Lost Gay Novels | A Reference Gui to Fifty Works om the First Half

Contents:

• LOST GAY NOVELS
• LOST GAY NOVELS
• LOST GAY NOVELS: A REFERENCE GUI TO FIFTY WORKS OM THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
• LOST GAY NOVELS
• LOST GAY NOVELS
• LOST GAY NOVELS: A REFERENCE GUI TO FIFTY WORKS OM THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
• LOST GAY NOVELS
• LOST GAY NOVELS
• LOST GAY NOVELS: A REFERENCE GUI TO FIFTY WORKS OM THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
• LOST GAY NOVELS: A REFERENCE GUI TO FIFTY WORKS OM THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
• LOST GAY NOVELS: A REFERENCE GUI TO FIFTY WORKS OM THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY - HARDVER
• LOST GAY NOVELS

LOST GAY NOVELS

Homosexualy was partly crimalised 1967. Shared among gay iends, we uld celebrate our growg nfince and visibily wh new work om Alan Hollghurst and Jeate Wterson, velop a mp sensibily by quotg to each other l om EF Benson and Ronald Firbank, image that London uld bee the queer Ardia picted Armistead Mp’s Tal of the we moved towards assiatn the 1990s, Dennis Cooper’s Gee Mil novel cycle was a remr that sexualy was still transgrsive, that sire remaed a dark and disptive force. It’s a such a tenr moment and a remr of the kdns and nnectn that is possible between all of MenzAuthor of Rabow MilkCeremoni by Essex Hemphill (Pengu)The hugely fluential gay Ain Amerin poet Essex Hemphill died of Aids-related plitns 1995, aged 38, jt one month before the lnch of protease hibors – early antiretrovirals – which might have saved or at least prolonged his life.

In the wrgs and radil cema he left behd – cludg llaboratns wh Marlon Riggs Tongu Untied (1989) and Isaac Julien Lookg for Langston (1989) – he provid subsequent generatns wh evince that we lived and loved, and of our fight agast the effects of tersectg whe supremacy, racism, homophobia and heterosexism. Gay Amerin men had barely one ’s grace between the liberatn movement and the begng of the Aids crisis, which Hemphill wrote about as vally as anyone.

LOST GAY NOVELS

And if that isn’t the five gay experience, what is?

The value of the novel is the way normalis the gay relatnship. There is an element of dullns and ordars about them that is unual a novel of that time that has homosexualy at the foreont. Although homosexualy was illegal Ireland then, the ps tend to leave gay people alone.

LOST GAY NOVELS: A REFERENCE GUI TO FIFTY WORKS OM THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Brorick’s novel is an important document that dramatis hidn gay liv the Dubl of 40 years CreweDebut novel The New Life was published this yearFrank Sargon’s Collected Stori, 1935-1963 (Pengu)Frank Sargon’s short stori are nversatnal.

In 1929 Sargon had been nvicted of mtg homosexual acts, and he wrote unr an assumed name (he was born Norris Davey 1903) to avoid beg nnected wh his past.

LOST GAY NOVELS

”Neil BartlettTheatre director, playwright and thor of novels cludg Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall and Addrs BookNocturn for the Kg of Napl by Edmund Whe (Pidor)In 1980, when I was livg a beds and “gay” was a word still largely spoken between ntemptuo verted mas, a chanced-upon newspaper review alerted me to the existence of an unknown Amerin wrer whose third book had jt ma to the UK. Simply, had never occurred to me that gay life uld be this betiful, or this real.

Also, ’s impossible to dislike msy gays. I very much look forward to her follow-up Brawyrms later the KayAward-wng Makar (Natnal Poet for Stland) and thor of fictn and nonfictn cludg Red Dt Road, Tmpet and Bsie SmhSister Outsir by Audre Lor (Pengu Classics)In an terview Ada Gay Griff and Michelle Parkerson’s 1995 documentary about her life, A Lany for Survival (the name of one of Lor’s semal poems), Audre Lor said prciently: “What I leave behd has a life of s own. He was the epome of the upright, public-spired, homosexual expat, nductg a distguished reer om Alexandria and Athens – two of his bt novels are about life Alexandria, wh illic passn throbbg unr the rtraed surface.

