The Gay Men's Edition

— this issue sponsored by — Green Candy Press Publisher of Let's Shut Out the World by Kevin Bentley &  Six Positions: Sex Writing  by Andy Quan

By Richard Labonte

Kensington Books: High Art, Low Art, & Commerce

14 From Kensington This Summer and Fall

You Can Say You Knew Me When is about a father and a son: Jamie is an underemployed, under-motivated San Francisco semi-slacker, eking out just enough income for rent and weed and long estranged from his homophobic father. Father Teddy, dead as the novel opens, comes to life in the form of letters Jamie unearths in the family attic when he goes home to help his stressed straight sister handle post-funeral affairs. Those letters set Jamie delving, somewhat obsessively, into his dad’s past – a “beat” year he spent in San Francisco in the early 1960s, emulating Jack Kerouac, hanging out with a covey of young writers, artists, and bartenders – and, to Jamie’s amazement, flirting with the homosexuality he so despised in his son. Soehnlein’s novel is splendidly textured: it’s set in those heady couple of years before the dot-com bubble burst, captures nicely the goofy insouciance and insolvency of adults who haven’t quite grown up, and crafts a painful family dynamic that’s probably all too familiar to many gay readers – but that eschews cliché.
 
Two from the African-American niche:
The first two Kensington novels with an African-American hue are as different as night and day: the first, published in April, is a prototypical Kensington romance, not as fluffy as most, with a mixed-race cast of characters; the second, out this month, is a rough-around-the-writing-edges story of ethnic friends and lovers moving through a Los Angeles most whites don’t see.
 
Bill Eisele’s debut coming-of-age Scrub Match ($14) is about Paul Carter, buppieish son of a disappointed black father and a supportive white mother, effectively a virgin after one abortive romance and desperate for true love when he flees the East coast for San Francisco. There he falls hard for Twitch, a quietly wealthy white boy who loves basketball with a passion that Paul is ready to share – but who in turn is attracted to another, brawnier, black player. Eisele’s novel – exploring the dynamic of biracial romance – is essentially about a black boy who loves basketball who loves a white boy who loves basketball (and who writes poetry) who loves another black boy who loves basketball. The ending isn’t happy-ever-after; rather, a lot of painful growing up goes on, a tone that adds some welcome heft to the romantic fluff.
Another review:
http://www.baywindows.com/media/paper328
/news/2005/06/30/Arts/He.Got.Game-959607.shtml
 
Frederick Smith’s Down for Whatever is narrated by Keith, a black professional who’s not too happy in love or in life, but is sustained by a quarrelsome, cavorting circle of almost-always-loving black and Latino friends – “a picture of gay L.A. we don’t see – men of color who like other men of color, and without drama,” as one character remarks at the end of the story. I’d guess that its appeal to white gay readers is less broad than that of Scrub Match, where the vernacular is more familiar and the characters are more ethnically mixed. For that very reason, Smith’s debut novel ought to be read outside of the audience Kensington is targeting it towards.
Author info:
http://www.fredericksmith.net
“Simply Fred’s” blog:
http://simplyfredsmith.blogspot.com/
2005_06_01_simplyfredsmith_archive.html
Another review:
http://brotha2brotha.blogspot.com/2005/04/down-for-whatever.html
 
Two that turn up the heat:
Scognamiglio’s first two forays onto the getting-glutted erotica field collect, in the first instance, almost every short story a newer writer has written, and, in the second, the decade-old oeuvre of an accomplished queer writer who’s moved on to more mature work… linked together by their shared marketing-inspired sub-titles, Tales of Erotica. Get it?
 
Boy meets boy. Boy wants boy. Boy satisfies boy. Most every one of the 28 erotic stories in Close Contact ($14) Sean Wolfe's imaginatively monotone collection follow that predictable sexual arc – imaginatively because the author works plausible settings and varied characters into the sex; monotone because, despite occasionally flashy prose and the odd flash of humor, every story's climax is all about the climax. In the first tale, "Badland's Bad Boy," a 27-year-old naif from small-town Texas (all the "boys" in story titles are in fact young men) finds, in a sex-soaked Castro Street bar, the man of color he's long had a hankering for; in the last tale, "Next Stop...Paradise," a college kid from Wichita, on his first visit to San Francisco, finds the sexual passion he's long dreamed of on the Market Street underground MUNI line. The settings in between vary – a frat house, a bathhouse, a city park, a dinner party, a wedding party, a rodeo – but the formulaic getting-it-on, getting-off riffs are better suited to one-handed pleasure than to literary delight. (From PW's review)
 
