Which of these novels by gay authors is your favourite?

My favorite is Paul Monette's Borrowed Time, but it's not a novel.

The World of Normal Boys. I felt a lot of what the protagonist/author describes, but happily not the self-destructive arc that the ending seems to suggest he's going to go in.

"The City And The Pillar" by Gore Vidal. It plays into my love of ginger men. The "straight" object of the main character's affection is named Bob Ford. Bob Ford is a beautiful, athletic ginger man.

I need to re-read that sometime this summer.

Gore Vidal himself was an awful person, but I really do enjoy the book everytime I read it.

The Beauty Of Men by Andrew Holleran

Mary Renault wrote a contemporary to her novel called "The Charioteer", that one is my favorite. It is set during World War II and has a love triangle where all the parties are sympathetic. It would be a perfect Merchant-Ivory film but alas the audience would not quite justify the price tag.

Years ago I was staying with an older gay friend for a week and read a book he had called “Faggots” by Pickles. It was set in early-80s London just before AIDS hit. I’ve never been able to find mention of it on the internet.

Waugh - Decline and Fall

I was mistaken, I just tried googling and the title was actually “Queens.” It was excellent and apparently hard to get ahold of.

I have read only one of these and am generally turned off by gay literature. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but it all seems to focus on a very specific type of gay men: close-knit cliques who are more obsessed with their looks and money than their inexplicable Ivy League intelligence, coming out, Fire Island, party drugs, AIDS, death. Rinse, repeat. I would like to read something funny and upbeat for once, and I'm not talking about that cloying YA rubbish written by sneaky fraus. Hollinghurst does seem worth checking out though.

Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima (1951)

R5 The Charioteer is also my favorite Renault novel. Such a mesmerizing prose. And you're right, it really feels like Merchant-Ivory material.

I would also include Wingmen by Ensan Case, which is a very nice WWII aviation novel.

I never heard anything in regards to Evelyn Waugh being gay other than having a gay name.

Of the choices given, “Dancer fro the Dance” is my fave. I read it when it first came out in the mid ‘70s and it really described gay life at that time. For a wonderful oldie, I love “Maurice”

R12 Read his Wikipedia article. It can be quite interesting.

[quote]"Come and drink with me somewhere": photograph sent by Alastair Hugh Graham to Evelyn Waugh

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill

Ohhhhh, MAURICE!

It doesn't hurt that it was made into a gorgeous film.

Nights in Aruba - Andrew Holleran - but really all of his novels should be on every gay man's shelf. Beautiful poetic prose, melancholy, realistic portrayal of the inner lives and emotions of gay men. Just read Less by Andrew Sean Greer. Started slow and bewildering, got better and better as it went along to an enchanting ending.

‘Crystal Boys’/孽子 by Bai Xianyong/Pao Hsien-young/白先勇： reputed to be the first gay novel in the Chinese language

The big one missing is “Giovanni’s Room”. OP is racist.

I just realized I like books by gay authors but only non-fiction.

I liked Edmund White's "A Boy's Own Story".

R13- Dancer From The Dance by Andrew Holleran was published in 1978.

R19 it’s in the poll. I voted for it, though I prefer the storytelling in Another Country.

I’m hopeful that we are at the start of a Baldwin Renaissance after the success of If Beale Street Could Talk.

I’ll have to read Larry Kramer’s book.

Or maybe not, I don’t know. I’m not sex-negative.

The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne is a recent addition to the gay canon and my favorite. Would throw in Cristadora by Tim Murphy as a close second.

R18 Another vote for Neizi. I read it in Chinese but I am sure it is just as good in English. Story is a little lacking but fun characters.

R18 Niezi is far from the first Chinese gay novel. It’s one of the earliest Taiwanese gay novels.

Yu Dafu, a major influence on Bai, wrote several gay novels in the early 20th century, including the classic Intoxicating Spring Nights/春風沈醉的晚上. Ling Shuhua, Ding Ling, Lu Yin, Shen Congwen etc. all wrote gay novels in modern Chinese before Bai, not to mention the ones written in classical Chinese such as 品花寶鑑.

[QUOTE] I would like to read something funny and upbeat

Tales of the City is like that.

[QUOTE] Nights in Aruba - Andrew Holleran - but really all of his novels should be on every gay man's shelf. Beautiful poetic prose, melancholy, realistic portrayal of the inner lives and emotions of gay men

Fully agree. Grief is beautiful too. Dancer still hasn't been made into a film, which is such a shame. Joe Alwyn is the right age now to play Malone.

Room With A View by E.M Forster is also very homo-erotic. Fuck Lucy Honeychurch, let’s go gangbang Mr. Bebe.

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood is a great rundown of an eldergay life.

I prefer The Swimming-Pool Library to The Line of Beauty (my copy featured the sexy speedo cover!)

Also agree with R5 re: The Charioteer.

Another vote for The Swiming Pool Library. Also, We Think the World of You by JR Ackerley is a good read and a great analysis of gay desire in pre-liberation days.

R22--I love Another Country & have read it a few times.

Viva James Baldwin!

My top 3 faves:

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill

The Charioteer by Mary Renault

The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst

R30, I agree -- Joe Alwyn would make a terrific Malone.