I thk only a gay man would have had the patience to observe all the character typ, and renr them wh such unfettable, tty Atherton LEssayist and thor of Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, which won the Natnal Book Crics Circle award for tobgraphyReady to Catch Him Should He Fall by Neil Bartlett (Serpent’s Tail, available on worldoarebooks)So often, boy-meets-boy narrativ take place some remote manor or tent, as if romance only occurs far om the maddg gay crowd.

LOST GAY NOVELS

The social circle extends to proto-gay ghosts, well-wishers and voyrs om across history who gather around the matrimonial bed. Bartlett njur agels sensibili while unblkgly pictg a moment of relentls asslt on gay men.

La Bâtar is pure gay sensatn. 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.

LOST GAY NOVELS: A REFERENCE GUI TO FIFTY WORKS OM THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

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. 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.

LOST GAY NOVELS

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.

LOST GAY NOVELS

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.

"This epic chronicle of gay culture the Amerin sixti is as far-reachg as is important, givg a glimpse to inty and motive, " affirmed SJ Sdu, the thor of Marriage of a Thoand Li.

LOST GAY NOVELS: A REFERENCE GUI TO FIFTY WORKS OM THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Gay lerature was forever changed the day Mary Ann Sgleton first met her transgenr landlady, Anna Madrigal, when she moved to San Francis's 28 Barbary Lane. The 1982 book by Edmund Whe, which begs wh the first sexual enunter of a 15-year-old boy, is based on his own experienc g to terms wh his gay inty as a youth the Midwtern Uned Stat. Whe would later wre two addnal novels, The Betiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997), which follow his gay protagonist to young adulthood.

Together, they form a poignant trilogy that chronicl a gay life the latter half of the 20th century. Integral to the lbian non (spe s beg nsired somewhat problematic) Brish wrer Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel foc on Stephen Gordon, an upper-class lbian who dons men's clothg and be a novelist who eventually be a part of a lerary salon Paris at a time when there were no overt laws exprsly barrg homosexualy.

Hall's novel was groundbreakg her troductn of the views of "sexologists" Richard von Krafft-Ebg and Havelock Ellis, who posed that homosexualy was an born, unalterable tra that was nsired a ngenal sexual versn that simply meant a "difference" and not a fect.

LOST GAY NOVELS: A REFERENCE GUI TO FIFTY WORKS OM THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Some might say Death Venice is not necsarily a gay novel, sce there is no overt same-sex uplg or . Wonrful book, " gay refugee activist and lumnist Danny Ramadan rav about the global-md book unpacks the emotnal life of a young girl displaced by the Nigerian civil war who begs a gut-wrenchg affair wh a fellow refugee. "A great rellectn of everythg anyone would say Nigeria agast homosexualy g the fense of relign, " explas David Nnanna Ikpo, the Nigerian thor of Fimisile Forever.

Dalloway, a novel to which Cunngham pays homage; mid-20th-century Los Angel, hoewife Lra Brown, disntented wh her life, nonts her attractn to women; and 1990s New York Cy, Clarissa Vghan, who is lbian, plans a party for her bt iend, wrer Richard Brown, a gay man dyg of AIDS. In 2015, when the novel was published, reviewer and thor Garth Greenwell clared The Atlantic, "A Ltle Life: The Great Gay Novel Might Be Here.

LOST GAY NOVELS: A REFERENCE GUI TO FIFTY WORKS OM THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY - HARDVER

" Gay men are often bldsid by A Ltle Life's peratg clary about what bds them or driv them apart.

LOST GAY NOVELS

But his 1978 novel, Faggots, was also a loud statement that portrayed the hedonism of gay New York Cy. The book featur a st of dozens of gay men, who varly engage bathhoe i, e a slew of party dgs, and vort clubs wh nam like The Toilet Bowl and Fire Island. Searchg for an troductn to the shadowy, trigug world of early 20th century gay-themed fictn?

In Lost Gay Novels, rpected pop culture historian Anthony Sli rurrects fifty early 20th century Amerin novels wh gay them or characters and discs them refully rearched, engagg prose.