Wisns middle school featur 'This Book is Gay' library, stirrg onle outrage | WLUK

Contents:

• CLASSIC GAY MALE LERATURE
• VTAGE GAY FICTN
• GAY CLASSIC BOOKS
• WISNS MIDDLE SCHOOL FEATUR 'THIS BOOK IS GAY' LIBRARY, STIRRG ONLE OUTRAGE

CLASSIC GAY MALE LERATURE

Recently, Alan Hollghurst said the gay novel is ad. "There was an urgency, a novelty to the whole thg, " said the gay thor, who won the Man Booker Prize for The Le of Bety.

" Maybe that's bee Baldw said the book isn't actually about beg gay. "Gvanni's Room is not really about homosexualy, " said Baldw a 1980 terview about queer life.

VTAGE GAY FICTN

Go Tell It on the Mounta, for example, is not about a church, and Gvanni is not really about homosexualy. SJ Sdu, thor of Marriage of a Thoand Li, lled , "One of the first Anglophone works to challenge the trope of the sad/suicidal gays who die at the end, this book gave a blueprt of what queer fictn uld look like. Forster (A Passage to India, A Room Wh a View, Howards End) wrote the benchmark gay novel Mrice cir 1913, was published posthumoly a lh tale of manners, posn, and sire, the tular character meets and falls for his classmate Clive while at Oxford.

GAY CLASSIC BOOKS

The pair embark on a two-year affair until Clive leav Mrice to marry a woman and live out his proscribed life as part of the land gentry, leavg Mrice shambl and seekg to cure his Forster's novel do not end gay tragedy. The thor of Night Drop, Marshall Thornton lled the novel "the origal gay romance. Alan Hollghurst famoly qutned the future of the gay novel this year, which is strikg sce he's often viewed as helpg make queer books accsible to a mastream dience.

WISNS MIDDLE SCHOOL FEATUR 'THIS BOOK IS GAY' LIBRARY, STIRRG ONLE OUTRAGE

Hollghurst set his pen on the sexual hypocrisi of homophobic policians, many of whom had their own discretns behd closed doors. The book follows Nick Gut, a gay graduate stunt unofficially adopted by the fay of a schoolmate.

The queer g-of-age novel about Jim Willard and his search for love was the first novel om a rpected wrer (Gore Vidal) to speak directly and sympathetilly about the gay experience an era when homosexualy was still very much taboo.

The book is remembered today for this legacy as well as for var them -- Hollywood's glass closet, beg gay the ary, the poisono effects of homophobia on society -- that still reverberate today. The only novel by the great Osr Wil may not be overtly gay, but there's plenty of gay subtext there for the reful rear - about as much gay subtext as a popular thor uld get away wh 's iends Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton exprs tense admiratn for his bety, and passag that show Basil's feelgs for Dorian as more clearly homoerotic were excised by an edor, acrdg to Nicholas Frankel, who eded an edn prentg Wil's origal text the text as origally published has referenc to Dorian's rptn of not only young women but young men: "There was that wretched boy the Guards who mted suici. Cy of Night, a 1963 novel by John Rechy, is a semal piece of fictn that follows the life of a gay htler New York Cy, Los Angel, New Orleans, and San Francis.