Who is the greatest living gay writer?

Jamie O'Neill. AT SWIM, TWO BOYS is a masterwork.

Edward Albee

I wouldn't give the greatest living gay writer award to someone who has published one novel, a decade ago. Colm Toibin and Alan Hollinghurst at least have a consistent output of good work.

Fuck you.

Delany, no question if we're talking about English-language authors. He's a major novelist and has made huge contributions to queer studies and to gender studies through his novels.

Toibin is very good, but only very recently has he become so.

O'Neill is great, but he's only written one great novel (the first one is only so-so).

Cunningham isn't good at all.

Edmund White is too precious and will be forgotten after he's dead.

Gurganus and Hollinghurst are both good, but limited writers.

Kushner wrote one great work, but nothing else has been very good.

I would have added Vidal to the list, probably in place of Cunningham (IMO, the weakest novelist in the list). MYRA BRECKENRIDGE is a major landmark in queer fiction. The essays and memoirs are pretty good, though he is pretty nutty with his historical theories (predicated mostly on snobbery and conspiracy theories).

Ahem.

Why isn't kirker on the list?

You should add John Rechy to the list

I am. But there isn't a publisher in the world with the insight to appreciate the genius of my work.

Fuckers.

Is David Sedaris considered a not so good author?

Samuel R. Delany is bisexual and Gore Vidal is also bisexual.

It's certainly NOT John Rechy or the professional complainer and drama queen Larry Kramer.

I used to like Dennis Cooper but I wouldn't say that he's anywhere near "the best".

Edmund White is pretentious, annoying, and boring.

Jackie Collins

Bollocks.

I don't see anyone saying Alan Ball, despite his many breakthrough successes.

[quote]I don't see anyone saying Alan Ball, despite his many breakthrough successes.

No, indeed, you absolutely don't.

Perez Hilton

Without Josh Purcell Kilmer on the list, I'm not voting. Our beloved "fish tits" deserves recognition.

What about Armistead Maupin?

Chuck Palahniuk?

Michael Chabon

Thanks R19, his style is niche but he has been an incredibly successful author. Definitely worth mentioning.

R21 Michael Chabon is bisexual, read his first book "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" which was based on his previous relationships with men and women before he was married.

R10 & R18, are you serious?

I recognize three names on this list.

And I'm not ashamed of that.

I'll nominate Dale Peck for Martin and John.

It's COMEDY, r23. You named two writers with a gift for comedy.

Literature snobs rarely take anyone or anything with a sense of humor seriously.

Sucks for them!

R19 Chuck P. used to be good and then his style changed and he tries way too hard to be shocking when it doesn't work at all now.

Now he's just predictable, boring, and everyone tries to imitate him.

He even has an online LOL "writing school" where you can learn how to write just like him!

At least the annoying Augusten Burroughs isn't on the list.

His "memoirs" are pretty much total lies and bullshit and whiny pity party drivel.

I'm surprised he hasn't been sued or hasn't been exposed as a fraud like James Frey.

Agree with R1: Two Boys at Swim is a brilliant novel. To have even one book that great is an amazing achievement.

Ditto for Tony Kushner and Angels in America.

Colm Toibin and Michael Cunningham just in general.

r6, I thought of Alison Bechdel for a half-second even though I don't think she's all that great - I do have a ton of affection for her, though. This is a topic that will interest about 1.7 people on DL but I think it's kind of interesting (/totally unsurprising) how basically every well-respected North American comics writer fits the profile of "straight guy who probably had a rough time in middle school" - every other medium at least has a few gay male legends on its Mt. Rushmore but when they did a major museum exhibit on American comics it was half well-executed boys' entertainment, half well-executed stuff from sexually frustrated straight men.

Sarah Waters, ya dumbshites.

Mabel Maney made me laugh. I don't know about the others.

I just discovered that the wonderful writer Chris Adrian is gay, but he never writes about explicitly gay subjects. Do we count him as a gay writer.

p.s. I voted for Hollinghurst.

Adrienne Rich.

Gore Vidal is not bisexual.

He doesn't like to be called gay, because he's got some elaborate justification about not believing in labels, but that old queen is absolutely not bisexual.

I'm glad "At Swim, Two Boys" was mentioned. Fantastic work.

I also have a soft spot for Ethan Mordden's "How Long Has This Been Going On?" but realize he's mostly an essayist and critic.

Loved the earlier Christopher Bram and Leavitt books. A few of Michael Cunningham's as well.

Thank you for NOT including Maupin. He's a halfway decent serial writer and if he was writing a soap opera he'd be great. But a novelist for the ages, he is not.

I'd add Brian Malloy who's written a few very underappreciated books (Year of Ice is fantastic).

And if you liked At Swim Two Boys, read The God in Flight. A classic love story between two men....and written by a then-fortysomething female academic. A great fucking book.

Is Bret Easton Ellis still gay?

r37 Yes, but he was never a "writer".

R27, "Pygmy" is very clever. And what DL queen wouldn't enjoy "Tell-All"?? It's a love-letter to old Hollywood written in poison ink.

r38 is right about Bret Easton Ellis, but he should get some kind of a prize for being the worst living gay Tweeter

Good one, R37.

Please tell me you are joking R17.

Isn't Ellis the skag who compared watching Glee to jumping in a puddle of HIV? How vivid.

I agree about Colm Toibin and Jamie O'Neill but where is Clive Barker?