Edmund White's [underline] The Beautiful Room is Empty[/underline]

I applaud your inclusion of Jeanette Winterson, but really Written on the Body is her tour de force and Oranges Aren’t the Only Fruit the most personal and heart breaking. Agree about Mishima, but again Confessions of a Mask is his masterpiece and timeless. White too should be on the list and I agree Beautiful Room is Empty over Boy’s Own Story. No BEE or Levitt? And nothing very recent? I think On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Vuong will prove the test of time to be an important work of literary genius.

For any of you who haven’t read The Line of Beauty, it is an absolutely brilliant novel. I’ve read most of the books on this list along with many of the others recommended here. I liked Maurice a lot and loved Tales of the City, but The Line of Beauty is the best contemporary novel centered around a gay protagonist.

Garth Greenwell's 2 books, "What Belongs To You", and "Cleanness", are wonderfully written, and sexually explicit as well!

[quote]Yu Dafu, a major influence on Bai, wrote several gay novels in the early 20th century, including the classic Intoxicating Spring Nights/春風沈醉的晚上.

Correction: Intoxicating Spring Nights/春風沈醉的晚上 is not a gay novel. I was thinking about the similarly titled and thematically related gay movie called Spring Fever/春風沈醉的夜晚 by Lou Ye. Yu's gay novels include 茫茫夜.

Hearts Invisible Furies by John Boyne. But I’m also Irish so maybe that biases me.

Line of Beauty is a great book too. Perfectly captures 80s London - AIDS, Thatcher, money. Beautifully written. The BBC film ruined it IMO.

"Becoming A Man" by Paul Monette or The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren. Both very different but both wonderful. Have read every book mentioned here except the Neizi, never heard of that one.

Some recent faves:

Christodora by Tim Murphy

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

At Danceteria and Other Stories by Philip Dean Walker

Sweet & Low by Nick White

Garth Greenwell’s novels don’t belong on this list. The first one was a compelling, fictionalized account of his obsession with a hustler in Sophia, Bulgaria. The second one was very much the same as the first, but more sexually explicit, significantly less moving and ultimately redundant.

Greenwell’s obsession with explicitly describing gay sex was really offputting to me. I almost put the second book away during the watersports scene. I know the conflict between “cleanness” and sex is Greenwell's thing, but it wasn’t for me.

"Maurice" and "Another Country".

I also loved the movies.

'I applaud your inclusion of Jeanette Winterson, but really Written on the Body is her tour de force and Oranges Aren’t the Only Fruit the most personal and heart breaking.'

I nearly put Oranges but I think it can be classed as autoiography not a novel? I liked Written on the Body better than the Passion but I've seen a few people here mention the latter so included that instead. After WOTB Winterson's novels became almost incomprehensible.

Since the list is strictly contempo, I guess Proust is not in the running. Otherwise....

Agree Garth agree well is waaay overrated. It read like a Datalounge thread. Loser guy goes to foreign country and becomes obsessed with hustler who he thinks is his boyfriend. Just another day in Puerto Vallarta. Not sure why it got so much press. Wasn’t brilliantly written either. A good agent I assume.

The Line of Beauty is more accomplished than Swimming-Pool Library, but SPL is also my sentimental favorite. So sexy! Everything Hollinghurst writes is worth reading and re-reading!

Tales of the City is not a Novel but a pastiche of mildly amusing stories grown from a newspaper column.

C’est si difficile!

I voted for 'The Line of Beauty’ (even though it made for a lousy TV movie). Hollinghurst is a genius for prose and 'le mot juste’. Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to be bothering with plot in his last two books.

E M Forster’s ‘Maurice’ is not a novel. It’s a messy, unpublishable fragment with none of the charm or profundity of his best work.

Evelyn Waugh doesn’t really belong on the list as he shook off his gay past. But he’s a fascinating writer and ‘‘Brideshead Revisited’ is a rich, interesting story and it marks a bridge between his early, frivolous works and his later less-successful serious war trilogy.

I recommend Dataloungers look at his ‘A Handful of Dust’. It has wit, poignancy and intelligent instruction on how to handle relationships.

Someone told Hollinghurst he was screwing up his novels by having awful plots.

R28/r42: are you by any chance Chinese, as I’m quite impressed by your knowledge of gay Chinese lit and film. I myself am biracial

[quote] awful plots

I sympathise with Hollinghurst, R55. The amount of concentrated brain power he would need to work on two levels (macro and micro, plot and sentence) in a 500 page novel is enormous.

So many authors prefer to do short stories but publishers insist on fat books so Hollinghurst has (I think) always had two stories running concurrently in his books.

[quote] Tales of the City is not a Novel but a pastiche of mildly amusing stories grown from a newspaper column.

So is The Pickwick Papers.

They are both novels as well.

The Pickwick Papers has a central character who is the magnet for everything.

Maupin has strands of characters who may or may not interact with each other. People like me can get through Maupin and happily ignore all those lesbian strands.

Oscar Wilde “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

[quote] I nearly put Oranges but I think it can be classed as autoiography not a novel?

It's an autobiographical novel, but a novel nonetheless. She calls it as much, and not everything in the novel happened to her in real life. No orange demons appeared to her in real life.

All a novel is, more or less, is a work of prose fiction that takes longer than one sitting to read.

