Friday
Sept 23, 2005
SGN.org
Volume 33
Issue 38
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Monday, Dec 01, 2008
08:06
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| NOTE** finding non clickable links? Sorry these columns are not featured in this weeks edition - |
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Book Marks |
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| Book Marks | ||
| by Richard Labonte
- SGN Contributing Writer
Clearcut, by Nina Shengold. Anchor Books, 342 pages, $13 paper. Boys love girl, girl loves boys, and boy loves boy in this memorable debut novel, a sexually steamy and emotionally engaging menage a trois set evocatively in the free-wheeling '70s, when "hippie" was still a way of life and "free love" was still a mantra. Earley is a hard-drinking man's man muscling out a lonely living by recovering scrap cedar from the Pacific Northwest's clear-cut timberland. Reed is a skinny, sensitive, and smartass college dropout searching for his runaway girlfriend. The two meet when bar-bound Earley picks up a bedraggled Reed, who is hitchhiking his way towards the tree-planting camp where his fiery and free-spirited girlfriend, Zan, is working. The lusty affair that flares between Earley and Zan, the simmering love maintained by Zan and Reed, and the erotic passion and reckless sex the three share are the body of Shengold's grand, tragic story. But its heart lies in how Earley and Reed, two men from utterly different worlds, love each other in a way neither fully understands, but which both come, hauntingly, to accept. Rode Hard, Put Away Wet: Lesbian Cowboy Erotica, edited by Sacchi Greene and Rakelle Valencia. Suspect Thoughts Press, 217 pages, $16.95 paper. Not all the Lesbians are cowboys, and not even all the cowboys are Lesbian - but this strong collection of erotica about gals who wear chaps, know their way around a horse, and can tie a mean knot does live up to its catchy title. Most of the tales are more sizzling vignette than fully developed short story, heavy on sexual tension and sex and light on character and plot. But a few offer some true emotional tone, and so stand out from the rest. Cheyenne Blue's "The Other Side of the Rockies" is a slight but wrenching story about a woman rescued from her husband's abuse by a cowgirl's strong arms. Jay Lake's "Dry Heart, Dreaming" is a numbing, humbling story about a widow, trying to save her ranch in the midst of a devastating drought, who opens herself to the love of a lady rancher. And Connie Wilkins' "Snowfound," with some historical heft, is about a cross-dressing Civil War soldier who, after the war, finds a woman she can love in the Sierra gold country of California. Three Fortunes in One Cookie, by Cochrane Lambert. Alyson Books, 416 pages, $14.95 paper. Phillip's boyfriend has dumped him, his Barnes & Noble job depresses him, he can't pay his rent, he has no energy for his art, and a bitter New York winter looms. So when his domineering grandfather demands that Phillip move back to small-town Mississippi and the antebellum home where he was raised, to care for his sweetly deranged mother, he doesn't have much choice. The deft writing team of (Becky) Cochrane and (Timothy) Lambert have crafted a beguiling, campy epic crammed with sympathetic characters and engaging eccentrics, including Phillip's four aunts, who run the gamut from fulminating fundamentalist to reserved Lesbian; the Irish hunk he left behind in Manhattan, who might still be the man of his dreams; his new Mississippi acquaintances, one of them a voyeuristic hooker, another an easygoing leather Daddy; and an old high school chum struggling with his own desires. Three Fortunes in One Cookie is bright and breezy, but the ease with which it can be read belies a complex, captivating plot and charming, solid storytelling. Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story, by Joe Florenski and Steve Wilson. Advocate Books, 245 pages, $15.95 paper. More than 20 years after his death, Paul Lynde lives on through reruns of his sarcastic - but almost always scripted - quips on the pre-Whoopi Goldberg incarnation of Hollywood Squares, and through his scant 10 appearances as fey Uncle Arthur on Bewitched: camp humor incarnate. But for anyone over 35 or so who saw those shows first-run, he was probably living proof - particularly for impressionable, questioning teens - that to be queer was to be a sassy sissy. Co-authors Florenski and Wilson flesh out that caricature of Lynde somewhat in this well-researched but often fawning biography, though they don't have much to go on beyond the reminiscences of showbiz peers (Phyllis Diller, Cloris Leachman, Peter Marshall, and Charlotte Rae among them) and a few early-career friends, including the rather clueless woman Lynde once thought he was going to marry. Lynde, until late in his life a self-destructive alcoholic, had few close friends and no real lovers. That's no doubt why Center Square, with its dry cut-and-paste tone, never really brings him to life. 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. |
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