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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 15, 1999)
retobar IS , 1999 ? Novelizing the history Look back in lavender of queer publishing by C hristopher D. C uttone f Felice Picano’s The Book o f Lies is a roman a clef, he sure fooled me. I realized it could be, given that the major characters are a bunch o f queer writers who all but invented m odem gay lit. Only these guys are called the Purple Circle instead o f the Violet Quill S oci ety (which Picano helped establish). Histo ry— literary, gay or otherwise— has never been my thing, though, so I didn’t recognize any o f Picano’s portraits. O ne thing 1 know for sure: There’s plenty o f “evidence” written into The Book o f Lies for anyone interested in deciphering whom the fictional authors might represent. Plenty bor ing too, those parts. W h o wants to read a three-page scholarly analysis o f the work o f a writer who doesn’t exist? It’s an exercise in mental masturbation— unless, o f course, the nonexistent writer is a caricature o f someone real and the criticism is tongue-in-cheek, which would make it much more amusing. Really, w ho’s who is just a subplot in The Book o f Lies. Picano has written a multilayered mystery with one hell o f a surprise ending. Much more blatantly than Picano’s other I Talking to Felice Picano by F lora S ussely 'elice Picano is undeniably among the most ‘ powerful gay literary figures in this country. Picano and a small group o f New York- based writers in the early 1970s revived book readings, founded publishing companies, and printed gay literature through their Gay Presses o f New York for 17 years. Speaking by phone from his home in Los Angeles, Picano was happy to give some histor ical perspective. “ Book readings had stopped completely in the 1930s, with the communist thing,” he explains. “Then in 1978, at a bookstore called Free Lives &. C o., run by three lesbians, we began doing them. N ow it’s in vogue.” Indeed, Picano and his friends proved— by writing best-selling gay fiction— that good writ ing is marketable regardless o f genre. In honor of National LGBT History Month, Just Out looks at three very different takes on queer history work that I’ve read, this book is postmodern: a novel about novelists and their novels, about the scholars who study and criti cize said novelists, and the cult o f personality that embroils them all. Personally, I like a story that has more going on FeiiceP icano than just the obvious plot— crisis, denouement, etc. But The ^ rv Book o f Lies isn’t V ~ , |T|f|^ so postmodern as \ jf JEM to be unenjoyable. In fact, it’s very engrossing and there fore a relatively quick and satisfying reading experience. It is a mys tery after all. “ I founded Seahorse Press in 1977,” he recalls. “ I chose the Seahorse because it is a male that gives birth— a gestating, creating creature.” As Picano makes clear, o f course there were gay writers before his group, but the members o f the Violet Quill Society were determined to legitimize gay literature. Now, with many o f the old presses out o f business, Picano is looking back in his fic tion, assessing the history o f the gay literary movement and publishing some unabashedly autobiographical work. “ I am all o f the char- •.H' j. ' s ■M* r EVOLUTION Furthermore, I was thrilled to be read ing a gay novel that— despite the sexy guy pic tured on the back cover— didn’t have 1 TCLJMfc \ sex and sexuality as its leitmo tif. What sex there I is, is brief and | p ' * frustrating, and the novel wouldn’t have suf fered from a wee bit more. But it’s refreshing to be reminded that gay guys do other things besides have sex with men. The setting, however, did not excite me one bit. Like all good Oregonians (even us trans- acters,” he says enigmatically, “and none o f them." About his new novel Picano says, “The Book o f Lies is about a person who is artistically affected by this group o f gay writers, and while he himself doesn’t consider himself gay, he knows that group o f writers opened a door to literature he had not known.... It was the opening o f an aesthetic." But, are we supposed to like him for infil trating the circle to gain access to the inner life o f this writer? “You don’t have to be 100 per cent homosexual.... He’s a seeker, and he is a completely different person at the end o f the book than at the beginning,” Picano adds. And what about the one very moving love scene that defies description, except to say that the tone is dreamy and it is written in the way memory feels? “That’s the whole point, it is that way," he concurs. “Sometimes, you’re just sitting there and you hear a voice, exactly the way it was, W hile reading the incredi ble sweep o f events covered in this book might overwhelm Tin: A/nof ati : Rt ports on readers, Witness to Revolution G ay and L lsbi . w P olitics , ultimately uplifts with stories I % 7 - 1 9 9 9 o f triumphs and determination E i) i i K D « i C h r i s B u l l to keep pushing the river o f by O riana G