But you can absolutely find exceptions to all those terms. there are novels written in poetic form (like "The Golden Gate" and "Eugene Onegin"), there are non-fiction novels (like "In Cold Blood"), and there are very short novels that can be read in one (very long) sitting (like "The Return of the Soldier" and "Heart of Darkness").

R60 No sex in "Dorian Gray.”

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Ethan Morrden and the BUDDIES cycle, although I guess you could say they were short story collections. And while his writing can be hit or miss, Felice Picano does occasionally provide a ripping yarn.

Speaking of Irish, Colm Toibin belongs on this list with The Master and it’s amazing presentation of James and his repressed homosexuality. Toibin writes so gorgeously both in a feeling so contemporary and as if he belongs in the 19th century.

[quote] A novel … is a work of prose fiction that takes longer than one sitting to read.

Is that all there is?

No higher intention? No moral aspiration or claim to profundity?

I enjoyed Patricia Highsmith's "The Price of Salt", but not as much as The Ripley series.

R63: yes, I’m especially fond of the Christmas story, found in the first of the series, ‘I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore’.

He got the tone of the Upper Crust on the Upper East Side just right

I have to admit, tho I’m gay, I’ve never been attracted to outright “gay” films or novels.

It’s like, listen, I lived the real thing.

R56 Yep, I'm Chinese. Tho I haven't really read much about Chinese gay lit, and Chinese gay films are rare to none (excluding Taiwan). I read more James Baldwin than Bai Xianyong.

And I'm currently reading Paul Rudnick's latest Playing the Palace. Not a literary contender for this thread but it's hilarious!

Garth Greenwell's extreme fugness is surely reason enough to exclude him from consideration?

EM Forster urged us to 'connect' and Garth Greenwell' maintains 'Sex is the first step towards connection'.

I don't necessarily dislike Hollinghurst's plotting, R57, I just heard him say it in an interview. I think he walks on water, personally. I have a copy of most everything he's ever published, including the poetry and short stories....

Hollinghurst for me too. His first books from Swimming Pool Library through The Line of Beauty are as good as contemporary fiction gets (and certainly the best depiction of gay life). His last 2 books have shown a distressing decline and i don't know quite what to make of it.

I would like it if the next book did not rely on the structure he's been using since LoB, with the time jumps between chapters. But I'll be happy to get a new book period.

William S. Burroughs…..’Queer’

Allen Ginsberg…..’Howl’

I liked Hollinghurst’s last book, The Sparsholt Affair. It may not rank among his very best but it is certainly better than 95% of gay focused literature written today. I’m not sure why it’s getting so much criticism on here.

The earlier Hollinghurst is a very hard act to follow.

Armistead Maupin’s work is wonderful.

I have every book of the Tales of the City series. It is a very accurate snapshot of San Francisco before and during the HIV epidemic in San Francisco…..great writer

[quote]R52 Tales of the City is not a Novel but a pastiche of mildly amusing stories grown from a newspaper column.

You mean like Dickens?

[quote]all of his novels should be on every gay man's shelf.

Holleran's short stories are incredibly good too. Several are minor masterpieces. If you like Dancer From the Dance, you'll love The Blue Star by Robert Ferro, another smart-as-fuck novel of romantic yearning. A failed experiment, but a great read.

A novel that's often off the lists, but is a masterpiece, is The Boy Who Picked The Bullets Up, about a medic in Vietnam. If it hadn't been a gay novel, without question, it would have been made into a film.

ALL of the great Christopher Isherwood's work except The World In The Evening is worth reading.

If you just want to laugh, California Screaming is a whip-smart, snarky very funny novel. If you find comic authors like Maupin and Keenan too twee, this is the hard boiled comic novel for you. The portrait of someone who may or may not be inspired by Mr DvF is delicious.

Vidal's City And The Pillar is ok, (the best line is the queen who says, of the Easter service in the Vatican: "Absolutely yummy!"), but Myra and A Thirsty Evil are great too. His sci-fi novel Kalki about a virus is incredibly and scarily prescient.

Jean Genet's Funeral Rites in the old Panther paperback translation (far and away the best, avoid all others!) is worth 50 wanks for the last scene alone.

Tony Duvert's Diary Of An Innocent, a semi-autobiographical novel of his time living in Morocco is extraordinary writing if you like really experimental work. Lots of underage boys get fucked, but that's Morocco and Duvert for you.

[quote]The Line of Beauty is more accomplished than Swimming-Pool Library

It was fab that a rich Londoner, obviously inspired by SPL, had a ruined Roman temple with mosiac swimming pool constructed in his Belgravia basement. It appeared on the cover of World Of Interiors.

"Dawson's Fifty-Kiss Weekend"

[QUOTE] Some recent faves: At Danceteria and Other Stories by Philip Dean Walker

Andrew Holleran has called the story “The Boy Who Lived Next to the Boy Next Door” in the collection At Danceteria a “minor classic in the literature of AIDS.” The author was a mentee of Holleran’s in graduate school, I believe.

One book I haven’t seen mentioned here yet is Allen Barnett’s The Body and Its Dangers (and Other Stories). It is very difficult to track down but well worth reading. I recommend trolling used book stores and gay book sales at conferences. It’s an incredible piece of fiction and was sadly Barnett’s only published work before he died of AIDS in 1991.

That's fabulous, R83.

