Book Marks
Book Marks
Book Marks by Richard Labonte - SGN Contributing Writer

The End of the World Book
by Alistair McCartney
(Terrace Books, $26.95)

There's nothing linear about McCartney's debut novel. There's not much narrative to it, either. It's not really a novel by any rational definition, actually. But its giddily unconventional structure delivers a glorious literary experience. From chapter A to chapter Z, this is an irreverent alphabetical guide to the author's many intense obsessions (knives and razors, young men and porn, horror films and hair), quirky cultural observations (macrame as a notable art form?), frequent literary touchstones (Proust and Kafka predominate), and - blurring the boundary between fiction and memoir - loving anecdotes about his Australian family and his American partner, performer Tim Miller. There's a searing satirical edge to many of the entries; some are deliriously absurd. A few are concise gems, such as "Inspiration: Quick, before it evaporates!" and "Homosexual: I think I am mentioned somewhere in the Bible, if I remember correctly." What links the several hundred entries together, aside from their eclectic poetic and philosophical range, is a thread of quizzical yet comic melancholy about the world.

Gentleman Jigger
by Richard Bruce Nugent
(Da Capo Press, $18)

Harlem Renaissance luminary Nugent's wicked roman a clef, written between 1928 and 1933 but not published until now, 20 years after his death, is a work with a split personality. Book One is based, without much apparent fictional embellishment, on the self-anointed Niggerati Manor circle of artists - including Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, and Countee Cullen - who produced just one fiery issue of the scandalous literary journal, Fire!!. Nugent's alter ego is precociously Gay Stuartt, a black man so light-skinned that he can (and does) pass for white. Not much happens in the first half, though lengthy disquisitions on race, identity, and skin hue illuminate the era's black intellectual and artistic ferment. The pace picks up in Book Two, after Stuartt relocates his narcissistic charm and breathtaking beauty from Harlem to Greenwich Village, where he's soon seducing Italian street boys and eventually Mafia crime bosses. Editor Thomas Wirth cobbled the novel together from several partial manuscripts, and the result is far short of seamless. Nevertheless, this is a must-read for anyone intrigued by early Gay fiction and black Gay history.

Heartland
by Julie Cannon
(Bold Strokes, $15.95)

Drop 10 fun-seeking Lesbians onto a working ranch run by a butch mourning the loss of her lover, and you'd expect much randy action to follow. But the focus of this fluid romance is primarily on just two women. One is Shivley McCoy, who was able to create her working-vacation getaway spread with money willed to her by her late mate; the other is Rachel Stanton, a political strategist-for-hire stressed by too many mudslinging campaigns. There's nothing coy about the passion of these unalike dykes - it ignites at first encounter, and never abates. The main impediment to their mutual physical and emotional fulfillment is rooted in Shivley's guilt: turns out she cared deeply for her dying partner, but wasn't really in love with her, and is wary of another romantic entanglement that might peter out. Cannon's well-constructed novel conveys more complexity of character and less overwrought melodrama than most stories in the crowded genre of Lesbian-love-against-all-odds - a definite plus.

Legacies of Love: A Heritage of Queer Bonding
by Winston Wilde
(Taylor & Francis, $19.95)

This is a Queers-in-history reference book with a difference. It's about couples - and the occasional menage-a-many. And there's a twist. Rather than order his historical vignettes chronologically, Wilde categorizes couples by "patterns." The most extensive is "peer love," involving relationships between persons roughly equal in age, class, and wealth, from Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Greek lovers said to have died at age 16 after plotting to rid Greece of a tyrannic ruler, to Paul Monette and Roger Horwitz - whose AIDS death is chronicled in Monette's memorable memoir, Borrowed Time. Other categories include the obvious - intergenerational, interclass, and interethnic love. Then there's the "utopian love" of pirates, male dancers, and the founders of Camp Sister Spirit; the "heterogender love" of the likes of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock; and, most intriguingly, "overlapping love" - a category linking three and even four individuals, most notably Sharon Kowalski, paralyzed in an auto accident in 1983, her lover, Karen Thompson, and a third member of their polyamorous relationship, Patricia Bresser. Profiles accompanying the 106 entries are brief but fact-filled; a wealth of photos puts faces to the facts.