Hands on your boners, boys. "Tom Caffrey," one of the more popular porn writers of the 1990s, is back in Tangled Sheets: Tales of Erotica ($14). This hefty collection of well-wrought sex tales reprints two entire BadBoy books, Hitting Home (1994) and Tales from the Men's Room (1996), as well as work that appeared only in magazines, and – best of all – a handful of original stories. As he notes in a generous introduction, Michael Thomas Ford adopted the Caffrey nom de porn because, back when he started his erotica run, he was also writing for a nongay teen market. Since then, he's moved on to seriously hilarious essay collections and queer novels for grownups. But he remains deservedly proud of the 39 stories in Tangled Sheets, introducing each one with a pithy sentence or two that personalizes it delightfully. Though much of Ford's erotica appeared in porn glossies like Blueboy (his first sale, though he wasn't paid) and Advocate Men, the writing is refreshingly devoid of sweaty clichés – a harbinger of the quality of more recent fiction like Last Summer and Looking for It (coming in paper in December, $14), two Kensington titles with much merit.
 
(And in another genre: there’s a Michael Thomas Ford title of quite a different sort coming in August from Citadel Press, one of Kensington’s many imprints. The Path of the Green Man: Gay Men, Wicca, and Living a Magical Life ($14.95) draws on Ford’s own interest in paganism – and of a group he founded, the Green Men, “to forge a rewarding Pagan tradition for gay men” – for a hands-on guide to living a spiritual life.)
Author info: www.michaelthomasford.com
 
Two (plus one) for the women:
One cop, one firefighter, one paramedic, one… feminist bookseller? That’s the primary cast of Best of Friends (Kensington, $14), by R.J. Stevens (author of Becoming Bobbie, also from Kensington), one of just a couple of the publisher’s lesbian titles for 2005. It’s a story cast very much from the Naiad Press/Bella Books mold: the loving couple survives a crisis and stays together, the bawdy dame who beds every babe finally settles down with the love of her life; there’s a tickle of hot sex, melodramatic moments of emotion, and just a bit of blood. If this were a Bella Books title, it would no doubt sell as well as most of that publisher’s books; that Kensington’s not quite as lean an operation as Bella may be one reason that lesbian titles aren’t doing as well for the larger publisher; it’s also likely that lesbians don’t see Kensington as a “lesbian publisher” the same way gay readers have identified the publisher as “gay” – or at least gay enough. One plus for me: Stevens’ inclusion of well-rounded male characters, both gay and straight.
Author info: www.rjstevens.com
 
The second lesbian title, Bliss, by Fiona Zedde ($14) is not yet received (or read) – and it straddles the genre divide by being both by a woman, and about a black woman. Here’s what the publisher has to say:
   “In her incendiary first novel, up-and-coming author Fiona Zedde has crafted a sizzling and insightful story about a young Jamaican-American career woman who discovers that there's much more to life than work – and much more to love than meets the eye. From the outside, Bliss Sinclair's life seems very glamorous – a high-profile job with a publishing house, a fashionable boyfriend who looks good on her arm, and ultra-chic parties where the come-ons are as hot and thrilling at night as they are empty as an air-kiss greeting the next day. Suddenly, she finds (love) in the most unlikely of places. Embarking on a series of carnal adventures with a notorious bad girl as her guide, Bliss opens herself to every new experience and every taboo. In abandoned warehouses, private fetish clubs, even her own office, Bliss is skating on the thin ice of desire – until her world comes crashing in.”

There’s a third lesbian-interest title, from Kensington’s Genesis Press “contemporary romance” imprint: Across, by Blue Dawson ($15.95). Coming in December, it’s about lovers Martha and Claudia, who book passage on a Turkey-bound freighter in order to carve out some time together from their busy careers. The relaxing days and exquisitely romantic nights are a tonic – until the freighter makes an unscheduled stop in Algeria, and Claudia is kidnapped. Dawson, says the publisher, “has traveled throughout the world and plans a series of adventures depicting strong women in perilous, faraway places.”

A few more books forthcoming:
September: The Actor’s Guide to Adultery, by Rick Copp, $14 – The second in Copp’s series (after The Actor’s Guide to Murder), about a former child actor and his beefy cop boyfriend, is new in paper; it’s about the stalker who’s bedeviled Jarrod Jarvis’s life since his first Oscar Meyer commercial.
Author info: http://www.rickcopp.com

October: Male Model, by Dave Benbow, $14 – Benbow’s second novel (after Daytime Drama, also new in paper), is a romantic romp about a lusty window designer and a married fashion designer who find themselves madly in love – though one is a married man. I peg this one as rough, fun fluff.
Author info: http://www.davebenbow.com

November: The Actor’s Guide to Greed, by Rick Copp, $23 – LA was the setting for Copp’s first, Murder; much of Adultery was set on a movie set in Florida; in Greed the scene shifts to London’s West End theatre district, where child actor Jarvis has flown to play a part written just for him by an old friend – and where he finds himself accused of poisoning a venomous costar while coping “with a British legend who’s a lush, a Bollywood beefcake actor who’s hot for Jarrod’s boyfriend, (and) an out of the closet Sir with a penchant for young actors.”