What a lousy list. Is that the best we can do? If it is, then the ghettoization of literature in gay fiction, black fiction, Latino fiction, has been a big bust.

[R44] Okay, princess, please tell us what's missing.

Frank Luntz

Edmund White???

Clive Barker? A tenth rate Stephen King, at best. If you nominate him, you should be nominating Anne Rice's useless offspring as well.

The Bunnicula guy

Andrew Holleran is my favorite writer from the Violet Quill Club. He lost it when he began to write about nothing but AIDS,

51 posts and I am the first to offer Edward Albee?

[R49] The bitchy Marys here annihilated him here a few weeks back for having the indecency to marry his younger partner, who he also supposedly looked just like. The things bitches complain about!

Hi R51, Albee was mentioned in R2.

Gregory Maguire

[quote]You should add John Rechy to the list

Posts like these are some of my favorites. You don't know if the poster was being funny or serious. Either is possible on datalounge.

Sarah Waters

Has she wed her girlfriend yet?

Andrew Holleran definitely deserves to be on the list. Too bad he's not more prolific.

R35:

I think Gore Vidal saying he's bisexual rather than gay is a cover for him having been engaged to Joanne Woodward before she married Paul Newman. Her being engaged to Gore means she was prepared to be a beard.

Thanks R36 for recommending Year of Ice. It was one of the very best gay novels I've read.

Vikram Seth

Gore Vidal has a tiny penis apparently.

Bret Easton Ellis is bisexual I liked some of his very early novels when I was the same age as the characters in them but he uses way too much coke and his later novels just suck.

Patrick Gale. He's the best and most underrated.

Is Kenneth Lonergan gay? If so, I vote for him.

Vikram Seth is gay??? And I think Michael Chabon specifically denied being gay in some online interview (so is he just confused when he wrote The Mysteries of Pittsburgh?)

another vote for sarah waters

patricia highsmith of the talented mr. ripley fame

neil bartlett (Mr. Clive and Mr. Page) is rarely mentioned but quite good

I love alan hollinghurst, but I'm having serious reservations about him after he said 'rich people's lives are more interesting' and therefore better fodder for literature

never could stand Edmund White's prose.

Vikram Seth more or less came out when India was legalising homosexuality. He's still coy in interviews, but it's common knowledge.

And he's far better anyone else mentioned so far, except for maybe Chabon, who may simply have a bi sensibility and tedious wife at this point.

Another vote for "at swim two boys" I love Alan hollinghurst,Patrick Gale and colm Toibin.I like Michael Cunningham.

I am so glad that some people have mentioned how pretentious Edmund White is. I thought it was just me.I have tried so many of his books and each one I hate worse than the last,but I keep being told try this one you will think differently.I don't ...Overrated.

No one has mentioned Mark Merlis ",Pyrrhus" and"American Studies" truly beautiful books

Guilty pleasures include William Corlett "Now and Then "and though flawed" Becoming a Man" by Paul Monette but both of these men have since died so I suppose we shouldn't count them but I have:)

A truly lovely book is an Australian book called "Holding the Man" by Timothy Conigrave but he died from Aids so I suppose as he is not living doesn't count.However if you ever need something romantic and sad ,this is it. The author met his lover at school and they were together until the end , even with a couple of break ups. Lovely

It's interesting that when talking about "writers" everyone's head goes directly to fiction, with some bones thrown in to memoirists.

I would suggest looking at some poetry for some of the greatest queer writers working today: John Ashbery, David Trinidad, D.A. Powell, Eileen Myles, just to name a few.

The best recent gay novel I've read in the last few years is probably the End of the World Book by Alistair McCartney but it seems to have flown under the radar, probably because it is more experimental. Still, extraordinarily beautiful at times.

Still, I voted for Delany on that list.

Of course, there is some great writing in queer theory sometimes, with Judith Halberstam and Jose Esteban Muñoz being some of the best.

The list doesn't make sense.

It's absurd to include one stage dramatist (Kushner, whose rep is based on 1 play) and not include writers for film or TV, essayists, or poets.

Ryan Murphy

Highsmith is dead.

Hmm...of the men, I think I'd have to go with Albee (who is currently getting flamed a lot by younger queers for identifying as a writer first).

And hell, yeah, Sarah Waters is a great writer; Emma Donoghue is also up there; Jeanette Winterson.

Gore Vidal. Novels, plays, essays....

Let the shrieking begin!

Patrick Gale's early books were terrific, but I stopped reading him when he stopped being published in the U.S. Are his most recent books good?

Paul Russell. He's amazing. I loved The Coming Storm.

Oops sorry R70, I totally forgot about the greatest LIVING author bit!

Mark Doty is a smashing poet, check out Atlantis

So, have any of you bitches bought North Morgan's first book yet!?!?

They've got gay writers now?

Joseph olshan " Night Swimmer" Australian author David Malouf

Reynolds price

Didn't know Malouf was gay!

Perez Hilton.

There was a really great interview with Samuel Delany in the Paris Review a couple of months ago that made me want to buy something else of his right on the spot, but of course I was reading it in a dying Borders like a bum, so no dice

We The Animals by Justin Torres.

Loved it.

Chris Adrian is also a fully pledged and practicing MD... Oncologist of all things! Talk about having his cake and eating it, too! Who's his BF or fuck buddy? Power agent? PR at Random House? Editor at New Yorker?

