The Sloth of Sadness
NEAR THE BEGINNING of A Single Man, the novel by Christopher Isherwood on which Tom Ford’s new movie [in 2009] is based, a college English professor named George tells…More
Browsing: November-December 2014
November-December 2014
Blog Posts
A Single Man We Can Relate To
IN HIS MEMOIR Christopher and His Kind, Christopher Isherwood describes his relationship with E. M. Forster, who was 25 years his senior. When they met in 1932, Isherwood felt…More
The Baldwin of Giovanni’s Room
WHEN James Baldwin presented a manuscript of Giovanni’s Room to his agent, Helen Strauss, she told him to burn it. It was his second novel. His first, Go Tell…More
Mary Renault as the First Gay Novelist
BEST KNOWN for her historical novels set in ancient Greece, many with overtly homosexual themes and scenes, Mary Renault began her career with a novel set in modern times…More
That Scene in The City and the Pillar
AT A TIME in the 1970s when talk at the playground was of the sex scene on page 36 of The Godfather, I was perpetually reading page 47 of…More
Gore Vidal’s Shot across the Bow
GORE VIDAL died in 2012, at 86, and The New York Times obituary reluctantly conceded that his claim of having been blacklisted by the newspaper for writing The City…More
Why We Wished at The Well of Loneliness
I FIRST DISCOVERED The Well of Loneliness when I was growing up in my academic parents’ house full of books. I became aware that this book had been banned…More
The Case for The Well of Loneliness
WHILE The Well of Loneliness has generally been granted pride of place as the first lesbian novel, can a case be made for it as the first “gay” novel,…More
Proust’s Search for Things to Come
NO ONE SPEAKS of À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) as a gay novel; it’s a novel about fin-de-siècle Paris, about the rarefied world…More
While Maurice Slept
A COMPELLING CASE can be made for E. M. Forster’s Maurice as the first gay novel. Completed 100 years ago this year, Forster’s boldness lay in his revolutionary decision…More