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
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