Felice Picano could easily have topped the list, if only he'd edited less and written more. Has he retired?

Armistead Maupin. OP, how did you come up with your list and leave him off?

I second Paul Russell. The Coming Storm and The Sea of Tranquility were both very good. He doesn't get nearly enough attention.

Justin Chin

Edward Albee is the world's greatest living playwright and the world's greatest living gay writer.

Geoff Ryman is a great and underrated writer.

R90--yes, and "Was" is now out of print, believe or not. So much more interesting a take on the Oz myth for me than Maguire's series (though I like Maguire's books perfectly well).

Where the hell's Ned Rorem?

Gore Vidal

Edmund White went to Cranbrook like Romney. He's a one percenter. Hell to the No.

Without question, Christopher Bradbury Robinson.

Every other writer is merely going over well trudged ground: he's the only one who, employing his own perspective and sexuality, has illuminated fresh landscapes. Academic libraries know it: that's why they all hold him, even though the swing of the social and cultural pendulum has made him temporarily unreviewable because of, like Duvert, the sexuality he uses as his pyrotechnic launchpad.

Alan Ball is not on the list!

Or Dustin!

Lars Eighner

Edward Albee

[R63] I pray that Kenneth Lonnergan is not gay.

Edward Albee vote again! "The Goat" is awesome

Mrs. Irving Mansfield

Vidal is bi? I don't believe it.

Augustin Burroughs

Uhm, perhaps you forgot about me?

Or me?

From the list offered, I'd say Tony Kushner.

I know you're not counting women as "gay" but if you were: Jeanette Winterson, Emma Donoghue, Sarah Waters and Dorothy Allison, in that order.

Just voted for Edmund White.

Oh R69, pick up a book.

And R85, pick up a GOOD book.

Most of you don't seem to know the difference between "greatest" and "latest."

Re 95 : I agree. I've been reading C J Bradbury Robinson since he published his astonishing first novel "A Crocodile of Choirboys" in 1970. Readers might like to know portions of that novel, plus the subsequent "Young Thomas" and the complete "Williams Mix", with its introduction by William Burroughs, have been published together under the umbrella title "More Please No More" (Out Now Press 2011). The book is available from Amazon UK.

Wentworth Miller

Yeah, Edward Albee you illitera...illitrete..illittteratati...dummy.

Hammersmith.

Wonderful [109] that you've found a way, Brad, of continuing our work in the next world. Delighted you've found a publisher for "Williams Mix" at last. Congratulations. I did try my best with Maurice Girodias, but L Ron outgunned him. All the best.

WTF? I wait for the movie to come out.

Unarguably: C J Bradbury Robinson

I agree with [95]. C J Bradbury Robinson is a great writer, for the reasons given. He's doing something new and doing it with style.

I'm delighted to see he's in touch with his old friend William Burroughs in the after-life.

May I humbly suggest, though, "Try" is almost up there with "Crocodile" ?

Does anyone actually read Dennis Cooper?

I've tried reading a bit of his work but it just comes across as banal everyday conversation amongst dreary self-abusive people. Not exactly illuminating.

I might actually read his blog if he was less self-indulgent enough to paragraph.

CJ Bradbury Robinson's writing reminds me, oddly enough, of Stephen Tennant. It's the same kind of masturbatory prose popular with trustafarians and lotus-eating academics, and which calls for editor's scissors and a bucket of cold water. I can imagine Tennant scribbling in bed eating chocolate biscuits and scented with violet water. Robinson is a more Methodist version where the object of lust isn't a muscly gallic tar, but rather, a banal tyke. But it may as well be a door handle.

Andrew Holleran is very underrated. Yes, his writing about late middle age can be excessively woe-is-me, and you want to drag him out into the sunshine, but his prose can be so funny and beautiful and poetic, and he navigates unspoken emotional depths like few other gay writers.

Vikram Seth

Australian author, Christos Tsiolkas - I recommend The Slap in particular.

Also, Jeanette Winterson

Take your pole and ram it up my ass, OP?

Re 116

Whilst I agree with you about Dennis Cooper, what you write about C J Bradbury Robinson is wilfully perverse. His prose is sublime and his books a delight, especially his novel for children "The Owl and his Boy". Like Drewey Wayne Gunn in his recent "Gay Novels of Britain 1881-1981", I heartily recommend the works of C J Bradbury Robinson.

Paul Russell

Andrew Holleran

"Kushner wrote one great work, but nothing else has been very good."

By far the most over-rated writer on the list; though I will say he did a very decent adaptation of the LINCOLN screenplay........for which he (not surprisingly) seemed certain would bring him an Oscar.

What about Allen Ginsberg?

Oh wait he's dead. Facepalm.

R36: Ethan Mordden has published something like ten books in fiction, maybe even more by now. He doesn't mainly write non-fiction; he just also writes non-fiction.

And I wonder if there could be just one "best" gay writer, with so many good ones. And doesn't Henry James belong on the list?

[quote]And doesn't Henry James belong on the list?

James is 'living' in that his works are in print, but he's long been unavailable for readings and signings.

It's Bart Yates

After reading Fixer Chao I thought Han Ong was going to be one of the great writers. He has it. I don't think he's written more than one book after Fixer Chao, though. Too bad. That book is devilishly funny and smart.

Nice list. I'm going to check out:

Chris Adrian

Christopher Bram (I've liked everything I've read by him, but it's been a while.)