Hollinghurst deserves lasting fame for having penned the best description of butthole smell ever put to paper (IIRC "a soft stench like stale flower water")

I think Interview With The Vampire is a great gay novel. Snobs under value Rice, but her powers of description are amazing. And after all, Dracula was written by a gay man.

Waugh wasn’t gay, possibly bi. He married two women- the first also called Evelyn. That marriage was dissolved so he could marry Laura Herbert. They had seven, or was it eight, children.

Love Brideshead and Line of Beauty. And anything by Winterson really.

My anal-retentive self was triggered by the poll, which mixed title/author with author/title in the same list! From what depths of Hell did this unholy list emanate?! Was OP raised in a barn?!

“Gaywyck” is a lot like “Rebecca”. I enjoyed both.

Do you hear me, world?? [italic]I enjoyed both!!

My favorite Waugh novel is A Handful of Dust. Nothing gay about it, but it is fantastic.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

The Hours is one of my favorite novels of the last 25 years but I thought this thread was about gay-themed novels, which The Hours isn’t.

R93, how is “The Hours” not gay-themed?

Also, “Flesh & Blood” by Michael Cunningham is wonderful.

[QUOTE] The Hours is one of my favorite novels of the last 25 years but I thought this thread was about gay-themed novels, which The Hours isn’t.

What? Almost every main character in that book is gay.

The Hours is totally gay-themed. Virginia Woolf was bisexual. Laura Brown was a closeted lesbian. Clarissa Vaughn is a lesbian and Richard Brown is a gay man dying of AIDS.

Billy Budd.

Eh, Billy Budd is pretty dire. Melville is interesting though. There's also a short story, I and My Chimney, about a crazy guy who lives in a house with a super secret closet in it. You get the idea...

I would add White's Nocturnes for the King of Naples and Hotel de Dream to the list. Dancer is a favorite--where is the film version?--I agree Alwyn would be a perfect Malone. Line of Beauty is fine. Vuong's On Earth is compelling, sordid, poetic. Baldwin's Giovanni's Room gets lost in self-hatred and cowardice, but as a picture of 40s/50s gay life it is I think accurate, and the prose is elegant. Unless you're a total perv avoid Dennis Cooper.

Another vote for Billy Budd.

Surely it doesn’t get any gayer than LITTLE ME… does it?

Ha, I tried to get through Little Me once (I'm 40). That's a deep cut...

Dear DL readers: I'm trying to remember the name of a book I read probably 15 years ago, about a group of friends who gather every week to watch movies together. The characters are all smart mouthed, very funny types who work in various facets of the entertainment industry. One is the personal assistant to a "star" who ruins a gown on loan for a red carpet event. The culmination of the book is the entire group going off to see Mariah Carey's GLITTER at the Cineramadome, where they encounter Whitney Houston. It's laugh out loud funny and if anyone can help me with the title, I will be eternally in your debt.

Has anyone reread Was by Geoff Roman in recent years? It was such a powerful read at the time, but also so deeply personal to me that I may have been more impressed with that then the literary aspects. Also, Mysterious Skin was such a brilliant take, but did the movie surpass it?

I tried reading The Line of Beauty but I thought the narrator was too ingratiating. I don't like stories where an interloper sucks up to rich people.

You aren't supposed to like any of them, R105.

[quote]R104 Has anyone reread Was by Geoff Roman in recent years?

No. Because it’s one of the most deeply depressing things I’ve ever read!

R105, R106 I assume Hollinghurst is making the point that 90% of the Western world is venal, if not vile.

100% of the Tories

Please, please don't sleep on Hollinghurst, he is a treasure.

He's a treasure but he's venturing into plotlessness. It is a dead end.

I'm waiting for the new one, to see if there is a surprise, but I'm afraid you may be right, R111. I hope not. He has a boyfriend now, a young writer, maybe he's feeling rejuvenated.

Virginia Woolf and Benjamin Britten both ventured into plotlessness.

It was an arid, barren place (for him in particular) while she retreated from it before her early death.

[quote] He has a boyfriend now, a young…

Isherwood got one of those and he became very complacent. His output became even more banal and repetitive than before.

The boyfriend did give him a nasty case of covid....

I reserve final judgment for the new book. Beyond that, everyone should read The Swimming Pool Library. Especially if you have a weakness for London.

R115 I've not seen that in the media. Do you know Hollinghurst, by chance?

(I've only seen him across a crowded room)

Can you imagine being the twit who killed Alan Hollinghurst?

No, I just compulsively read his interviews. :-)

He may have mentioned it here? Worth a look either way.

Rupert Everett writes novels. I think.

I met Alan Hollinghurst in the early 90s--he came to my university to give a talk, and since I was a graduate student in English working on what would now be called queer approaches to literature, I got to meet him and have an extended talk with him and some other graduate students in the field.

He was a very nice man--very sweet and modest. He was in the early part of his career then (he had only published "The Swimming-Pool Library" and "The Folding Star" by then). He said one of the oddest things about his career at that point was that so many people he met expected him to be like Will Beckwith, the snobbish, slutty aristocratic super-stud who narrates "SPL." He said when he wrote that novel, he wanted to create a character extremely different from himself, and was stunned people thought he would be like that character.

[quote] people thought he would be like that character.

That is a syndrome.

Publishers use a photograph or illustration of the protagonist on the front cover to help readers imagine the story as it unfolds.

