lachaise cemetery. Celebrate today by rereading their books, or Monique Truong’s much-praised novel The Book of Salt which imagines their lives through the eyes of their gay Vietnamese cook.

After Chauncey's Pansies, Meet The Nance's Chauncey

By coincidence, Douglas Carter Beane's new play The Nance, which brings to life the era of pansy acts and burgeoning antigay blacklash described in Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncey, is about a nelly performer named Chauncey Miles (Nathan Lane). Chauncey, a middle-aged Republican actor, plays a superswish character in a fading New York burlesque lifted by the sudden popularity of his pansy act beloved by both gay and straight audiences. It is 1937 and in advance of the coming World's Fair and a tight mayoral race, officials want to clean up the city: Police raids on gay bars expand to theaters, with fines, raids, and ultimately a ban on degenerate performers. In typically twisted tradition, the city official leading the ban on pansy performances is himself a closet case, and the law he's pushing to ban gay performers will still allow cross-dressing. I don't think The Nance mentions it, but of course the spreading antigay sentiment was also enshrined in Hollywood's infamous Hays Code of 1934 banning, among other things, "sex perversion."

Offstage, either from this growing repression, his long self-hatred, or simple preference, Chauncey prefers one night stands, yet he agrees to a relationship with Ned, a much younger naive newcomer he picks up in a lavender automat. The untenable imbalances of their situation (Chauncey wants an open relationship; Ned needs monogamy) combined with the stress of neverending fear of police raids and the probability of Chauncey losing his career are juggled with other plot strands emphasizing hopes raised and dashed -- notably unions, strikes, and Communism. Already groaning with too much material, the play is constantly interrupted by burlesque performances that overstay their welcome. Corny routines compete with unsexy strip numbers. Even without the edits it craves, The Nance has some powerful moments and makes important points about a forgotten era in our history.

Jacobi, McKellen Get 'Vicious'

Poor you if you thought the gay comedy Vicious (debuting tonight on ITV) was going to serve actual queer viciousness. Predictably cozy, the sitcom about a gay couple who've been together 48 years may nevertheless elicit a laugh or two thanks to its stars.

Publishing Triangle Winners

      

Lots of repeat winners last night as Trebor Healey took his second Ferro-Grumley Award and former lifetime achievement winners Bechdel (2012) and Bram (2003) both won their nonfiction categories.

Lifetime achievement: John D'Emilio, author/co-author of Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture, and Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University.

The Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction: A Horse Named Sorrow by Trebor Healey

Debut Fiction: Monstress: Stories by Lysley Tenorio

Lesbian Nonfiction: Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

Gay Nonfiction: Eminent Outlaws by Christopher Bram

Lesbian Poetry: Song and Spectacle by Rachel Rose

Gay Poetry: Looking for the Gulf Motel by Richard Blanco

Why Is Obama Praising Bush on His Global HIV/AIDS Program?

Pathetic. Of all the half-straws to grasp at in his remarks at yesterday's dedication of the Bush Library in Dallas, why did Obama highlight Bush's global hiv/aids initiative? And why did NPR use this as their soundbyte? Bush's PEPFAR program took money away from NGOs and threw billions to antigay evangelical groups whose solution to the crisis is to promote "abstinence until marriage." Deaths from the disease are said to have decreased under the program but infection rates remain the same. Or new infections are rising. Some close observers have felt the faith-based approach was more about promoting religion and recruiting non-Christians than about teaching prevention to those most at risk. Cary Alan Johnson cites officials' "stunning disregard for the needs of men who have sex with men and other hiv-vulnerable groups." Read his 2007 report "Off the Map: How HIV Programs Are Failing Same-Sex Practicing People in Africa" or Scott Everertz' 2010 paper, "How Ideologogy Trumped Science: Why PEPFAR Has Failed To Meet Its Potential." 

Other point: It's time to end the nonsense of individual presidential libraries. A president's papers belong to nation and ought to be housed in the Library of Congress or the National Archives, not these expensive shrines to vanity.