And already available: Trust Fund Boys, by Rob Byrnes, $14 – This is the paper edition of Byrnes’ second romp (after The Night We Met); it may well be the kind of light fiction that Kensington editor Scognamiglio says might have been overdone – but the story of two young men reinventing themselves as the kind who fit in to New York’s wealthy (and snobbish) A-gay circle of sugar daddies and social achievers has a charming, bubbly class-consciousness that makes it quite endearing.
The Rob Blog: http://robnyc.blogspot.com/

Five Books of Very Varied Sorts

Six Positions: Sex Writing, by Andy Quan, Green Candy Press, $14.95
Though several of these stories first appeared in such erotica collections as Quickies, Best Gay Erotica, and Best American Erotica, it’s fitting, and not at all precious, that Quan’s prose be thought of as “sex writing.” These pieces are hot, to be sure, whether fictional or autobiographical. But the title story, for one – with its lyrically incantatory “I’m making love to the oldest man…fattest man…most exotic man…smallest man…thinnest man…myself” first sentences – is raw emotional poetry. “Something About Muscle” is, powerfully, all about that; “Positive” is, luminously, about sex and AIDS; “Surf” and “Shoes” are, simply, all about sex. Not too many years ago, there was porn and there was literature. The current abundance of quality erotic writing has blunted that specious dichotomy; this collection erases it entirely.
Author info:
www.andyquan.com
An interview:
http://www.mcv.net.au/frameset/default.htm

Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis, Alfred A. Knopf, $25
“Every word is true," declares Bret Easton Ellis, the bad-boy character, in this fifth novel by Bret Easton Ellis, the bad-boy author – but, then again, a writer's life is "a maelstrom of lying.” So though this lubriciously hyperactive fiction is blatantly autobiographical, facts have certainly been skewed. Its first half details the downward emotional spiral of “Ellis,” who has forsaken his high-living, drug- and alcohol-soaked Manhattan haunts for married domesticity in the ‘burbs with an old flame – a movie actress who once loved him hard – whose alienated son may or may not be his. About midway, though, Lunar Park veers deliciously into Stephen King territory: his stepdaughter’s animatronic toy bird comes viciously to life, his house is haunted by horrific apparitions and then morphs into the California home of his youth, and his email inbox is flooded with messages from his dead daddy dearest. Eek. Spooky. And almost, but not quite ever, out of control. At heart, this is a novel about handling stress and loss and accepting love and truth, a cautionary tale about the ideal anti-hero – the author himself.
From a 2003 interview:“Ellis is working on a new book that, he says, ‘is a very long, involved novel about a marriage and my family. It’s very autobiographical. And it has no gay content.’ No gay content? But isn’t Ellis gay? Isn’t he one of our gay authors? ‘I definitely don’t identify as gay,’ he says, his tone slightly cagey. ‘So I can’t commit an answer.'”
The full interview: http://www.metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=126

Let’s Shut Out the World, by Kevin Bentley, Green Candy Press, $14.95
These are the stories – less sexual but no less engrossing – that didn’t make it into the Lammy-finalist Wild Animals I Have Known, Bentley’s 2002 memoir that, as I said in a review at the time, gave promiscuity and sleaze a good name. Some are set, hilariously as often as grimly, in the El Paso of Bentley’s youth, where he confronted fierce fundamentalists on one side and closeted “fauxmosexuals” on the other. A few cover the same heady, sexually liberated 1970s-San Francisco as the earlier book, sometimes just as raunchily, sometimes more introspectively. And the rest take Bentley into the 80s and 90s and beyond, into a contented but never complacent middle-age monogamy. Let’s Shut Out the World demonstrates, without pretension, that the most honest, most telling, history is the most personal.
Publisher info: www.greencandypress.com

Lazarus, by Rashid Darden, Old Gold Soul Press, $14.95
Black activist and college NAACP leader Adrian Collins is a 19-year-old sophomore who knows he’s gay. In fact, he’s in a relationship with a senior, Savion Cortez, an acclaimed campus poet. But he’s also eager to pledge Beta Chi Phi, the fiercest black frat there is. Darden’s debut novel is a bit ragged – copy editor, where art thou? – but it nonetheless captures the antsy angst of finding a first boyfriend, then being drawn from him by a desire that’s even greater than the physical experience and emotional satisfaction of love for one man – the need to belong, to fit in, to be accepted by peers, despite being a gay man in a newfound family uneasy with queers in its midst. Darden’s description of the frat’s initiation and hazing process is skilled and unsettling, and his focus on the camaraderie of the pledges is deft and compelling – it’s apparent that he writes from experience. And that he isn’t daunted by self-publishing: Covenant, the sequel to Lazarus, is scheduled for 2006 – when Isaiah, a lanky easygoing basketball player who was a minor character in the first book, takes on a major role…
Publisher info: www.oldgoldsoul.com