Frank Luntz

Bunnicula???

Brian Malloy (I like him. I hope he's kept writing.)

The God in Flight (This really is as good as the poster said. I'm going to read it again.

Neil Bartlett

Mark Merlis "Pyrrhus" "American Studies” (I loved American Studies.)

End of the World Book by Alistair McCartney

Patrick Gale

Paul Russell (I think I've read everything. He is my favorite living gay writer.)

North Morgan

Joseph Olshan (I loved Nightswimming.)

We The Animals by Justin Torres

Christopher Bradbury Robinson

Lars Eighner

Bart Yates

Where is Christopher Rice ? Snort ....

No one in your poll has a selfie like this one ... now THIS is a serious writer !!

Holy shit has he aged! I swear I thought it was a 50-something year old man with lifelong sex, alcohol and drug habits.

He was only born in 1978 making him 36!!!

Annie Proulx

R25 from the What if Matt Damon had been Emperor of the French? thread.

John Weir, duh.

[quote] John Weir, duh.

I love his outfits!

Albee and Edmund White. Soft spot for Maupin.

R133: Douce et charmante.

Not the skater, the writer.

Weir's new story in *Subtropics*, called "Hurts," track it down.

Brad Gooch wins the award for best aged gay writer--and when I met him at a Flannery O'Connor conference, he was charming and reasonably modest for an ex-model. And he didn't rip Flannery's ancient, mean cousin a new one, as he had every right to do.

His biography of O'Connor is good--his biography of Frank O'Hara is, IMHO, his best writing. The fiction was of its time and hasn't really lasted.

Though Gooch did look puzzled when I asked after his lovely sister Agnes! (I didn't, but was tempted--and didn't primarily because I assume he has been asked the same question by countless would-be-clever queens).

!

Anyway, Albee, of course.

I'd've said Adrienne Rich if she hadn't just died.

Totally predictable and obvious answers on this thread, except for one or two. And is there no such thing as women?

Am I wrong?

You're free to cite as many gay woman writers as you like, R143 R144. And unpredictable men (I eagerly await this list, especially).

Allan Hollinghurst hands down. But it seems he has made no dent in America. I think he and Edward St Aubyn (Patrick Melrose novels) are probably the two greatest living novelists of any kind.

Ms Donna Tartt.

I voted Other.

Steven Macaulay (Object of My Affection)

What about this hottie?

Indisputably C J Bradbury Robinson.

Drewey Wayne Gunn in "Gay Novels of Britain 1881-1981" writes as follows : C J Bradbury Robinson's "Greenleaf novels are interconnected literary tours de force, postmodern works involving all kinds of narrative play: metafictional games, parody, invective, doubling and tripling of characters, changes of sex along with much word play and inventive use of incremental repetition."

That's accurate. Two of the four Greenleaf novels, all long out of print, have been rewritten and published under the umbrella title "More Please No More" available from Amazon UK.

The volume also contains the fine "Williams Mix" with an introduction by William Burroughs.

Essential reading.

[quote]It's Bart Yates

Yes. If you haven't read Leave Myself Behind or The Brothers Bishop, don't declare anyone better until you do.

Another person for Sarah Waters.

Felice Picano

r145, Jeanette Winterson, Alison Bechdel, Eileen Myles, Sarah Waters, Mia McKenzie, Holly Hughes, Paula Vogel, Helen Eisenbach, Madeleine Olnek, Dodie Bellamy. . .

Men:

Alex Chee, James Hannaham, Jericho Brown, DA Powell, Karl Soehnlein, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Kevin Killian, Frank Bidart, Carl Phillips, Jon Robin Baitz, Christopher Durang, Richard Greenberg, Douglas Carter Beane. . .

Have none of you *read* a book in the past 40 years?

Christopher Bram

I don't read a lot of fiction, R154.

Does nobody else around here find Alan Hollinghurst a little precious, and sort of icky in his fetishizing of black guys?

Not a lot of especially adventurous readers on Datalounge! Doesn't surprise me!

R158 ...

I read quirky stuff, but it isn't largely gay, which is the scope of this thread.

From your list, "adventurous" R158 R154, I like KM Soehnlein and Kevin Killian. Same goes for Robbie Baitz, Chris Durang, and Richard Greenberg. I've read and seen many, but not all, of their plays.

Thanks for your “adventurous” suggestions for further reading. I’ve ordered Chee’s [italic]Edinburgh[/italic], Hannaham’s [italic]God Says "No"[/italic] Killian’s book with “Princess” in the title, and two books by Saenz.

Is it fun to be so condescending?

Yes, r160! It's REALLY fun to be so condescending!

Thanks for asking.

I hope you bought all those books from a local independent bookstore, and not online from the dreaded Amazon!

I praise you in all ways.

Boring thread, nobody's ever read anything.

Lena Dunham

C J Bradbury Robinson

Obviously.

See post 150 for the reason why.

[quote]Men:

Alex Chee, James Hannaham, Jericho Brown, DA Powell, Karl Soehnlein, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Kevin Killian, Frank Bidart, Carl Phillips, Jon Robin Baitz, Christopher Durang, Richard Greenberg, Douglas Carter Beane. . .

Have none of you *read* a book in the past 40 years?

R154 Kevin Killian isn't gay, he's bisexual and is married to a woman his wife Dodie Bellamy who is also a writer, and no it's not a marriage of convenience.

Anyone new on the horizon?