Marriage Equality: France, RI, DE, NV, Santa Fe, Colombia

Defying antigay mobs outside, and antigay protesters in the gallery (about whom the Speaker said, "Get these enemies of democracy outside parliament!"), the French Assembly approved marriage equality by a wide margin, 331 to 225. It is the 14th nation to legalize same-sex marriage. Three other countries (Mexico, Brazil, and the US) have marriage equality in some states.

Yesterday, Rhode Island's senate passed 26-12. Previously, the house passed a similar measure 51-19, but because the senate bill differs it has to go back to the house. The governor says he will sign it. 

When that bill becomes law in August, 16.1% of US citizens will live in states that recognize marriage equality.

On Tuesday, Delaware's house approved a marriage equality bill in a 23-18 vote. Now it goes to the senate where a close vote is expected. 

Also Tuesday, the Nevada senate voted 12-9 to begin the process to reverse the state's ban on marriage equality. During the debate, lawmaker Kelvin Atkinson came out.

Last night, the Santa Fe City Council voted 5-1 (with two abstaining) to approve marriage equality and urge county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The mayor supports the measure, which is seen as largely symbolic .

Yesterday, Colombia's parliament rejected a marriage equality bill 51-17. Armando Benedetti, who drafted the bill, said, “Those who vote against this project ... would have voted in favour of slavery.”

Born April 25: Andy Bell

After co-founding and leaving Depeche Mode, after co-founding Yaz and leaving Alison Moyet, Vince Clarke advertised in Melody Maker for a singer for his new duo and plucked a gay meatpacker (literally) born in Dogsthorpe. With his high voice, high energy, and high style, Andy Bell put the disco in Erasure's discography: Who Needs Love Like That, Oh, L'amour, Sometimes, It Doesn't Have To Be, Victim of Love, Chains of Love, and A Little Respect, among many other singles that have, since 1985, propelled them to record sales of 25 million worldwide. Openly out while others cowered, Andy appeared on many gay charity albums like Red Hot + Blue, events like Red Hot + Dance, the True Colors Tour, the No H8 photo campaign, and he's headlining St Louis Pride in June. Though the Brit lives in Spain, the day of the US Supreme Court's DOMA hearing, he tweeted the video of A Little Respect. Middling interest in Erasure's recent albums of 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2011, have led to... a Christmas album coming in November. Andy is 49 today. His partner of 25+ years, Paul Hickey, died at 62 last April.

Michael Pollan's Cooked

The other instant bestseller of interest out yesterday is Michael Pollan's Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation [Kindle]. It's his seventh book and, yes, we've been here before with other authors, but as a nature writer Pollan is going to make his usual interesting connections between your kitchen and the wider world.

At least all his success has not co-opted his straight talk. From a chat with New York:

"So you’ve been disappointed in the Obamas?
"I’m disappointed. I think she’s done some very positive things. She’s elevated the conversation. The planting of the garden at the White House was a powerful step... I think that the rest of the administration has been very disappointing—in the East Wing they get it, not in the West Wing so much. They’ve backed off whenever challenged. Even voluntary marketing guidelines have been shot down. Voluntary guidelines! There has been more support for farm to school, there have been some improvements in lunch programs. But it’s not what we needed or what we hoped for."

For more disappointment, read this story posted today about the Obama administration rolling back USDA's oversight of the nation's biggest chicken and turkey slaughterhouses.

Born April 24: Patty Schemel

You think Courtney was the only complicated chick in Hole? Drummer Patty Schemel refused to take part in the March 1994 intervention to get Kurt off drugs because she was addicted to heroin and didn't want to be hypocrite. (Patty had been Kurt's first choice to replace Nirvana's original drummer Chad Channing, until Kurt heard Dave Grohl's audition, when she was bumped to second choice.) Famously, she split from Hole before their recording of Celebrity Skin -- maybe because of the drugs, maybe because the producer wanted her gone -- but she still appears on the album cover because she co-wrote many of the songs, even though she doesn't perform them. She was supposed to be in the video for the first single, but didn't show up. That break didn't end her relationship with Courtney. Later they formed the short-lived band Bastard, and she co-wrote and performed song's on Courtney's solo album America's Sweetheart. Patty lives with her wife Christina Soletti and their daughter in Los Angeles.