12 Books To Watch Out For as Summer
Fades to Fall

In October:
You read the stories; now curl up with the novel – Douglas A. Martin’s Bronte Boy merges the possible and the real in this lyrical story about Branwell Bronte, the gifted artist and writer – and possible homosexual – brother of the better-remembered Bronte sisters, dead at 31 from alcohol and opium abuse (Soft Skull Press, $13.95)… In Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948-1963, Gavin Butt assesses the role gossip and innuendo played in shaping the careers of Larry Rivers, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and other emerging artists of the period (Duke University Press, $21.95)… Poet and novelist Edward Field’s chatty memoir (“After reading a chapter, I feel like I’ve just had a martini with Edward…” says Brian Bouldrey) opens the closet door – really, really wide – in The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag, and Other Intimate Literary Portraits of the Bohemian Era (University of Wisconsin Press, $29.95)… Last year, Richard Chamberlain; this year, Tab Hunter – it’s raining pretty men; pinup boy Hunter tells how he survived the Hollywood closet, in Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star (Algonquin Books, $24.95).

In November:
In the biography The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer, David Leavitt illuminates the life of the persecuted homosexual English genius who, by clarifying the concept of what a computer can do, cracked the Nazi’s wartime Enigma code and hastened the end of World War II (Atlas/WW Norton, $22.95)… Out of their suits and into the dresses: the 90-year history of men donning the garb of dames is discussed by Jean-Louis Ginibre in Ladies or Gentlemen: A Pictorial History of Male Cross-Dressing in the Cinema (Filipacchi Publishing, $65)… Best Gay Erotica 2006, edited by Richard Labonte, ahem, selected by Mattilda a.k.a Matt Bernstein Sycamore (Cleis Press, $14.95)… Rough trade, rent boys, and the occasional queer young man posed for David Hurles’ still, super 8, and video cameras for more than 40 years, images of raw maleness collected in Speeding: The Old Reliable Photos of David Hurles, written and designed by homoerotic artist and designer Rex (Green Candy Press, $26.95).

Niche survival, writer's block, a gay uncle, Larry for President

A Store Closes, a Cover Changes, a Contest Starts

It’s lost behind the archive barrier by now, but Romentics writers Scott Pomfret and Scott Whittier scored a PR coup in mid-June when staff writer Alex Wachtel featured their line of gay romances in a New York Times Magazine article that hardly sniggered at all. The hook was the novel Hot Sauce, self-published last year and then picked up by Warner Books for a June 15 publication date – timed no doubt to coincide with Gay Pride month. One interesting nugget revealed in the 3000-word profile: the cover on the advance reader copy shipped to reviewers earlier this year was dropped, apparently under pressure from the buyer at Barnes & Noble, who thought a muscular torso with prominent pecs and perky nipples – and a bare crotch suggestively veiled by a whipped meringue-like froth in a bowl – was too much for the faint hearts that shop at the superstore’s less Big City stores. The cover for the finished book, coy and cartoonish, depicts a couple in the foreground and a flirtatious fellow in the background – an image drawn from the plot, but it’s far too fey. There is also a change from the original self-published text and the storyline in this edition: the book is set in Massachusetts, so the happy-ever-after tale ends with a real wedding, not just a commitment ceremony. (Three other Scott & Scott novels – Razor Burn, Spare Parts, Nick of Time – are available from gay bookstores or from here):
http://www.romentics.com/non_flash/buy.html
The article for sale:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?
res=F30F11FC395C0C718DDDAF0894DD404482
But this Boston Herald story is free:
http://theedge.bostonherald.com/bookNews/view.bg?articleid=92809

Suspect Thoughts Press has announced a second Project: QueerLit contest for first-time LGBTQ novelists; submissions will be accepted – one novel per author – starting Sept. 1 through Dec. 31. “The Project: QueerLit contest celebrates and brings media attention to unpublished authors of queer writing and opens doors for publication of their work. The Project: QueerLit contest is open to any unpublished author of an English-language novel with queer and/or bent content,” say organizers Greg Wharton, Sean Meriwether, and Ian Philips. For details on how to submit entries:
http://www.projectqueerlit.com

Publisher Profiles:
Turtle Point Press/Helen Marx Books

Capote, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Brainard, and Some Easy Porn

