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.