C J Bradbury Robinson has published a new novel with the title "Get Back".

A surreal and hilarious indictment of language as our chief gaoler.

Highly recommended and available from his website.

T.E. Lawrence

Albee own this thread.

Ethan Mordden has no ear for dialogue whatsoever. I read one of his unending novels, and just kept thinking, "Real people don't talk like this". Read one of his non-fiction Broadway history books and it was...meandering. It also presumed that the reader already knew every obscure Broadway musical nugget...

Gurganus is unreadable. I just found him unreadable. And laughable.

C J Bradbury Robinson

His novel A Crocodile of Choirboys (Greenleaf Classics 1970) is revelatory.

Paul Russell is the most consistently good gay male writer alive today.

Also: Holleran and Molloy. I like Cunningham's elegant sentences, but find his storytelling less than compelling.

Colm Toibin is the best living writer of fiction. Period. Since he is gay, then he is the best living gay writer. That not all of his works focus on gay experiences does not put his place in doubt, IMO.

Madame is the great of them all!

Bump.

I don't know about 'greatest' per se, but Mr Brad Gooch is certainly one of the greatest-looking ones of them all:

Excuse me

C J Bradbury Robinson, naturellement.

And in his new book, Words For Love Perhaps, he's in his element. Available from Amazon UK.

Mr North Morgan:

Upcoming work by Mr Morgan:

Literary Bubble:

C J Bradley Robinson? His seedy novels are just circuitous poor-me paedophilic navel gazing written in a tiresome drug-fucked style. Unless you like mooning over unobtainable eight year olds I can't see the attraction. I'd lay bets that, like Dennis Cooper, he's a trustafarian, because otherwise an editor would have bluepenciled half his output. As a paedophilic author, Duvert blows him out of the water. Duvert's recently translated Journal Of An Innocent is so great it's beyond any niche genre. But Duvert is dead, so that rules him out.

My choices: Andrew Holleran definitely.

The Australian author Robert Dessaix for his extraordinary Night Letters. His coffee table book Arabesques : A Tale of Double Lives, which traces the journeys of Andre Gide is also remarkable: I can't think of anything like it that has come out of either England or America, yet it was published Down Under!

No one has mentioned Duncan Fallowell. Not great great, but thoroughly enjoyable. His book of interviews are fantastic. His From London To Noto In A Ford is not to be missed.

I'm don't read much, but I'm sure some of these writers being mentioned are not "living."

Of writers who write exclusively on gay male experiences, I'd say Holleran. Of writers who are gay men but write more widely, I'd say Toibin. I'd give my left ball to have 1/10 of either of their talent.

Albee.

I'm not reading anything on this thread before it was put to sleep last year.

Most of you have veered off-topic without considering OP's question: GREATEST LIVING gay writer, as in male.

Justin Chin is dead, so he's out.

Justin Torres is a coddled pretty poster boy for Lambda Literary Foundation. 'We the Animals' is little more than 100 pages; not great, cute. It's one book.

David Sedaris is for illiterates who want toilet reading. He writes anecdotes.

Maupin, while prolific, is no "great" writer; overpraised, overdone, and over-published. He got in at a good time, and has sucked every bit of marrow of out the "Tales" series. The others are fine.

Picano is amazingly prolific, but doesn't stick to any genre, which some dislike. I know there a few here who despise his work for some deranged reason.

Cooper is a serial creep. Every book is about the same thing: twinks, torture and death.

As for the has-been Ellis, and the fraud "memoirist" Burroughs, they should not even be compared to the likes of Toibin or Holleran. It's like comparing dog shit to purebred dogs.

Also, piling nonfiction, fiction and plays together is absurd.

I give this thread two out of five stars.

C J Bradbury Robinson a "trustafarian" ? Obviously (182) you know as little of his biography as you do of his books, all of which are infinitely preferable to the novels of Tony Duvert. "Diary of an Innocent" is as tedious as the Arab boys it depicts, banal and humorless, whilst Robinson's "More Please No More" is beautifully written and witty - as its title indicates . . . Well, don't take my word for it; read Drewey Wayne Gunn's eulogy of Robinson in his recent "Gay Novels of Britain" (McFarland 2014).

An astonishing story you may not be aware of.

Albee

Did I mention Albee?

[quote]C J Bradbury Robinson a "trustafarian" ? Obviously (182) you know as little of his biography as you do of his books

A quick search indicates him saying he's worked as a schoolteacher and psychoanalyst, but it also brings up that he owned stock in the packaging conglomerate Robinsons. Which is par for the course. Most of the perpetrators of unreadable but academically wanked over look-at-me prose are trustafarians. It goes with the navel gazing territory. I'd put him in the same boat as that other trustafarian Peter Lamborn Wilson.

Just because a writer references Burroughs or Beckett or TS Eliot in their writing, and tries to pull off the same tricks doesn't make them a great writer. Half his stuff reads as stream of consciousness indulgent as Barbara Bloody Cartland -- if Babs was fingering herself over eight year olds.

GORE VIDAL IS DEAD you morons.

He has been dead for four years.

Why is he being discussed?

David Leavitt?!?

I haven't heard that queen's name in a decade.

He got drummed right outta New York - is he still teaching at a state school in Florida?

R193: why was David drummed out of NYC? Details pls TIA!

Fuck ya bitch. Why it has to be a living writer? The greatest gay writers are dead. Deal with it.

