But Was He a Gay Writer?
This article is only a portion of the full article. If you are already a premium subscriber please login. If you are not a premium subscriber, please subscribe for access to all of our content.

TIFF
A Life of Timothy Findley
by Sherill Grace
Wilfred Laurier University Press. 512 pages, $34.99

UNLESS you’re Canadian, older, or a scholar of 20th-century literature, you’ve probably never heard of Timothy Findley—the subject of Sherill Grace’s enormous and detailed biography. Yet he was a major figure in his time: actor, playwright, producer, much honored and best-selling author—almost until his death in 2002. He was openly gay in the media quite early on, and he made certain that his male life partner was included in everything public that he did. Yet he refused to be called a “gay author” and never wrote anything that can be said to add to LGBT literature as we know it. The few gay characters in his later books are often creepy or mentally disturbed—some prey upon teens, who, in turn, often prey back on them.