You Are Here: A Memoir of Arrival, by Wesley Gibson, Back Bay Books, $13.95
"I'll Have A Gibson," June 6, 2005
I didn't really think I'd enjoy this book because it was advertised in The New Yorker. Shallow reasoning eh? But anyhow a very good friend gave me a copy of Gibson's book for my birthday, and so I felt I had to read it. Well, let that be a lesson to me; from now on I will scour The New Yorker looking at all its ads, for this particular book, a cross between a memoir and a novel, turned out to be very good. I could not put it down, even though I had a zillion other things to do. I just kept reading as the day wore on, and the sun went down, and I had to fumble with the lamp to switch it on without diverting my attention from the page.
  I felt I had to know what was happening with John, and what was up with Alan, and what was going to happen to Wesley once the full dimensions of John's illness became obvious. It isn't that the plot is so strong, indeed, hardly anything happens, so don't come to this book looking for Clive Cussler-style action. No, it is Gibson's wonderful insight into all the little crazy things we humans do, that make the book so compelling. I feel not so much as that after reading his book I know Wesley Gibson, but rather that through some magical gift of X-ray vision into the heart, he knows me.
  I used to live in New York, so I'm familiar with the rat race of trying to find somewhere decent to rent. And who hasn't lived through the misery of having someone die on you; even if you aren't in love with them, it still knocks you on your ass. With his love of language and his discernment and humility, Wesley Gibson brings all these things right to the surface, the place where the reader and writer extend hands and touch fingertips.
 
Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote, edited by Gerald Clarke, Random House, $27.95
Too Much Of A Good Thing, June 20, 2005
I always loved Truman Capote's writing and looked forward to this book oh, so much, especially when I saw it was edited by the estimable Gerald Clarke, who has written so brilliantly on Capote in his biography (and who also wrote Get Happy, a terrific life of Judy Garland). (Hmmm, he must specialize in the tiny.)
  But alas Capote's letters just aren't as good as his fiction. They seem hurried, scattered, as though he were writing too fast to revise, everything exactly the opposite of what one likes about the stories and film scripts. I will say you do get a different side of him, and the outlines of his social world become clearer, so view this compilation as an addendum to the biography, and you won't go far wrong.
  I was surprised to see him make so much of (i.e. flatter) Cecil Beaton; it sounded phony. It seems that he treated Newton Arvin pretty well, all things put together. Some have said that he "used" Arvin to get ahead and then dumped him once he had found a measure of his own success. But Arvin can't have been an easy guy to live with IMHO. Another interesting correspondent is William Goyen. I think the best letter in all of Too Brief a Treat is Capote's letter congratulating Goyen on the achievement of The House of Breath. That letter, in the perfection of its phrases and the conviction of its rapture, is alone worth the price of the book. It's a shame that Goyen later turned on Capote and treated him so shabbily. Good for Gerald Clarke for pointing this out.
  Meanwhile the good news for Capote fans is that his novel Summer Crossing, about which many of the letters to Bob Linscott are devoted, has been recovered and now, fifty-plus years later, it might be seeing the light of day. In the interim we will re-read these letters, hoping to scan in more data on the terrific catastrophe that was Truman Capote's life.
 
In the Hub of the Fiery Force: Collected Poems of Harold Norse 1934-2003, by Harold Norse, Thunder's Mouth Press, $19.95
As many as there are stars in the sky, April 15, 2004
 If he lived anywhere else but in America, he would have received the Nobel Prize by now. But we in the USA have a way of depreciating our best writers, especially if they do not fit into one or another accepted movement, or if they do not conform to government-approved standards of patriotism and "decency."
  Harold Norse has the enormous range of his mentor, William Carlos Williams, and the verbal dexterity and flip amiability of his compadre, Allen Ginsberg. But in spirit he is perhaps closer to the world poets rather than to any particular American model – poets like Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Reverdy, Ungaretti, Marina Tsvetayeva. Only among these international figures, whose work argues with and deranges the ideological concerns that pre-occupy our best writers, can we finally rank Norse.
  Many have spoken of his facility and technical mastery, but I think, after reading the whole of this volume, spanning an incredible seventy years, that the impression you come away with is not primarily admiration for a squeaky-clean "line," but you're blown away by the vision – of language and society – displayed by this unique poet. If we can't get him the Nobel Prize, at the very least we could try to secure him the Poet Laureateship of his adopted city – San Francisco. He's already the Pope of Albion Street.
 
Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard, by Ron Padgett, Coffee House Press, $17.95
Excellent Memoir, April 11, 2005
 Poet Ron Padgett is also an interesting biographer and knows how to tell a good story. In Joe he does a fine job in recounting the basic facts of Joe Brainard's life, and his arrangements and paragraphs are written with a poet's eye to detail and piquancy.
  Everyone loves Brainard's art and his writing, and the difficulty insofar as I can see it is that the book loses a little something after Joe meets Kenward Elmslie and his career moves into high gear. As Padgett admits, his closeness to Joe began to unravel slightly at this juncture. (The two had been high school pals in Oklahoma and had moved to New York together, with the poets Dick Gallup and Ted Berrigan, from Tulsa very early in the 1960s.)
  Once Joe stops worrying about money, a little of the tension disappears from the story. Until then it has the high drama of a Dickens tale, even down to the story of Joe reduced to begging in the Boston streets and being too embarrassed actually to ask people for money. After his success, he goes to Vermont every summer, he can afford tables at the finest restaurants, he meets Jackie Onassis and Willem De Kooning, the whole nine yards of NY social success and eventually he stops painting.
  His death from AIDS is briefly discussed. I have the feeling that Padgett did not want to make this into an AIDS story and wanted instead to celebrate his gay friend's life and work, but as he admits many aspects of Joe's sexuality were occluded from himself and from Pat (Padgett's wife). Whenever Joe gets close to a woman he has fantasies about taking the next step into having sex with her, but this seems to have occurred seldomly if at all. In the meantime he continues writing his book I Remember and its many sequels and extensions, and launches into a long-running affair with the actor Keith McDermott.
  Many other figures grace the book, including Andy Warhol and Frank O'Hara. Through every detail Padgett retains his equanimity, never letting the bathwater drown the baby. I wish he would write a memoir of all his friends (and relations, having enjoyed his book about his own father, a bootlegger and a real Oklahoma "character" like Curly or Jud.)
  Many anecdotes, many insights, in Joe. I love the tale of Padgett asking Joe, a notoriously hard person to shop for, what he would like for Christmas. Joe says, "Stairs. I don't like sitting in chairs, but I always like sitting on stairs, and I'd buy some, only I never see them for sale in shops." That would be charming enough, but then amazingly Padgett gets out his carpenters' tools and builds Joe a set of four stairs each about thirty inches wide and hauls them over to Joe's loft a few days before Christmas. It is this kind of affection and amazement that pervades this book and indeed, pervades our reading of Ron Padgett, no matter what he writes, poetry, memoir, translation.
  It seems that on every page Joe is expressing his love for Pat and Ron by giving them painting after painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, you name it; they must have the world's biggest art collection. Good for them!
 
American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation, by Jonah Raskin, University of California Press, $24.95
Raskin Uncovers Some Remarkable Information, July 23, 2004
 American Scream is a well-done précis of everything that was happening in American culture at the time Ginsberg wrote Howl and in the months that succeeded his breakthrough.
  Better yet, Raskin has had quite a coup, and he has persuaded Ginsberg's psychoanalyst (Dr. Hicks) to talk about the mental and emotional torments Ginsberg had first to overcome before he could begin the writing proper, and he has ventured into the dusty file bins and uncovered for us the actual records of Ginsberg's stays in mental hospitals and psychiatric facilities. Heretofore such records were only vaguely guessed at. Raskin uses the new information wisely, much as Diane Wood Middlebrook was able to use the testimony of Anne Sexton's analyst when writing her biography some years ago of Sexton.
  There are a few places where I disagree with Raskin's implications. Regarding the now-notorious "6 Gallery" reading in San Francisco where AG premiered Howl, Raskin states, "Many of the notable local poets – Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Robin Blaser – were not included in the program, and so the gala event at the Six Gallery was a cultural snub of sorts to the poets who thought they embodied the best of Bay Area poetry." This is disingenuous, as Raskin knows: neither Duncan, Spicer, nor Blaser was living in the Bay Area at the time. Duncan was at Black Mountain College, Spicer living in NYC, and Blaser in Boston. How is this a "cultural snub"? It's also a shame that such a classy book should be spoiled by the numerous typos. On one page alone the names of two poets who spoke at Ginsberg's funeral are misspelled, so we have Andrew "Shilling" instead of Schelling, and Robert "Haas" instead of Hass. They show up in the index thus abused as well.
 
The Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954, by Jack Kerouac, edited by Douglas Brinkley, Viking, $25.95
Comedown, Sorrow, and Truest Love, December 23, 2004
 Two of Kerouac's journals, published together and finally available for the lay reader to pick up and delve into. Editor Douglas Brinkley does a fine job putting this material into context, even if he makes overstated claims for it, and even if he seems so needlessly to kiss John Sampas' ass, even dedicating this book to him among others of his cohort.
 We learn a lot about Kerouac from these journals, a lot that's valuable and a lot that shows us just why so many fell in love with his mind and his thoughtful, sometimes halting way of proceeding, always trying to do the right thing despite innumerable obstacles. I think also he had a natural inclination to be sort of the bad boy, and then he had the specter of his dead brother acting on him as a kind of good angel always steering him right. With utmost seriousness he tried to plot out his life and his course of spiritual action; of course, as we see, women, booze, guys, and wanderlust got in his way, caused him to stray from the path.
  His very earnestness however is endearing: "This is why life is holy," he states on pg. 211 (think of the irony on top of which such a statement would be laden today by Kerouac's so-called successors), "Because it is not a lonely accident. Therefore, again, we must love and be reverent of one another, till the day when we are all angels looking back." He sounds an apocalyptic note: "Those who are not reverent now may be the most reverent then (in their other, electrical, spiritual form.) Will there be a Judgment Day? No need to judge the living or the dead: only the happy and the unhappy with tears of pity." Kerouac seems to have seen clearly what escapes all of us but the most enlightened, that we are all creatures of sorrow and of what he calls "electricity," the charge that makes us human.
  But not all of Windblown World is so solemn; there are some hilarious tidbits and routines, such as the curriculum JK develops in October 1949 (pp. 226-28) for a kind of "New College for Comedians," with imaginary courses that might be given by Burroughs: "How to Play the Horses" and Huncke: "Modern Drugs." His own courses were more poetic: "Riddles and Roses" and "The Myth of the Rainy Night." The requirements to get into the school? "Sixty points in elementary realization, largesse, comedown, sorrow, and truest love."
 

Arts and Letters, by Edmund White, Cleis Press, $24.95
A Treasure Trove, October 18, 2004
 In Arts and Letters veteran novelist Edmund White shows again why he is one of the most inventive English language writers. It's a salmagundi of commissioned pieces and articles that originally appeared in a variety of slick and gay magazines. Take them all together, and you get a lot of insight into White's own irresistible personality, even more so than in some of his celebrated autobiographical novels and memoirs. Plus, it's like being at the same party with some of the most intriguing personalities in the world today, as well as some dead immortals.
  White's style when he profiles these luminaries is never fawning – well, maybe once or twice, but he does it so well you forgive him anything. He's fearless, and asks the people in question exactly the kind of questions you think you'd ask yourself, if you were there on the scene, and you had balls of brass. Cleis Press is to be commended for bringing out this jumbo volume. I only wish there were more.
  There's just enough of a selection of White's writing about art to make you wish he'd jump in and write a whole book about the art and artists he admires. It's hard to find anything new to say about (for example) Jasper Johns or Robert Mapplethorpe, but after reading White's articles on both you will be viewing their work with new eyes. And he provides wonderful introductions to artists whose profiles may not be quite as high as these guys – Rebecca Horn, perhaps, or Steve Wolfe.
  One after another of these articles are stunners – there's a fine piece on the half-forgotten French New Novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, which takes you back to the day in which he was regarded as a wunderkind of depthless talent, and then shows today why he is still a writer worth studying.
  White is not always Mr. Goody Two Shoes either. In one case, the Ned Rorem profile, you watch in helpless delight as Rorem gets skewered on the high kebab spears of White's erudition and wit. I also thought that printing a brief review of James Baldwin's Just Above My Head and labeling it "James Baldwin" leads the reader to think JB will be getting the full-blown profile treatment and instead it rebounds and just makes the review seem skimpy. And in some cases the reader will disagree, perhaps violently, with White's assessment of this or that subject, and you will still feel he has won the right to deliver it. I don't believe for an instant that James Merrill is the equivalent of Cavalcanti crossed with Noel Coward, but it's amusing to hear someone say so.
  By and large these essays are compelling, entertaining, and wise. It's a book that deserves all the praise it will doubtless receive.
 
Freddie Mercury: An Intimate Memoir by the Man Who Knew Him Best, by Peter Freeston, Omnibus Press, $18
Peter Freestone traveled over hill and dale with Freddie, and holds very little back in his account of life with one of rock's most "mercurial" stars.
  Was he the man who knew Freddie best? He claims to be, and yet there are a number of fans and other authorities who feel he has claimed this intimate title without the backstory to back it up. He knew the tragic star for eleven years, the last years before his death from AIDS, and he even became kind of a nurse to him, so there were elements of Freddie's life he had an eyewitness view of, and saw things no other mortal was ever privileged to see.
  The music, the madness, the mirth, all are aspects that Peter isn't so hip on, but I dare any reader to go through this book right to the end and fail to shed a tear as the implications of Freddie's diagnosis begin to take root, and people begin to realize what this will mean to Freddie himself and to all those who loved Queen and rock music, too. Peter F. was there, and he writes sensitively about a difficult issue. Elsewhere his writing is humorous and sparkly, with a bit of an outsider edge, when he describes the ingenious ways he thought of to protect Freddie from the punters and paparazzi, but at the end you will feel your heart in your throat.
 
