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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1987)
LAMBDA RISING BOOK REPORT • 10 Telling Stories About Writing & Publishing Continued from page 1 ...telling me that they’d hated the novels they’d been assigned in class, but came across one of my formulaic adventure stories and liked it enough that they’d dec ided it might not be so bad to try to read some more. I defy any writer to cheat on his or her craft after getting a message like that. . I, of course, care more about those books into which I’ve put the most and those are the ones which the readers affirm with the greatest gusto. The magical thing about storytelling is the way that a character comes to life when one is writing. My characters always seems to get to a certain place in a manuscript and simply will not follow the plot I’ve so can efully outlined. They take on a life of their own and it becomes obvious that they simply will not do that thing I’d wanted them to, that’s how much they live in my imagination. When those same characters get to a publ to be having with these entertainments. One isher it seems they’ve become economic tok of the things I loved best about the short ens. Will they sell enough copies to earn novels was that I could roam across a broad back the book’s advance? Do they help the area, taking on different issues in each one title fit a genre’s marketing expectations? with a facility that another format might When they arrive in the hands of the critic, not have allowed. they’re forgotten. Eventually, after five volumes, I felt I But these characters are redeemed was getting stale with the books. Besides, when the story is read by a reader who is so my reputation was growing. The publisher, swept up that he or she has to sit down and Alyson, was honorable, but the checks for write to the author. The messages I get that these short books weren’t as large as the tell me that reading FRANNY gave others I was getting. Maybe I’d gotten too someone a new sense of identity, or that “big” for Alex Kane. another character provided a young person Then I received a fan letter from with a hero are the ones that let me know someone who’d read GOLDEN YEARS, the I’m a writer and not a part of an industrial second in the series, a book which dealt with process. older gay men. “It was wonderful,” he Sometimes a reader’s care can wrote, “to read about someone in a gay book rejuvenate us to a degree we could never who had to stop at the top of a flight of stairs and catc^i his breath for a change.” have suspected possible. I was sure the reader was an older I had, a while ago, created a character who starred in a series of adventure novels, man himself and that was why he was writ THE MISSION OF ALEX KANE. I d been ing until I got to the last paragraph. “You taken with telling stories about a gay hero see, I have cerebral palsy and live in a who would go around the country protecting wheelchair. Gay books about discos, beaches the dreams of gay men everywhere. I and cruising don’t touch my life. At least enjoyed writing the books at first and the this one came close.” response was wonderful from those readers That one letter brought Alex Kane who understood the fun they were supposed back. I sat down that day and began Continued from page 1 ...been a century before so different are the worlds they inhabit. Where Orton’s diary is filled with male prostitutes and tearoom trade, Welch's journals are jammed full of the Georgian twilight and delicate descriptions of nature. But he shares Ort on’s love of young men's beauty. Encoun tering a youth swimming naked, Welch notes how “the water gartered his legs round the middle of his calves. The hairs on his body and legs dripped with sparkles of water. He looked like a truncated statue fixed to a base in the bowl of a fountain.” Welch began first as a painter, but while an art student he was run over by a car and suffered the spinal injuries from which he eventually died at age 33. Welch's account of the accident and his partial recovery form the basis for his last novel, A VOICE THROUGH A CLOUD. But Welch’s mas- terwork is his journal which has a rare del icacy and immediacy. His wish is to “men tion the tiny things of [people’s] lives that give them pleasure or fear or wonder...the details of their houses, their meals and their possessions...the bits of family or intimate history they know.” Welch’s writing has a curious effect. One reader told him that it broke “all his shell” because it contained "the absolute honesty that strips away one’s barricades, so that one can be hurt, just as one was a child.” Indeed, it is Welch’s vulnerable hone sty that haunts these pages and the magical tales included in Robert Phillips’s edition of THE STORIES OF DENTON WELCH. For even more than Orton, Welch recognized the approach of death. In con siderable pain, he goes for a trip with his When...characters get to a publisher it seems they’ve become economic tokens. - Orton’s Hectic LETHAL SILENCE, a novel about a young man in a wheelchair who helps Alex break up a conspiracy of hatred and who, coin cidentally, manages to find himself a lover along the way. I wrote back to my correspondent and thanked him for his letter, telling him that he had done me a great favor. He had reminded me that there were still stories to tell and • Messages I get...let me know I’m a writer, not part of an industrial process. - there were readers who were waiting for Alex to save their dreams. There was an audience of real people out there waiting for my words and I had work to do. John Preston is the author of over 30 books, lives in Maine, and presently is working on SEX WORKERS: Living in the Erotic Mar ketplace, to be released from Arbor House this winter. e c n a i l , r B Welch’s Quiet Dignity lover Eric Oliver: Eric saw how sad I was and he kissed me and lay down on the ground and shut his eyes. We both felt then. . . how doomed we were how doomed everyone was. We saw very clearly the plain tragedy of out lives and ov everyone’s. A year after a year after a year passes, and then you look back and your sadness pierces you.