If there's no man on the front cover we sub-consciously use the picture of the author to help us imagine the story as it unfolds.

I loved Hollinghurst’s The Folding Star. I think it could be “canceled” now but it’s exquisitely written.

Is there a paedophilic age difference between Edward and Luc in 'The Folding Star'?

Will the self-appointed Social Justice Warriors worry about being offended by something in a 320 page book without pictures?

I moved to NYC after reading Dancer From the Dance. Loved it. Don’t remember how I came across the book in small town USA. Far from a big city. Decades before Amazon.

Hollinghurst praises this Houstonian @ R120

I wonder if Bryan Washington would like us to buy his novel and read it to 'filth'?

Yes, I think I remember AH saying that the illegality of the relationship in Folding Star was only pointed out to him afterwards? You'd think the publisher would have caught it. Luc was no blushing violet though.

*shrinking

I need some coffee

Orlando is surely Woolf's gayest book.

I noticed that I'd mixed author/title and title/author as soon as I'd posted it and started cursing, but alas no edit button.

Stella Duffy wrote some good lesbian crime novels.

[QUOTE] He's a treasure but he's venturing into plotlessness. It is a dead end.

This happened to Winterson too. Written on the Body was the last readable one.

Alwyn would make a good Will Beckwith too. Was TSPL ever a film?

Don't think so, R133. It would be a pretty explicit movie. Only sponsors would be TfL and some corn oil company.

R133 Who is Alwyn?

R83: who’s ‘SPL’?

‘SPL’

R137: OIC - am rather slow today 🙀

You lost me at not having Giovanni's Room. It's one of my top five favorite novels, gay or not.

[quote] Was TSPL ever a film?

R133 No one would make TSPL into a film because —

1. it's riven in to 2 stories in different decades of the same man.

2. It describes secret societies who meet at public bathing pools

3. Its hero is a slender, selfish man who demands fornication daily.

Lots of interracial sex too. I guess there's My Beautiful Laundrette, but not really a popular film topic.

At R140, for many of us, the perfect pitch.

I just started reading The Swimming Pool Library. Thanks for the recommendation, DL, as always.

What about "Call Me By Your Name"? I just read it and it's a beautiful book.

r144 Ruined by the adaption.

The movie version of CMBYN is so much better than the book in my opinion. I hated the book and loved the movie.

'Only sponsors would be TfL and some corn oil company.'

Everyone remembers the corn oil scene with that cook lol.

'You lost me at not having Giovanni's Room. It's one of my top five favorite novels, gay or not.'

It's the seventh option on the poll, you numbskull. This isn't a thread for people who can't read at all.

1. it's riven in to 2 stories in different decades of the same man.

2. It describes secret societies who meet at public bathing pools

3. Its hero is a slender, selfish man who demands fornication daily.

I think there would be a huge appetite for it after the success of It's A Sin, which also deals with a gay underclass having lots of sex and spans two decades. The lead character is slender and selfish and demands fornication daily.

'Who is Alwyn?'

Joe Alwyn is a young good looking British actor. I guess there's no chance you know who Malone is.

[quote] I guess there's no chance you know who Malone is.

Umm

This is the DL I wanted back when everything was wall to wall Trump shit.

You won't find out who Malone is through Google lol. It's not Jo Malone.

Anthony Malone and Andrew Sutherland. How can you be a gay man and not know who they are?

But R155, 'Dancer from the Dance' was just a series of episodes describing parties, wasn't it?

I felt no urge to pick it up again.

I know he messed up his face and career.

But my subconscious imagines him when I pick up one of the Hollinghursts.

'Dancer from the Dance' was just a series of episodes describing parties, wasn't it?'

Nope, much of it was about the WASP lawyer Malone slowly coming to terms with his sexuality, and then coming to NYC aged 28 and falling in love with a married Puerto Rican guy called Frankie. They move into a loft together and are blissfully happy until Malone starts cheating. Frankie finds out and tries to beat him up and Malone runs away and is swept into a taxi cab by Andrew Sutherland, drag queen extraordinaire and lover of drugs and Pose type balls.

I don’t like Line Of Beauty at all. Novels looking back on the Thatcher years are usually unbearable.

Whereas novels looking back on the Harold Wilson's years were the Golden Age. Harold was our greatest leader, ever.

The thread is about gay authors and the author of Call Me By Your Name is not gay.

I really had hopes for David Leavitt, especially after While England Sleeps. That book, about the furtive gay experience in 1930s England, got mired down by a lawsuit. The rest of his work was on point, but left me wanting him to do another draft. He, AM Homes, and Michael Cunningham created a lot of novels that are very engaging and promising, but not quite there.

[quote]Novels looking back on the Thatcher years are usually unbearable.

Aptly enough, as it was basically a nasty divisive time. Hollinghurst registers and evokes this (and more) with insight and depth. Main character Nick Guest is after all a (yes) guest in the home of an ambitious Tory MP, who manages to bag Thatcher for a big party. Her manner is expertly drawn by the author.

The book is all the more resonant for not being a harsh satire about a volatile era. Hollinghurst lets characters and events breathe so we can draw our own conclusions about a ghastly snobbish brutal milieu. It's possible to write very well about a bad time, and Hollinghurst did just that.