Patty is the subject of the documentary Hit So Hard, which features interviews with all four Hole members. Its premiere at New Directors New Films got them all in same room together for the first time in thirteen years. Director David Ebersole's next doc is about Cher's mom, Georgia Holt, which premieres on Lifetime next week, May 6.

David Sedaris's New Essay Collection On Sale Today

The long wait is over for David Sedaris's Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls [Kindle], a return to form with personal essays after that wee, twee bestiary that was his last book. Many of these pieces once again feature his stalwart partner Hugh, and again revisit the perils of living abroad, now in England. Critics agree, the collection is "gut-bustingly funny" and, repeatedly, "touching."

LAT: "Sedaris is a remarkably skilled storyteller and savvy essayist. He weaves together vivid images and sensations into a coherent whole that packs a serious emotional punch... And based on this latest collection, he's getting only better." 

EW: "Artfully milked embarrassing personal incidents for literary laughs... There are plenty of well-cut gems, including one about an ill-fated adoption of some sea turtles that's both hilarious and touching." 

NYDN: "Fresh....funny, whimsical, unexpected, and never obvious....Who would anticipate that an encounter with an Australian bird could be so damn touching?" 

People: "Glorious....What makes Sedaris's work transcendent is its humanity....He's the best there is."

Does Jesus Really Love Him?

It sounds like a book from the 70s, or the 90s, but Princeton grad, TIME reporter-at-large, and lifelong Christian, Jeff Chu recently toured the country asking every kind of religious leader Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America [Kindle]. Chu's blend of memoir and reporting has earned great reviews almost everywhere, including Dan Savage on the cover of the NYTBR a week ago: "a fascinating, thoughtful, and important book." Library Journal calls it "poignant, at times painful, and spiced with wry humor," and Frank Bruni writes, "Jeff’s own story makes me hopeful. It’s one of grace."

Again sounding outdated at a time when marriage equality now enjoys majority support nationwide, not as a sudden turnaround but as the result of gradual, steady gains of about two percenage points a year since 2004 (read Nate Silver), Harper scarily describes it thus:

"From Brooklyn to Nashville to California, from Westboro Baptist Church and their 'God Hates Fags' protest signs, to the pioneering Episcopalian bishop Mary Glasspool—who proclaims a message of liberation and divine love, Chu captures spiritual snapshots of Christian America at a remarkable moment, when tensions between both sides in the culture wars have rarely been higher. Funny and heartbreaking, perplexing and wise, Does Jesus Really Love Me? is an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual pilgrimage that reveals a nation in crisis."

This is not Chu's fault. But it's worth noting that publishers are still harping on gay culture wars when even Rush Limbaugh has conceded defeat, saying, "The issue is lost. I don’t care what the Supreme Court does. [Gay marriage] is inevitable."

Born April 22: John Waters

The oddball joy of his movies extends to real life: Last May, at 66, John Waters hitchhiked alone from Baltimore to San Francisco. Fifteen rides with total strangers took him eight days, and he says of his drivers, “Pot smokers, cops, I got everybody. And everybody was lovely.” An exercise in giving up control from his over-scheduled life, the trip will be the heart of his next book, tentatively titled Carsick. He explains, "The first half is a little novella. I imagine the 15 best rides that could ever happen, and I did the 15 worst rides that could ever happen."

His trashy yet sweet movies are part of the permanent collection at MoMA, but beyond the films John Waters has written four books, published three volumes of photographs, and his artwork has been shown in many museums and galleries internationally. As for the movies, he's made sixteen, with his best work clustered from 1972 to 1988: Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Polyester and Hairspray starring the incomparable Divine [also pictured] who was his special ally since their shared childhood in Maryland. 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. His children's Christmas movie starring Johnny Knoxville and Parker Posey, endearingly titled Fruitcake, has been canceled, as has the sequel New Line convinced Waters to write, Hairspray 2: White Lipstick, imagining Tracy in the late 60s during the British Invasion and Vietnam. His wonderful memoir Role Models was the best LGBT book of 2010 according to Bill Clegg and Sebastian Stuart.