Featured Excerpt:
Stuartt was silent, enjoying to the full Orini's movements, his voice, and his body, which was becoming more and more visible as he shed first trousers, then shorts, with nonchalance. "Guess they sorta get an idea of this sorta thing when they look at you." Stuartt watched the hollow of Orini's stomach, his raised chest and the muscles of his arms rippling gently under his tannish skin as he asked, "Did you?" and only half heard Orini as he answered, "Naw, not exactly. I didn't know you was a fag just looking at you. That never crossed my mind - but you did make me look another time - and I ain't never looked twice at no man for nothing."

-from Gentleman Jigger, by Richard Bruce Nugent

Footnotes:
LAMBDA LITERARY NEWS: Ann Bannon, Malcolm Boyd, and Mark Thompson will be recipients this year of the Lambda Literary Foundation's Pioneer Awards at the foundation's 20th annual awards ceremony, May 29 in Los Angeles. Bannon is author of the classic Beebo Brinker series of lesbian pulp romances, published between 1957 and 1962. Boyd, who turns 85 in June, is the author of 29 books, including the coming-out classic Take Off the Masks; he has been an Episcopal priest for more than 50 years. Thompson - Boyd's partner for more than 20 years - was a long-time arts and cultural editor for the Advocate, and is author of the acclaimed Gay spirituality series, Gay Spirit: Myth and Meaning, Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature, and Gay Body: A Journey Through Shadow to Self. The Lambda Foundation has announced 107 finalists in 21 categories for this year's Queer literary awards, available at www.lambdaliterary.org. Meanwhile, the organization is relocating in May to Los Angeles; executive director Charles Flowers - the only paid employee - is following his partner, who has taken a new job on the West Coast.

Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-'70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@qsyndicate.com. by Richard Labonte - SGN Contributing Writer

A Perfect Waiter
by Alain Claude Sulzer, translated by John Brownjohn
(Bloomsbury USA, $19.95)
For 30 years, reclusive waiter Erneste has nursed his love for a young man he met before World War II. That's when handsome 19-year-old Jakob arrived from Germany for summer work at the elegant Swiss hotel where Erneste  only a few years older  was a respected employee. Their passion ignited almost immediately, a thrilling first love for Erneste and a randy sexual awakening for Jakob. But by the following summer, young Jakob was cheerfully exchanging blowjobs for 5 francs from a celebrated German author, who was married and more than twice his age. And when, weeks later, the older man ferried Jakob with him to America, ahead of the Holocaust to follow, Erneste's hollow, emotionally distant life was set in place  until, decades later, a letter arrives from Jakob, still in America, begging for money. Sulzer's short novel about love's betrayal and the lies of desperate men is a miniature jewel, its cool, dispassionate, and disquieting prose communicating an old-fashioned kind of doomed homosexual ardor with exquisite, nuanced precision.

Venus Besieged
by Andrews & Austin
(Bold Strokes Books, $15.95)
Snarky commentary on the shallow whirl of the Hollywood scene and an exploration of a threatening spiritual underworld make for an odd but engrossing blend in this third novel in the "Richfield and Rivers" Lesbian mystery series. Teague Richfield is an aspiring screenwriter coping with the casting-couch come-on of an oversexed, androgynous-looking female studio executive. Callie Rivers is the psychic-astrologer love of Teague's life  though the two women aren't sure about the living-together part of their tempestuous relationship. The could-be couple meets in a secluded Sedona cabin for a month of screenwriting freedom and passionate togetherness, planning to sort out their emotions. But their romantic romp is swept up in a metaphysical mystery involving a powerful shamanic Native American woman, a callous land developer, a shape-shifting wolf, an ancient family feud, and the buried bones of a woman still very much alive. The offbeat pairing of goofy movie-making compromises and intense mystical elements gives this well-crafted mix of supernatural thrills and edgy romance a high-spirited flair.