I've recently stumbled over an openly gay british/cornish author named Patrick Gale. He wrote and published tons of books and many of them (if not all...) seems to have protagonists from somewhere within the LGBTQ spectrum.

From the 4 books I've read I've liked "A Place called Winter" and "Take nothing with you" the most..

Haven't seen his name here before so I thought I should share...

It was not a mistake or tokenism that Line of Beauty won the Booker. It's quite a good book.

CHRISTODORA by Tim Murphy must be mentioned again. I'm sad that more gays don't know this brilliant novel from just a few years ago.

And though David Leavitt has been mentioned, I'd specifically cite his THE LOST L:ANGUAGE OF CRANES. What an amazing debut novel!

And though the author isn't gay, how can we not talk about THE DREYFUS AFFAIR by Peter Lefcourt? So hilarious and moving.

In the early 1980s I discovered gay Brit novelist Patrick Gale. His first books like KANSAS IN AUGUST, THE AERODYNAMICS OF PORK and LITTLE BITS OF BABY were wonderfully irreverent but I found most of his later work mawkish and sentimental. Any fans here?

Just finished John Boyne's A LADDER TO THE SKY, and was bowled over by it. Brilliantly plotted and one chapter in particular (the recreation of an evening with Gore Vidal at his home in Italy) is breathtaking. His recreation of Vidal's voice and erudition is pitch perfect. I highly, highly recommend this book.

R167, I agree. Fantastic book. The author’s THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES is also wonderful.

I recently read THE PLOT (by a straight woman) and it almost seemed to be borrowing certain elements from A LADDER TO THE SKY (which is the stronger novel).

I remember reading SPLENDORA (1978) but not much about it. Maybe I should give it another chance, as it has loving reader reviews at Amazon.

—————-

“An intoxicating mixture of wickedness and fun." - People

"Edward Swift has a particular gift for capturing the continuous low musical murmur of small-town gossip..." -- Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review

The Washington Post: "Splendora reads like an exuberant fairy tale about a young man's search for himself."

I wouldn't call Faggots sex negative. I think the protagonist just outgrew the sex-intensive subculture he was living in.

Hollinghurst has entered his Martin Amis phase, unfortunately.

Oh, hardly.

Article on Edward Swift, author of SPLENDORA. His first two novels were published by major houses, then his following work was considered “too fanciful.”

R171 Do you advise us to avoid Martin Amis?

I read one of his collections of short stories phase (and I admit I was influenced by his cute picture) and found it to clever and sharp —especially when describing the horror of having ALL his English teeth extracted by an American dentist.

Then I tried 'Yellow Dog' (which I had assumed was the EM Foster reference to the foolish American visiting Florence) and found it was as messy as quicksand.

I haven't tried another.

R174, Martin Amis' first few novels are great reads - London Fields being the best. But after that they become less about characters and plot and more conceptual, with Amis constantly playing with language and almost parodying his earlier works. I found Yellow Dog repellent and confusing and haven't read anything by him since.

I can definitely recommend London Fields, though. One of my favourite novels. There's a film of it that was shown once at a festival and then unfortunately shelved, starring Amber Heard, Johnny Depp and the gorgeous Theo James. Depp and Heard started an affair whilst filming.

Hollinghurst is a big Amis fan and wrote a glowing review of the dire Yellow Dog for the Guardian. Naming a character who is a guest 'Nick Guest' is a very Amis thing to do.

Extract

Yellow Dog is a disturbing book, but its opening pages create a mood of excited reassurance: Martin Amis at his best, in all his shifting registers, his drolleries and ferocities, his unsparing comic drive, his aesthetic dawdlings and beguilements, his wry, confident relish of his own astonishing effects. The pace is smartish, and there are three strands of narrative, each with its particular social register and verbal colour, distinct as the worlds within a Dickens novel, and with a comparable sense of latent connectedness.

I think Hollinghurst sometimes tries to atone for the brutal, catty reviews he used to write for TLS. He talks openly about having dissed Edmund White.

Yes, R177, he mentioned dismissing Edmund White in his interview @ R120 and then revising his opinion on a second reading.

But Martin Amis is not gay, is he? How did he get into this thread?

John Boynes Hearts Invisible Furies and Ladder to the Sky should be up there. Christodora was OK but it was far from a gay book. More of a 1980s reminiscience with a gay character. As opposed to Line of Beauty which was really a gay book set in the 1980s.

I've had a lot of pleasure from Amis's talent, but the later novels are indeed a disappointment. His most recent, 'Inside Story', is defiantly billed as a novel, but is in fact much more like a counterpart to his fascinating memoir, 'Experience.' However the segments of (autobiographical) novel which punctuate 'Inside Story' certainly show flashes of the younger Amis's ability.

Hollinghurst book for book is the better more satisfying novelist for me. I really liked and admired 'The Sparsholt Affair', for example, while 'Lionel Asbo' left me cold.

I just bought the Kindle edition of Ethan Mordden's "I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore" for just $2.99. I bought a used copy of "Buddies" a few years ago, but it reeked so of the original owner's old lady-ish hand lotion, I was never able to read it.

This is the first volume in the "Buddies" series.

I've never read his fiction, but Mordden's Broadway books are good reading.