Holleran's "The Beauty of Men" is so powerful....

[quote]Fuck ya bitch. Why it has to be a living writer?

r195, you might like to re-look at the title of this thread.

But you can start a DEAD greatest gay writer thread if you wish.

[The picture of the snarling pussy was unnecessary and simply cunty.]

[quote]I read one of his unending novels, and just kept thinking, "Real people don't talk like this".

Absolutely right. Case in point:

“Set me down in your paragraphs,” Portia promised, “and I'll fuck you crippled.” She said this sweetly, even innocently; girls were so different nowadays.

R197, you make dat thread and i'll vote. Otherwise, don't try to convince me that i'm a bad kitty. It will fire back at ya.

Andrew Holleran or Paul Russell

Who is Molloy, R172? I agree with your assessments completely, except I don't know who Molloy is.

Since Gore is dead, I believe that would leave John Rechy as the grande dame of gay writers in the US

r199, you are a bad kitty

R202, Jim Morrison was pretty homophobic, but he loved 'City of Night' by John Rechy.

One more time

Stupid cat post, R205

The only thing that seems daft is you, R206.

Stephen Sondheim

Ms Donna Tartt.

Is Donna Tartt gay?

Brian Molloy? He wrote one decent book. Hardly a masterpiece of all time and space.

C J Bradbury Robinson "unreadable" 191 ? Precisely what is unreadable, or "stream-of-consciousness indulgent" about this :

"Without the window day awaited light to dispel the night. Purple treeshadows leaned dark in the moonshine, brooded the garden, watchful. A mouse, alert, traversed the lawn, forging a slim black wake in the sea-smooth grass, each blade scattering beads of dew, mirroring many moons. A Persian, one paw raised, watched. Shy flowers hid their heads demurely, hoping, with their petals shut, not to be noticed; birds in the treetops safely slept. No owl hooted, no early car whitewashed walls with swinging headlamps, no. The shadows lengthened, slowly lightened, lost their mystery, disappeared."

The opening lines of Bradbury Robinson's "More Please No More". Fine writing, I'd say. William Burroughs thought so too.

As for the "trustafarian" charge, it's nonsense.

[quote]As for the "trustafarian" charge, it's nonsense.

So the Christopher Bradbury Robinson who holds 10.8% of Robinson PLC is quite some other Christopher Bradbury Robinson then?

And the Christopher Bradbury Robinson who wrote this letter would be someone else again?

It's all so confusing.

Edmund White can write all genres. Plus he is (or was) a delightful, amusing, bitchy, and generous person. I don't know how he is in his old age, though.

Has anyone mentioned Albee?

R215 I especially found his descriptions of receiving watersports as part of a dom/sub relationship the height of Proustian sublimity. Plus, his rather idiotic comment that anyone who didn't become HIV+ during the 80s was just a coward places him a bit lower in my estimation of "generous"--though it sounds like he was eager to "give."

[post redacted because independent.co.uk thinks that links to their ridiculous rag are a bad thing. Somebody might want to tell them how the internet works. Or not. We don't really care. They do suck though. Our advice is that you should not click on the link and whatever you do, don't read their truly terrible articles.]

Review of the latest praised-to-the-skies gay novel. I can't think of a topic that would bore me more. It's supposed to be a 'crossover' success so I'll leave it to the straights.

Re 218 Can anyone explain why Webby has suddenly taken against long links, and The Independent? Is it hormonal or are they a problem?

Mr Greenwell's eloquent defense of park cruising in the age of bourgeois same-sex marriage and respectability:

Paul Russell

I read it, r19. Nothing more than dreary. Some poster who couldn't start a thread asked if someone else would do so, as this was the REAL Great Gay Novel of the 20th Century.

I liked it even less than that book from last year, whose title I no longer type.

R223 was actually a response to r219.

Classics prof James Davidson

C J Bradbury Robinson has no shares in Robinsons of Chesterfield (and neither had his father nor grandfather), though he is distantly related to the firm. As his biographer, I can assure you this statement is factually correct. As for the letter (213/214), it looks genuine enough, but one never knows with the internet . . . What matters, anyway, is his writing. Were it not for the writing, no one would take the slightest interest in the life, which, as with most writers, W S Burroughs excepted, is pretty dull in comparison with the words.

Datalounge Anonymous, take a bow! You are the greatest living gay writer!

Madame is the greatest star of all!

Tennessee Williams

[quote]C J Bradbury Robinson has no shares in Robinsons of Chesterfield

So the shareholder is quite another Christopher Bradbury Robinson in the family? Is there a friend called Bunbury as well?

[quote] As his biographer

What biography? Has Amazon been banning again?

[quote] As for the letter (213/214), it looks genuine enough, but one never knows with the internet ...

Obviously not enough biographical questions have been asked.

[quote] What matters, anyway, is his writing.

Given the tiresome whinge that constitutes his oeuvre is an endless j'accuse, best not ignore the context.

Edmund White has a new novel out tomorrow. He's had a really uneven output in the last decade or so (I guess that's been true throughout his career, though he started really strong). This one is about some gorgeous young gay male model in the 1980s. Either it will achieve the Proustian sensibility he aspires to (and sometimes gets within a mile of, to be fair) or it will be insufferable. Toss a coin. Nonetheless, I'll be there to get it tomorrow. He's earned our support over the decades--the series of novels beginning with "A Boy's Own Story" were beautifully written and revolutionary in presenting a non-pathological narrative of the American gay male (like Isherwood's novels did for Brits and emigres).