Crossing Borders
by Will Carr
(GLB Books, $23.95)
Though he's now in his 80s, Carr's account of his youthful travels around the Mediterranean and North Africa more than half a century ago is remarkably vivid. The then-27-year-old Jewish man motored for months through countries as anti-Semitic then as they are now, including Egypt and Algeria, capturing both the physical geography and his own sexual and spiritual evolution with writing that is fluid and fresh  and fun to read. Carr traveled sometimes with companions for whom he felt a budding sexual attraction, sometimes alone with his thoughts and fears  often concerned as much about his own sexual bent as about his personal safety, but always enthralled by the people he met and the landscape through which he passed. It was an odyssey that changed his life many decades ago, and one that will charm readers today. Travel writing, coming-out story, historical document: this engaging memoir is rewarding on every level, a saga from a senior Gay man still firing on all cylinders.

In the Time of Assignments
by Douglas A. Martin
(Soft Skull Press, $17.95)
There are three distinct geographies in Martin's first poetry collection: the South, where he grew up, often an outsider; college, where he honed skills as a Queer lad and a budding writer; and New York, where he moved  as the title of the third section of this book of memory shards and physical moments ably demonstrates  "to become a poet." What ties the disparate locales together so memorably is Martin's unguarded vulnerability, expressed through awkward yearning for emotional connection, unabashed need for sexual connection, and intense conviction that there can be a love connection. Readers familiar with his autobiographical prose  particularly the novel Outline of My Lover and the stories in They Change the Subject  will sense that Martin is drawing from the same well of personal experience for these poems. But poetry, released from the need for narrative structure, can express a free-form honesty and attain a seductive engagement with the reader that is so much more immediate. Fiction mined from a writer's life is made up of words; this book is the music.

Featured Excerpt:
"Was she yelling at you?" Callie frowned, having heard Barrett's voice through the phone and seen my dejected expression. "Yeah, redeveloping my story and then shouting at me because I don't get the plot. By the time this project is over, I won't recognize this as my story, which is good because it will probably be about a psychologically abused aardvark that has sex with a chicken, and there will be enough writers on the credit roll to start a ball team. The entire shape of the story is shifting & subtle at first, a tweak here, a tweak there & and soon it's unrecognizable, like a screenplay suffering from Alzheimer's, the original idea still buried inside there somewhere, struggling to communicate something." - from Venus Besieged, by Andrews & Austin

Footnotes:
TWO OF THE OLDEST Queer-friendly, independent bookstores are up for sale, though neither is in danger of closing. Barb Weiser, general manager of the 38-year-old Amazon Bookstore Cooperative in Minneapolis, says there have been some serious inquiries since she announced in February that she wanted to leave, after 21 years, and that none of the other collective members with equity in the bookstore were prepared to take it over. The sale of Little Sister's in Vancouver, which opened in 1983, was also announced in February by co-owner Jim Deva, whose partner's health was a factor in their decision to find a new owner; a condition of the sale is that Janine Fuller, manager of the bookstore for 12 of her 18 years there, stays on...MEANWHILE, ANOTHER branch of Lambda Rising  in Baltimore, Md.  is closing, says owner Deacon McCubbin, because of declining sales. McCubbin closed the Lambda Rising in Norfolk, Va., a couple of years ago, but the flagship store in Washington, D.C., and a smaller store in the resort town of Rehoboth Beach, Del., are going strong...BRIAN LAM, PUBLISHER of Arsenal Pulp Press, was one of the "CanLit 30" singled out in the March issue of Quill & Quire, a book trade monthly, as one of the most influential Canadians in publishing. Queer books are a healthy component of the press's catalogue  including a classic series, suggested by the staff of Little Sister's, which has brought back into print books by Jane Rule, Richard Amory, Sarah Schulman, and other authors.

Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-'70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@qsyndicate.com.