Flavorwire Lists "50 Essential Works of LGBT Fiction"

Yesterday's list of fifty books Flavorwire considers essential queer fiction is sort of good, sort of awful. Yes, absolutely: Hollinghurst, Baldwin, Winterson, Forster, Mann, Sarah Waters, Isherwood, Renault, Proust. But the list includes far too many recent, first-time authors who are friends of the compiler? talented but have not yet reached the mastery of those omitted: Wilde, Waugh, Cheever, Cather, Capote, Colette, Gide, Firbank, William S Burroughs, Marguerite Yourcenar, Denton Welch, Colm Toibin, Michael Cunningham, Stephen McCauley, Alan Bennett, Philip Hensher, Peter Cameron, J.R. Ackerly, David Leavitt, Dale Peck, Dorothy Allison, Reinaldo Arenas, Paul Russell, Alison Bechdel, Jaime Manrique, E. Lynn Harris, Alan Gurganus, Katherine Forrest, Glenway Westcott, Jonathan Strong, Tove Jansson, and Tennessee Williams, to name a few. In the face of so many omissions, it's impossible to justify giving Larry Kramer two entries, for Faggots and The Normal Heart.

How do you feel about straight authors on a list of gay books? Intellectually, the work speaks for itself, period. Emotionally, it's tough to see so many dedicated writers above pushed aside for at least four non-gay authors who made it onto the list: Andre Aciman, Jeffrey Eugenides, Michael Chabon, and Stephen Chbosky. What do they offer that can't be found in a comparable book from a queer writer? By any yardstick, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is ten times better than The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Despite its shortcomings, the list also surprises, happily, with three lesser-known gems: At Swim, Two Boys [Kindle] by Jamie O’Neill, Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai, and Narrow Rooms by James Purdy.

I never see Flavorwire and would have missed this were it not for the intrepid Logan Ragsdale, a New York City area librarian.

Comments

[Suzanne Stroh]

Well written post, thanks. I agree with your chief complaint and might even go so far as to say that the inclusion of both Eugenides and Chabon felt so disheartening, the list instantly lost credibility with me at that point. Sticking to reportage of my emotional state, I had been worried about not seeing Wilde or Proust earlier...and had been pining for Leaves of Grass... and Olivia by Dorothy Strachey Bussey...and of course Portrait of a Marriage... and so the whole review of this list was terribly anxiety-producing. Thank god it's over. As for awarding points for cutting-edge works, who could leave out Hotel World by Ali Smith, which actually advanced literature from an LGBT platform? And if career-makers also get points: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein? It's not there?

[Jack M]

Of course there will be books that people feel were left out or were included wrongly, but a list like this is meant to provoke thought and conversation. All in all, I felt it was pretty good. What about The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren? Many think it's a landmark gay novel, and it was written by a straight woman. So what?

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