Los Angeles Times 2012 Book Prize Winners

    

Announced last night, the 2012 LAT Book Prize winners are

FICTION:  Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk [Kindle]

FIRST FICTION:  Maggie Shipstead, Seating Arrangements

GRAPHIC WORK:  Sammy Harkham, Everything Together: Collected Stories

CURRENT INTEREST:  Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers

BIOGRAPHY:  Robert Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

HISTORY:  Fergus M. Bordewich, America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union

SCIENCE:  Florence Williams, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History

MYSTERY/THRILLER:  Tana French, Broken Harbor

YA:  A.S. King, Ask the Passengers

POETRY:  Louise Glück, Poems 1962-2012

Aaron Hamburger Goes Searching for Janet Frame

Who are the best people on earth? Readers. And none more so than the semi-obsessive literary sort who make religions of their beloved favorite writers. Aaron Hamburger (whom you know for his fine gay stories and novel Faith for Beginners) traveled halfway around the world for A Literary Pilgrimmage: In Search of Janet Frame's New Zealand. Inevitably, he discovers many locals who have never read her, or even heard of her, but he also finds the godson of a gay writer, Frank Sargeson, who despite his own impoverished circumstances, gave shelter to Frame for sixteen months. Aaron writes:

"Cole told us that his godfather had been a solicitor until his arrest for indecency (i.e., gay sex) in a public toilet. After the arrest, Sargeson gave up his career, lifestyle, and even his old name and moved to his family’s “bach” — New Zealand slang for a summer home — to write fiction full-time. Here, in this tiny spartan house, he lived until his death in 1982, surviving on his meager writing income as well as his vegetable garden, where he grew such exotic European plants as tomatoes and zucchini.

"Cole went on to explain that before the opening of the Harbour Bridge in 1959, the North Shore had been a sleepy farming area mostly cut off from the main city of Auckland, and Esmonde Road a quiet cul-de-sac terminating in a mangrove swamp. This cheap, isolated area attracted a community of writers eager to live the bohemian life free from the constraints of New Zealand’s strict middle-class conventions.

"Also, as an openly gay man in a country where homosexuality was criminalized until 1986, Sargeson carried an additional burden. “I remember once there was a heavy knock at the door and his face went all white,” said Cole. “He was afraid it was the police.”

"In Janet Frame, Frank Sargeson saw a fellow misfit, an artist who could thrive only by surviving on society’s margins. He invited her to live in a shack (now demolished) in his garden to work on her writing undisturbed."

Read Aaron's full essay.

Thanks to the Jane Campion film from 1990, Frame's best known work is the second volume of her autobiography, An Angel at My Table. Among many honors late in life, she was awarded an OBE. She died in 2004, having written 12 novels, 3 volumes of stories, and a storm of poems. In 2010, The New Yorker ran an unpublished bit of fiction, Gavin Highly. If you want more about her life from another perspective, try Michael King's biography Wrestling with the Angel.

Cannes: Ozon, Coens, Polanski, Payne, and Liberace in Competition

The full line-up of the 66th Cannes Film Festival includes the gay glitterbomb Behind the Candelabra and a new new movie from Francois Ozon (whose old new movie opens tomorrow in the US), and many other treats in and out of competition. Speaking of the glitters that aren't gold: I think the revamped Gatsby trailer is among the worst I've ever seen.   

Opening film: The Great Gatsby, dir: Baz Luhrmann
Closing film: Zulu, dir: Jérôme Salle

Competition
Only God Forgives, dir: Nicolas Winding-Refn
La Grande Bellezza, dir: Paolo Sorrentino
Behind The Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh
The Immigrant, dir: James Gray
Venus In Fur, dir: Roman Polanski
Straw Shield, dir: Takashi Miike
Nebraska, dir: Alexander Payne
Jeune Et Jolie, dir: Francois Ozon
The Past, dir: Asghar Farhadi
Inside Llewyn Davis, dir: Joel & Ethan Coen
Jimmy P., dir: Arnaud Desplechin
Heli, dir: Amat Escalante
Grisgris, dir: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Like Father Like Son, dir: Hirokazu Kore-Eda
La Vie D’Adèle, dir: Abdellatif Kechiche
Borgman, dir: Alex Vann Warmerdam
A Touch Of Sin, dir: Zhangke Jia
Michael Kohlhaas, dir: Arnaud Despallières
Un Château En Italie, dir: Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi

Un Certain Regard

The Bling Ring, dir: Sofia Coppola (Opening film)
Omar, dir: Hany Abu-Assad
Death March, dir: Adolfo Alix, Jr
Fruitvale: dir: Ryan Coogler
The Bastards, dir: Claire Denis

London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp

If Band of Thebes had a book club, the next selection would be Jonathan Kemp's novel London Triptych, finally out in North America after its debut wowed British readers way back in 2010. Like Michael Cunningham's triple-threaded riff on Virginia Woolf, London Triptych exists in three eras -- 1890s, 1950s, 1990s -- each echoing the experience of young hustlers and older gay clients, spinning out from the Oscar Wilde rent boy trial. The Hours won a Pulitzer and London Triptych won the Authors Club Prize (established in 1955), besting all its straight competition including the Whitbread/Costa winner for best first novel. Judge Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, said Kemp's book has “astonishingly textured prose [and] wonderfully defined narrative voices.” The book was also shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize and the Polari Book Prize. Clayton Littlewood called it "an amazing book. This is the best gay novel to be published in many years... It is literary fiction at its best." And the Times Literary Supplement praised Kemp's evocation of London, saying the city itself is as much a character as his three protagonists. Read it.

Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist

Formerly the Orange Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction has announced its shortlist:

• Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
• A.M. Homes, May We Be Forgiven
• Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior
• Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
• Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette
• Zadie Smith, NW

The winner will be announced June 5 in London.

Uruguay, New Zealand Will Be 12th, 13th Nations with Marriage Equality

Following last week's overwhelming victories in the senate (23-8) and house (71-21) passing marriage equality in Uruguay, a similar bill yesterday passed on its third try in New Zealand's parliament, 77-44. Watch the video below to see the happy gallery and politicians SINGING in celebration. The law will take effect in about four months. NZ and Uruguay will become the 12th and 13th nations with marriage equality. The first was The Netherlands in 2001.

(Other than showering with a kiwi rugby team, by far the best introductions to queer New Zealand are Chris Brickell's book Mates and Lovers and the awesome documentary Topp Twins.)

In France, the contested bill has passed tough votes in the senate and assembly and faces only the final vote next week. The pro-equality government moved that date earlier from May to avoid more mass protests against gay marriage.

The ten countries that currently enjoy marriage equality are Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Iceland, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Canada, and South Africa.

In the US, the next likeliest state to get gay nups is Delaware, which introduced a new bill earlier this month. (Fast work for the Small Wonder that only got civil unions in 2011.) Illinois, Minnesota, and Rhode Island are also working toward passage of similar measures. Advocates in California, New Jersey, and Hawaii, all previously cheated from their right to marry, continue their fights, too.

Born April 17: Chavela Vargas

A late bloomer, perhaps, but what an extraordinary flower -- Mexican singer Chevela Vargas did not release her first album until she was 42, didn't come out as a lesbian until she was 81, and didn't debut at Carnegie Hall until she was 83. What was she doing all those years before recording Noche de Bohemia in 1961? Well, she dressed as a man, often in her signature red jorongo, smoked cigars, drank heavily, and packed a pistol, so obviously she was busy with more than singing rancheras in the streets. And maybe she had an affair Frida Kahlo (as Josephine Baker had). Since that first record, she has released more than eighty albums. Her great fame of the 1960s and 70s subsided when she retired to battle her alcoholism. She returned to performing at 72 in 1991 in Mexico City. Since then her music has been widely used in films and she has appeared singing in several movies including Almodovar's Flower of My Secret, Taymor's Frida, and Innartu's Babel. All I can say is buy her, beware: The first time you hear Chavela unleash her power midway through the quiet Paloma Negra you might drop whatever you're holding. She died last year at 93.