Mordden's "Kansas" stories are pleasant and very funny, but they were mostly stand-alone tales that had been published in Christopher Street magazine. The so-called Buddies series doesn't take off until the second book (actually called Buddies), when he starts to create a gay "family" and follows their adventures through the years.

Then the stories get very sexy and a little strange, because they're highly naturalistic yet fanciful at the same time. Again, they're very funny. Witty, even. Some people hate them because they're so "New York gay," with the opera and old movies thing, and the snarky jokes, and the emphasis on looks and physique. But they're a relief from the arty gay novels filled with languorous Europeans and rich whoever-they-ares and comments about Proust.

Years ago, someone told me he had been at a dinner party where Mordden was a guest, and the conversation turned to Proust. Mordden said he thought Dorothy Dunnett does what Proust does, but in a different way (and much more readably). And it turned out that nobody at the table knew who Dorothy Dunnett was.

Actually, a lot of people don't, but she's very worth investigating. But she wrote epics spanning ten or twelve volumes, so you might want to save her for your retirement.

r184, can you recommend a good book to start with by Dunnett? You've intrigued me.

[quote] I have read only one of these and am generally turned off by gay literature. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but it all seems to focus on a very specific type of gay men: close-knit cliques who are more obsessed with their looks and money than their inexplicable Ivy League intelligence, coming out, Fire Island, party drugs, AIDS, death.

I like a lot of gay literature and have read numerous authors across several generations, but I relate to this post - for a while in the late 90s every book that was being recommended to me was like this poster describes.

It wasn't a novel so much as an itinerary of Here's All The Clubs We Visited, Here's All The Men I Slept With, Here's All The Money I spent. No character development or any sort of authenticity in the story. And every one featuring the obligatory elegiac last chapter(s) where the hot godlike man/men the narrator had chased all through the story either drank themselves to death, fucked themselves to death, or *gasp* had the rank indecency to age.

"Like People In History" by Felice Picano is the one I remember truly loathing, but there were probably a dozen or more just like it.

R185: I recommend The House of Niccolo, eight books set in Renaissance Europe--all over it, in fact.

After reading it in library copies, I wanted to own mint editions of the series, and I had no trouble finding them one by one on eBay for very little money. So you can easily buy the first book (of eight) in the series, Niccolo Rising.

But read the first few pages carefully, because Dunnett is a high-style writer, and if you skip about you'll get lost. I think also she's one of those writers (like George Meredith) who makes the first fifty pages of each novel difficult, to discourage the riffraff. (!)

But she's worth the trouble, and you'll learn a lot about what life was like in the old days. And Noccolo himself is something of a big blond boy, a hunk in almost the gay manner (though straight). You could drop him into a novel by Edmund White or whoever and not feel anything was wrong. So there's a sexy side to all this.

You're in for a treat, though, if you stay with it. Dunnett never got her due praise because historical fiction is thought of as kitsch. She isn't.

Huge Hollinghurst fan here but I also love Edmund White. CITY BOY is terrific, and JOHN HOLMES AND HIS FRIEND (which is his cock) is sexy, sexy, sexy.

I think Hollinghurst is a model of what the English boarding school sort of education should produce but never does (including the BUGGERY). And he suffers no upper class twits.

Hollinghurst is pretty erudite. Can't be bothered to google him but I'm thinking an English degree at Oxbridge or one of the London universities.

Hollinghurst hides his erudition. He knows the absolute right word for every description but he doesn't use abstruse polysyllabic words.

Yass I was right! Could not resist looking him up. He's in his 60s now. Where is his Sex at Oxford novel? He's been holding out on us.

Hollinghurst studied English at Magdalen College, Oxford, receiving a BA in 1975 and MLitt in 1979. His thesis was on the works of Ronald Firbank, E. M. Forster and L. P. Hartley, three gay writers.[5][6] While at Oxford he shared a house with future poet laureate Andrew Motion, and was awarded the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1974, a year before Motion.

In the late 1970s he became a lecturer at Magdalen College, and then at Somerville and at Corpus Christi. In 1981 he moved on to lecture at University College London, and in 1982 he joined The Times Literary Supplement, where he was the paper's deputy editor from 1985 to 1990.[7][8]

Hollinghurst is gay[9][10][11] and lives in London.[12]

He really did go to boarding school. His parents sent him off when he was seven.

And the first section of his last book is sex at Oxford during WWII.

I hear it's all down hill in the next section, r194. Worth a read, anyway?

Oh, i don't know, I think the next section after that is some of the sexiest stuff he's written in awhile. Not necessarily explicit, but charged. Sparsholt Affair is a bit underrated, I think.

The interview at R120 tells how he deliberately omits section of the plot.

He says he's following EM Forster who had Accidental Plot Syndrome.

But it's disconcerting (if not irritating) for newcomers raised on Terence Rattigan, Robert Louis Stevenson and well-made plots.

He started out writing poetry, and his books are enjoyable for setting a mood, for descriptive writing, and for their themes. He does not give good plot, no, and never has.

He's also witty. And I understand there are lots of jokes and easter eggs for smarties which do not ruin anything for those who are less well-read (like me).

Hollinghurst does love subtle word-play and literary reference. He formerly edited 'Nemo's Almanac', a quiz for the formidably erudite.

Not perhaps so subtle, but it still took a reviewer to point it out to me: 'Sparsholt' contains its pared-down version of 'arsehole.'