“ And yet, too, there is a quiet dignity and joy that suffuses these pages and tou ches me just as deeply as the hectic bril liance of Orton. After a rare night of rea sonably sound sleep, Welch awakes to hear Oliver’s ’’breathing mixed [with] the won derful nightingale which never stopped. . . and it seemed a miraculously pleasant end to our troubles.“ He concludes, ”1 don’t know what will happen in the future to our friend ship, but now it is good to keep it alive all I can. And I will give all I can.“ In a time that thinks it has just inven ted gay romance after a period of sexual profligacy, these quietly truthful, bitten sweet journals may seem all the more imm ediate and necessary. They teach us about how men can love each other with a ten derness and sympathy so often exhausted in O rton’s frantic life. David Bergman is the winner of the George Williston Poetry Prize for CRACKING THE CODE and has recently edited John Ashury’s A RT CHRONICLES which will appear next spring. Catcher In The Rye Revisited Continued from page 4 ...denouement, while believable, is anti-climatic. The reader has figured it out long before, and once revealed, it offers nothing new, nothing terribly insightfull. THE HUMAN SEASON is a study in craft, a finely- drawn and confident craft. Previously, Ms. Rossiter has written a collection of short stories, BEYOND THE BITTER AIR. Clearly, she has sharpened her techniques there, for THE HUMAN SEASON is the most well constructed of books. At times too much so. It is a textbook of how to write a well framed, and logically symbolized piece of fiction. For instance. When we first meet Peter, he is working on an assignment for Manning: "The Nature of TVagedy in Shakespeare.” This is no accident. It is clever, pedestrian, even obvious foreshadowing. And yet, by having Peter say, recalling Cate's mysterious death, "maybe I won’t have to write it now. Maybe no one will.” Rossiter makes the symbol real. Breathes into it life. This undisguised clue to Rossiter s eventual catharsis may be blatant, but it is well placed. It is the first of a series of echoes which are first novel careful, yet promisingly true. “Everything’s going to be okay,” repeated over and over to Peter by Manning, by Mrs MacQuire. by Judith, and by Peter to Cate in several flashbacks, is a central thread woven throughout the narrative. It is offered as an assurance to the speaker as much as a comfort to the listener. It is heard Books & other products reviewed or advertised in the BOOK REPORT are available at your local gay & lesbian bookstore & Lambda Rising. Credit Card holders order toll free from Lambda Rising by dialing 1-800-621-6969, 10 a.m. to Midnight, E.T., daily. so often in everyday life, along with such toss offs as “how are you-fine” and “see ya” that one believes it by rote. Peter is no different, believing that in fact everything will be okay. If not because he has faith in the speaker, but because he has never considered what would happen if things did not turn out “okay.” But there is much at Dunster School which is not “okay,” much which bodes true of collegiate life in general. The groves of academe are often fecund with sexual mis conduct. One has but to look at the paper, or visit a local campus of either college or secondary school to feel the pressure, the almost malleable tension-both sexual and psy chological. Here, the untrained student is met by the cosmo politan teacher. Virgin sexuality is both tempted and temp- tor. Ths air is thick with all manner of physical experimen tation. “ ’Poor Spaulding,' his classmate Edwards taunts. 'Another illusion shattered.' I keep my eyes closed. I don’t say anything. He does. 'Shattered,' he says. 'And after all she's done for you. All these years. Tea and sympathy. Just like a mother. And all this time to think you never knew that she was otherwise inclined.’” The perceived deja vu is strongest in sections such as this. Is this not something out of Lillian Heilman's THE CHILDREN’S HOUR or Robert Anderson’s TEA AND SYMPATHY? Do not the sand filtered strains of the theme music to THE SUMMER OF '42 seem to be blowing across our brains? The night of Cate’s death sees a venerable tree smote by lightening-an overly dramatic choice, and one we recall from Arthur Miller's ALL M Y SONS. We are not surprised when Peter tells his stepmother that he always likened his father to Zeus, complete with edicts flung down like lightning bolts. We expect the imagery to complete itself, for Rossiter to fill out the poetic superstructure she put in place. And, waiting like a saved up punch line (one eagerly awaits it from the first mention of "tea and sympathy”) there is even this line reminiscent of the play and film of the same name: “ 'Peter,' he says. I turn. His hand lifts. A brief salute. A silent pleading. ’Remember me kindly, will you?”’ Deborah Kerr never said it better. Sarah Rossiter is a gifted graceful writer. Though delicate, her writing never falters toward the treacle or the overly sentimental. If the HUMAN SEASON reminds us of stories, films, plays-real life experiences--with which we are familiar, it is no fault of the author’s. Rather, it is a laud. Virginity is lost in many ways. Rape, family betrayal, the death of a loved one. “ I praise the fall; it is the human season...” from Archibald MacLeish's "Immortal Autumn" gives Rossiter her title. It is so. Those halcyon days between summer and Halloween, smelling of leaves, football fields and a fleeting tenuous innocence seem ingrained in golden memory as the most fitting time for those first tentative steps into adul thood. If Rossiter has framed a story about an overused subject, it is one framed in autumnal gold. And given the purity, simplicity and undeniable talent of her writing, it is a minor flaw THE HUMAN SEASON is a joy to read. David Perry is a freelance arts writer in Washington, D.C. His articles have appeared in HORIZON MAGAZINE, DOS SIER. THE WASHINGTON TIMES, MUSEUM & ARTS WASHINGTON and THE WASHINGTON BLADE A novel centered around D.C.’s Dupont Circle, THE M AN IN THE CIRCLE, will be completed later this year.