Guys Gone Wild, DVD, $14.99
To sum it up for next time, June 10, 2005
While we wait for the sequel, Spring Break Explosion, here's my impression of the first Guys Gone Wild disc. And maybe a lesson or two for the makers of the first one, because it let us down quite a bit and maybe with Spring Break they will make some reparations. First, the plusses. For the most part the GGW guys are great looking, with a few duds sprinkled in here or there to keep us grounded. It's true after awhile they all begin to look alike. They have the same body type, the same haircut, the same goofy expressions frozen on their faces as their jaws try to speak in words after twelve tequilas; they shrug, they give up speaking, they concentrate hard on opening the drawstring to their pants. The sound equipment the interviewers use is horrible, and this is one DVD that might be better viewed with the mute button completely off. The interviewers can be heard screeching extremely loud, but the boys' answers are pretty mumbled, and it's not only the liquor that makes them sound underwater, it's the lack of attention placed on getting the audio right. To a lesser degree the same is true of the video. These girls can get a guy to strip off his boxers and get down to nothing at all in ten seconds flat, but they can't photograph him worth a darn.
  Hire someone who can work both ends of a camera, is what I say. The camera's bobbing up and down like it's on a buoy out in a storm, it's like The Blair Witch Project, and when you can see anything, it's just for a flash. The other problem is, the running time is under an hour. I guess a fool and his money are soon parted but in this day of six-hour porn DVDS, who is going to be fooled twice with a 50 minute short? Get some extra footage in there pronto.
  I can't wait until these guys, who have all presumably signed releases, try to get work as adults. Hopefully they won't be running as congressmen or anything that would require full disclosure. Granted we all go a little crazy when we're juiced up, but doing it for video, that's a lapse in judgment – however it's one I'm glad they made. It will give a picture of what American youth thought appropriate in the year of our Lord 2005. Now let's just have more of it, and I will rest happy. Oh, and to really add a star, girls, get them to have sex with each other on camera. How hard could that be?
 
The Life of Helen Stephens: The Fulton Flash, by Sharon Kinney Hanson, Southern Illinois University Press, $29.95
Impressive Account of One of America's Finest Athletes, July 2, 2005
Wow, before opening this book I had never heard of Helen Stephens, and now that I've finished Sharon Kinney Hanson's fine book about her life, I feel as though I have known her forever! They called her the Fulton Flash because of her great speed, and her ability to sprint took her out of Missouri and catapulted her to the great stages of the world. Like a comet streaking across the sky she represented the United States in the now legendary Berlin Olympics of 1936, where she appeared in front of Adolf Hitler and, no doubt, gave him a few ruminations about the power and speed of America. The Olympics were actually far from a rout for Germany, as Kinney Hanson reminds us. Nowadays we think that because of Jesse Owens and other great American performances, Germany had its ass handed to it at the games, but far from it; they actually did very well and Hitler must have been quite proud! In women's track events, Germany won seven medals, the US only two – both courtesy of Helen Stephens. Conceivably she could have won more medals, but some events, opened to women competitors in later Olympics, were closed to her in 1936 (like shotput, at which she was a great champ).
  Photos show she was an astonishing beauty, with great bones, perhaps a little Amazonian and androgynous. Some people thought she was a man, and this irked her no end. She sued LOOK magazine and as funny comeuppance for LOOK she went out on a date with one of LOOK's lawyers. After several drinks things got hot and heavy. As the author reports, "Helen told her friend Gertrude Webb, 'I had a sense he was trying to find something. So this ole country girl let him roam around awhile 'til he found what he was lookin' for. I just wanted to settle it then and there!"
  Nevertheless, Stephens was a lesbian in a homophobic society and stood her ground with dignity and courage. It was hard for such a woman to 'come out' but inevitably she did, or almost did. The whole tragedy of women's sports in the twentieth century is a story that Sharon Kinney Hanson tells with distinction and clarity. She brings all her skills to her on-point account of the apparently intersex sprinter Stella Walsh, who was killed by a robber's gunfire in 1980. Because of the violent death she was subject to an autopsy in Cleveland of all places, which revealed her ambiguous genitalia. Stella Walsh, one of the greatest Olympic heroines, was one of the closest friends of the Fulton Flash, and her death apparently had great impact on Helen. I won't reveal any more of the story, except to say, it is an amazing one, the kind that makes you put down the book and just say, "Holy Moly."

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Richard can be reached at tattyhill@gmail.com, at 613 264 5409, or at 7-A Drummond St W, Perth, ON K7H 2J3 Canada. Books for review, author news, interesting links - all appreciated.