reen hate in the other direction. It ought to be required reading, especially for those too young to have lived through the forma or a serious nonfiction book o f queer history, pick up Wit tive years o f queer liberation. ness to Revolution edited by Chris Bull, the Washington D.C. correspondent for The Advocate. This is a meaty ■ WITNESS t o R evolution edited by Chris Bull. Alyson Books, com pilation o f the best political reporting from all 32 years o f 1999; $16.95 paper. The Advocate. From the early, heady days o f protests to leg Tke times they’ve been a changin’ F islative battles and custody fights to serial killers, the terrible plague and battling the right wing, The Advocate has covered it all. Birthed out o f rage after police raids on gay bars in Los Angeles two years before Stonewall, The Advocate has estab lished itself as the foremost chronicle o f the lesbian and gay civil rights m ovement. It has been for many readers a credible voice in a dark sea o f hate and confusion. T he stories includ ed in Bull’s com pilation map the history o f the queer com m u nity’s transformation from a victimized underclass to a c o n stituency with far-reaching political clout. or a somewhat lighter look at queer history, delve into Gay Essentials: Facts for Your Queer Brain by David Bianco. Also a compilation, this one collects the best o f the author’s nationally syndicated newspaper column, Past Out. In each column Bianco answers a question about queer his tory— such as, W h o were the Daughters o f Bilitis? Short answer the first lesbian organization, founded in San Francisco in 1955. A n early group discussion topic was whether lesbians should wear skirts. The response goes on to detail the impor tant contributions o f the group, which soon went national. F • * ]3 # plants), I have a special loathing for all things LA. I moaned inwardly every time I had to read an extended description o f the com er o f blah and blah. I would have preferred to know the color o f the sky and the quality o f the sun light, but Picano seems intent on displaying his knowledge o f L.A. and its many malls. The Book o f Lies is set in the near future, which makes for some amusing cultural refer ences, like the mention o f a film called Hell- raiser 10: The Magnetificaticm o f Pinhead. Picano artfully draws out this book’s primary mystery, a scholar’s quest to unearth an unknown author whom everyone else seems to want buried but good. The mystery’s solution is, on the one hand, a little cheesy; on the other hand, it’s a slap in the face that revives the reader just enough to enjoy the really good, wholly unexpected slap in the face that is the novel’s true conclusion. The ending lays out an issue that needs to be discussed. By saving it till the end, Picano craftily builds the tension necessary to a mys tery but doesn’t give himself or the reader much time to consider the issue. The Book o f Lies is well-written, interesting and intriguing— it practically begs to be next m onth’s book group topic. ■ T he B ook OF L ies by Felice Picano. Alyson Books, 1999; $24.95 cloth. right there. These people who are gone are right there, and you can hear them.” About the autobiographical content o f his work he explains: “People Like Us was about [my] generation. AIDS ended those lives. But, really, what I find is that people who lived through that are less traumatized than those who didn’t really. They won’t read about it or think about it,” he says o f younger audiences. How is it that a small group o f writers changed the literary scene so profoundly? “We decided to make it happen. A nd you know how we made it happen? W e wrote bestsellers! Gay bestsellers1” Picano shouts into the phone. As to his next novel, Picano hesitates then spills the plot: “ It’s about a long-term relation ship I had with a married man. It’s never been done.” (As a book, he means.) Other questions include: BAY ESSENTIALS What was the Padlock Bill? FACTS FOR VOQg QÜEEP BPAIN Really short answer: a New York state law that banned DAVID BIANCO homosexuality from Broadway plays for 40 years. Bianco also answers questions about famous gay writers, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, queer activities during World War II and so on. O ne fascinating reply explains how San Francisco came to be so gay. Apparently we can thank the U.S. military. During the 1940s, San Francisco was the main port o f embarkation to the war in the Pacific. Hordes o f hom y men filtered in and out o f the city and found ready outlets and inlets— whatever their leanings. As legions o f them slunk back to the states with so-called “ blue" discharges for being homos, many opted to remain in San Francisco rather than face the shame waiting for them at home. From drag shows to pulp novels, from the Kinsey Report to the Queen for a Day clause, Gay Essentials is a quick and easy read, and a breezy primer in things historically queer. ■ G ay E ssentials : F a c t s for Y o u r Q ueer B rain by David Bianco. Alyson Books, 1999; $12.95 paper.
