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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (July 1, 1989)
Musical closets: the old in-out Facing the Tank, by Patrick Gale. American edition 1989, E.P. Dutton, $17.95. 302 pp. eading a Patrick Gale novel is something like taking a roller-coaster ride: there’s little time for contemplation here, but the fun comes through our enjoyment of the twists, turns, and sudden changes in tempo that his accomplished writing provides. The talented young Britisher now has four novels to his credit — Ease, The Aerodynamics of Pork, Kansas in August, and the latest, Facing the Tank, which may be the best of all. This time, Gale locates his novel well outside of London, in a comfy British cathedral town called Barrowcester (and pronounced “Brewster”). Barrowcester lies, quite symbolically, at the exact center of the British land mass, and the native cast includes some wickedly witty variations on the British middle class: there’s a socialist bishop; his mother, who dabbles in the occult; a role- reversed upper-middle couple (he a househusband, she a writer); a gay interior decorator; and the cleaning woman who shuttles between them all. To this social stew Gale adds a number of intruders: an American writer and expert on the demonic; a young woman up from London who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant; a lonely 16-year-old student away from home for the first time. Gale is too cerebral and too cleverly subversive a writer to let any of these characters interact in the usual manner. For R example, the British and American writers never meet socially. They can’t: she is too busy dealing with her hitherto-gay son’s wedding plans, and he is too busy trying to figure out just what it was that ransacked his room and destroyed all his research. A demon, perhaps? Gay, straight or in between. Gale’s characters typically are in one kind of closet or another. And those who have the most to hide are usually the most closeted. Gale cheerfully skewers cozy domesticity and punctures their liberal pieties — and so brashly and unexpectedly that the usual term for such deflation, “satire,” seems strangely weak and beside the point here. In Facing the Tank, Gale tackles the cozy heart of England, and wins — and at greater length, narrative skill and complexity than in his previous three novels. Is there some way we Yanks could bring this talented young man over here and let him concoct an American story? Allen Smalling A sampling of gay books — 1989 here are so many books of interest to gay men today that it’s impossible to list them all. This partial list of recent titles, chosen for their high literary quality and popularity demonstrate how wide the field of “gay literature” has become. Our thanks to Unabridged Bookstore in Chicago for their help. Eighty-sixed by David Feinberg (Viking Press, $18.95). A fresh and funny two-part novel. The first part is set in 1980 and T recounts the erotic adventures of a young man before anyone heard of AIDS. In the second part, set in 1986, nothing else matters. The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst (Random House, $16.95; soon to be a Harper & Row paperback, $7.95). A British novel of high literary quality. A young man in early-1980s London stumbles across an elderly man’s memoirs from the 1920s. He discovers that gay life hasn’t necessarily changed much throughout the decades. Shadows of Love, edited by Charles Jurrist (Alyson paperback, $8.95). Sixteen gay short stories from all over the United States, embracing a wide variety of viewpoints and writing styles. The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White (Ballantine paperback, $4.95). Nobody does better than White in the quasi- autobiographical, “confessional" mode. Here, the unnamed hero of A Boy’s Own Story grows up, goes to college, and moves to New York. White proves that liberation for gays had to wait until 1969, with Stonewall, at the novel’s conclusion. The Christopher Park Regulars by Edward Swift (British American Publishers, $18.95). Engaging light novel, essentially a series of vignettes about the colorful eccentrics who frequent a small park in Greenwich Village. Swift (who also wrote Splendora) writes about misfits with sympathy and charm; the book as a whole is a love poem to New York City before the yuppies took over. Capote by Gerald Clarke (Ballantine paperback, $12.95). Though technically not a work of “gay literature,” this biography succeeds on many fronts: it’s superlatively researched, well-written, and integrates the man with his work. Best of all, it doesn’t shy away from Capote’s sexual life but doesn’t overdramatize it either. Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist by Larry Kramer (St. Martin’s, $18.95). Here, the grand old man and chief scapegoat of AIDS awareness assembles his most inflammatory writing and speeches, with new updates and transitional material. Useful in understanding the path of AIDS; essential in understanding Larry Kramer. Allen Smalling Enchanted Blue Wave Ltd. ‘‘A Magical Oceanfront Retreat’’ A Bed and Breakfast For Women O cean View Rooms ■ Outdotrr Spa Fitness and Gam e R(X)ms P. O . Box 147 (2 0 6 ) 642-4900 Seaoieu’, WA 98644 f t . '0 S a S S0Ki ¡U S t O Ut EVERYTHING FOR YOUR OLD HOUSE PORTLAND’S OLDEST AND FINEST STORE FOR OLD HOUSE RENOVATORS. 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