Dear r231: please tell us more about the encounter when you're done, thanks!

Has someone said Ryan Murphy yet?

White's Inside A Pearl was very disappointing. It was like he was just filling pages. I never finished it.

[quote]Given the tiresome whinge

The only word worse than "arse" is "whinge."

[quote]Edmund White has a new novel out tomorrow.

I hope I don't break a finger in my rush to get to amazon to not buy it.

As long as it doesn't take place in fucking PARIS.

R234 I couldn't finish Inside a Pearl either, but I liked Hotel de Dream, his Jack London novel, very much. His memoirs, while frank, don't make me eager for their next chapter which, no doubt, will take us from his forays into a piss-drinking sub into what must inevitably be the next stage--the Depends Queen.

C J Bradbury Robinson - only he isn't gay and nor is gay sex what he writes about . . .

The "tiresome whinge" (230) is YOURS.

Now, if you don't mind, I'll get back to his unique novel "Get Back" . . .

239 replies and not one mention of Michel Foucault.

[quote]C J Bradbury Robinson - only he isn't gay and nor is gay sex what he writes about . . .

Gay? Perish the thought! No, what he writes about ad infinitum is the pain.... that boys are a bitch to bum. And that is super special. And needs to be separated out and sprinkled with glitter dust and given it's own unique little haloed niche of suffering - one shelf down from schoolgirl lesbian novels. Despite the fact that every second 'gay' historical figure from Caravaggio to Gide to Whitman occasionally shoved it to junior.

Yeah, think about that, R240.

Michel Foucault is deaded, darling. Deaded, deaded, deaded. Has been for quite some time. Of the aids. So not so living.

Got a second choice?

Barbara Thorndyke

C J Bradbury Robinson.

"What he writes about ad infinitum is the pain . . ." ? (241) Nonsense. Not even true of his quartet of novels published by Greenleaf Classics back in the Seventies - that's 45 years ago - which I suspect is all most Americans have read. Still less is it true of the more recent novels published by Out Now Press in Britain and Holland : "More Please No More" (which includes the novel "Williams Mix" for which W S Burroughs wrote his masterly introduction); "Words For Love Perhaps" (a rewriting of the Greenleaf "Crocodile" plus the original text) and "Get Back".

And then there's "The Owl and his Boy" - C J Bradbury Robinson's children's book - which is delightful, witty, profound. Perhaps those here (241) who haven't read these books could stop pretending they have ? And perhaps also they could start writing grammatical English e.g. ". . . given it's own unique . . ." That "it's" should not have an apostrophe . . .

R236 - Amen. I got it from the library. It's the same as everything else he's written and comes with dust it's so dated.

To cut Edmund White some slack he wrote 'Inside a Pearl' when recovering from a stroke, so it was the gossip of a convalescent. Well and good if it helped him through. He's a survivor for sure.

Stop trying to make Robinson happen R245. It's not going to happen. And this is not because his subject is the pain of pederasty, or his works are virtually unobtainable, or because it's not something that interests most people. The reason it's not going to happen is because he belongs to that subset of self-indulgent writers who pen word-gaming aren't-I-clever prose that's tiresome to read. The had a moment of popularity in the 60s-70s, but it is long past. Readers don't have time for such bullshit any more. Combine that with endless circuitous navel gazing, and the writing is doubly unrewarding. Pederasty/pedophilia are naturally tricky subjects, and you can count the great modern writers who've addressed the area in single figures: Gide, Pater, Hopkins, Nabokov, Peyrefitte, Montherlant, Augiéras, Duvert, and perhaps one or two others. Robinson however belongs more with 2nd tier scribblers with artistic pretensions such as Casimir Dukahz - another wearisome word player who thinks he's clever. But as was pointed out upthread, Robinson hasn't half the talent of a Duvert, who is likely to be read centuries from now.

C J Bradbury Robinson.

His novel "Young Thomas" does for "Peter Pan" what "Lolita" did for "Alice in Wonderland" - that is to say, it demythologizes childhood. Furthermore, the beauty of the writing and the wit are comparable with Nabokov.

The revised and final version of "Young Thomas" is part of "More Please No More" - available from Amazon UK.

William Burroughs would disagree with you (248) - so too Drewey Wayne Gunn - and so do I - though I would admit that Robinson's prose takes a university degree in English or familiarity with Close Reading to appreciate. On almost every page there are literary allusions or puns or parodies to savour, such as the hilarious Toffee Apple encounter in "Minor Incidents" which is a send-up of the Sucking Stones episode in Samuel Beckett's "Molloy". Can anyone honestly read it without enjoyment, without laughter ?

Robinson is funny, good heavens, full of fun . . . The savants here notice only the sadness. Now why is that, I wonder ?

[quote]though I would admit that Robinson's prose takes a university degree in English or familiarity with Close Reading to appreciate.

Thank goodness Shakespeare is still readable for the peasants.

[quote]such as the hilarious Toffee Apple encounter in "Minor Incidents" which is a send-up of the Sucking Stones episode in Samuel Beckett's "Molloy".

Oh my sides! Anyone who ever got a laugh out of Beckett needs help. Paglia was correct to label him a parched neurotic and his work callow wordplay and oafish low comedy.

Does nobody here read Peter Cameron? The Weekend, Andorra, City of Your Final Destination, Coral Glynn? His story "The End of My Life Life in New York" (2101 Pen/O. Henry Awards) is one of the best (and funniest) things about gay life in NYC I've ever read.

Have you read Someday, This Pain Will Be Useful to You, R251? I like it best of all his books.

Haven't read Cameron's Someday This Pain because I'm not a big fan of YA, but I'll give it a try.

I just read 'The End Of My Life In New York' at the link. Good, but nothing special. Only served to remind how wonderful Andrew Holleran is, who has covered the same emotional territory. Unlike Holleran he also takes a long time to make his points. Awful thing to say, but it smacks of writing summer school. A good first draft.

C J Bradbury Robinson.

His novels are literature, but they are Outsider Literature, in the same way that Henry Darger's work is Outsider Art. Thinking about it, a better comparison would be with Balthus.

Is Balthus one of the great artists of the Twentieth Century ? No. Does his work repay close attention ? Yes.

Same applies to Robinson.

Robinson comparable to Balthus? Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Talk about false equivalency. Try Thomas Kinkade.

C.J. Bradbury Robinson.

His first book, A Crocodile of Choirboys, (Greenleaf Classics 1970) already showed his gamma-ray psychological insight. Still nearly half a century later, it leaves readers wondering if they're reading the book or the book the reader.

Robinson's writing trains its eye on one of the essential but more abstruse forces in the human weave, that at once holds the social fabric together and risks breaking it down radioactively. Across by now many volumes, experiments in style, and ideological somersaults, he remains a literary specialist -- but the key his work has cut will, I predict, unlock a niche for its author in the pantheon.

r242

"Dead" and "living" are arbitrary categories invented by scientists and lawmakers in the 19th century - part of an oppressive discourse in which entrenched power structures manifest themselves.

Before 1800, these categories didn't even exist - there's a letter from a medieval Provencal peasant that proves this unequivocally.

What are C J Bradbury Robinson's books like? I looked up one of them and it looked like writing that de Sade, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Dennis Cooper would enjoy. I cannot find them and the ones that were on amazon were super expensive! One book cost £1,001.00!

Kushner and Ed White better than Hollinghurst? I don't know about that. I browsed a little of this long, old thread, and I will say that I agree with the people who just can not stand White. Glad that it isn't just me.

I think most literary critics and academics would probably say Delany, than Kushner. Toibin would also be taken quite seriously by them.

Edmund White would be taken seriously for his autobiographical trilogy, but probably for little else he has written.

I agree, but I also think that Delany is unreadable, other than his memoir. His novels are more fun to write about than they are to read. An academic's dream.

Hollinghurst has been treading water since The Line of Beauty, and has never been able to plot anything. But he wins for me, just based on intelligence and style.

The cloistered queer writer Garth Greenwell is now overweight-bordering-on-obese (at least, he was as of January of this year--see the video linked below). He is stunned that The New Yorker magazine ("OUR New Yorker!") published a homophobic review by Updike of "The Swimming Pool Library" more than 20 years ago:

It's me, bitches.

I enjoyed Edmund White's biographies about Jean Genet and Rimbaud; but his memoirs, and novels I do not enjoy...just my opinion.

R264, I like White's response to that review:

"Updike missed that opportunity to acknowledge Hollinghurst’s genius, because Hollinghurst is a writer who has real subject matter, unlike Updike. Updike could only write about suburban adultery and childhood memories. He had no subject matter even though he wrote 50 or so novels. One is more empty than the next. And he’s a writer who will be forgotten, except maybe for his trilogy about Rabbit."

Robert Harling

Gore Vidal also paid Updike back for homophobia in a long magisterial takedown in the TLS. Vidal was nominally reviewing 'In The Beauty Of The Lilies', but took the chance to range across Updike's whole oeuvre, finding more than enough to disparage.

One quote from Updike amid the detailed takedown seemed likely to have contributed to Vidal's strenuous animus: a glancing knowing dismissive remark typifying gays en masse as a lesser species.

Maybe Updike had it coming: he was on the crest of his fame and acclaim, and seemed regarded as an untouchable. The fact and extent of Vidal's takedown was startling, and of course no-one could have done it better. The article is in one of Vidal's excellent essay collections.

Did Andrew Holleran die, either when this thread was new or when Bump Bitch bump bitched it?

Paul Russell is my favorite after Andrew Holleran. I especially liked The Salt Point, The Sea of Tranquility, and The Coming Storm.

It's interesting to read about Updike's homophobia. I remember being introduced to the gay writer Denton Welch through his New Yorker essay in praise of Welch.

[quote]One of the most disparaging voices was that of John Updike, who, in a review for The New Yorker, complained that Hollinghurst’s novels were “relentlessly gay.” After a while, he wrote, the (presumably straight) reader begins “to long for the chirp and swing and civilizing animation of a female character.” For Updike, even subpar novels of heterosexual coupling still concerned themselves with “the perpetuation of the species and the ancient, sacralized structures of the family,” and thereby possessed a certain inherent interest; in “The Spell,” by contrast, “nothing is at stake but self-gratification.”

I tried three times over the years, but I was never able to get through even the first of Updike's "Rabbit" books. I don't remember any chirp or swing, though.

I believe Harold Bloom had it right when he called Updike "a minor novelist with a major style." In contrast, I think Hollinghurst is a major novelist with a major style, although I do agree that his most recent novels seemed to have waned in quality.