Yes, that Nemo's Almanac thing is thoroughly demoralizing. For those who don't know, it's a mass of single lines from English-language literarature, no context, and you have to locate the source (without using the internet). Think lots of poring over poetry anthologies.

Hollinghurst's increasing weirdness of language and narrative is no surprise considering that he's a huge Martin Amis fan.

Brandon Flynn for Malone and Matt Bomer for Sutherland,

Jenna Malone for Malone and Keifer Sutherland for Sutherland.

I want this Malone partnered with the statuesque but trilling Joan Sutherland.

Spastics have joined the thread.

I got his t shirts, bitches.

[quote] I got his t shirts

Are you reading t shirts instead of reading novels?

Wasn't it Malone who had the lavishly-described wardrobe?

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Peter Cameron, who I think is one of the best queer novelists. Maybe because his book aren't always centered around gay characters, although there are queer characters in every book and his sensibility is wonderfully queer. His most recent novel, What Happens at Night, is a perfect case in point.

[quote] his sensibility is wonderfully queer

I'm not sure how he could do that. Does he use homosexual adjectives and adverbs to describe heterosexual people?

R211 is not Queersighted.

[quote] not Queersighted.

I placed the words Peter, Cameron, and queer into Google and it gave me no result.

I feel like I'm turning into the Gap Playlists Guy.

Those films portray Transvestites, Lesbians, Murderers, Blackmailers, Prostitutes, Adulterers.

Well, if it brings the use of "queer" into ill repute, that would probably please a number of DLers.

Also: still better than Turner Classic Movies.

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood.

The Boys In The Bars, by Christoppher Davis has great charm.

In that Alan Hollinghurst interview at R120

He thinks gay secrecy is interesting @ 16 mins

He's disinterested in conventional narrative @ 41 mins.

He enjoys riddles, non-plots and mysteries @ 52 mins.

This is like an old Victorian ladies book club. Where are the contemporary gay authors??? The ones who actually have contributed something of interest and pushed boundaries - you left out:

Bret Easton Ellis

Dennis Cooper

Chuck Palahniuk

Who?

Grandma (R222), good news! The libraries are now open. Don't forget to renew your card when you get there and don't forget to return your Barbara Thorndyke novels!

Can you literary people please come add your thoughts to my thread?

Yes, this is a naked plea. And I’d be grateful.

"Swimming in the Dark" by Tomasz Jedrowski was published in 2020. You have to be a gay guy to truly "get" it.

Why do so many gay novels have 'swimming' in their titles?

^ Swimming sounds sexy.

Songwriters know that a song with the word 'freedom' in the title are more likely to be bestsellers.

The Sluts - Dennis Cooper

I thought Paul Burston's The Gay Divorcee was a fun little read, and I actually heard about Hollinghurst by reading some interview with Burston, talking about how he loves AH and some other names, but is just writing frothy beach reads.

The Advocate's terrible list of best 25 lgbt novels. Mainly lesbians.

Eek! Was A Little Life the only recent book and from the 21st century? I’m someone who found it interesting and worth reading, but most here seem to have a problem with it. There really wasn’t a better choice for the list?

Finished Giovanni's Room today. Talk about a train wreck - not the excellent writing, but the tragic story. Pretty in-your-face for 1956!

Are there any penises in Giovanni's Room?

Dancer isn't even on that list, but the shockingly badly written Well of Loneliness is. A Little Life is torture porn.

R234 “Well” is probably not on for it’s literary value so much as being so early, groundbreaking and influential.

[quote]Why do so many gay novels have 'swimming' in their titles?

Have you never had pool sex? I highly recommend the Brined Boybultt, a true delicacy

Gordon merrick. Taught me sex, love & the need for a a good tan

[quote]I think Hollinghurst sometimes tries to atone for the brutal, catty reviews he used to write for TLS. He talks openly about having dissed Edmund White.

was his dissing of White before or after White described "The Swimming Pool Library" as "surely the best book about gay life written by an English author"?

R238 See the post at @178.

If you have access to the TLS archives, Hollinghurst reviewed mostly opera and gay interest books. He was pretty hard on everyone. Seems like its less of a publication now than it used to be.

The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church.

thanks R239, missed that

Well, Hollinghurst wasn't hard on Holleran in his long introduction to Dancer. It's like an essay for an English Lit exam. He very much admires the sumptuous prose and I think tries to emulate it a little in TSPL.

That was written long after the book's original publication. The TLS stuff was from the 80s. The ones I remember specifically (for being tough) were reviews of the journal of Denton Welch and the Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse or some other gay poetry anthology.

His reviews are good reading. I would also like to see his poetry collected, but I bet that won't happen.

I just read a sample of that Falling novel and it's like a horror novel so definitely buyer beware.

[quote] Which of these novels by gay authors is your favourite?

We like to read books here @ 3.20.

I've just been reading Dancer from the Dance, and I'm thinking Jim Parsons as Sutherland. He's got that rawny look which one could imagine a speed queen like Sutherland having. He's also not that attractive (so one can believe the bit about Sutherland having a micropenis; personally I don't want to imagine Matt B as being hung like a flea) and can be quite effeminate.

Bomer is a charisma vacuum, imho. In Boys in the Band, Bomer was literally just there to look pretty (and he smashed it). Personally, he would not be my choice for Sutherland.

I can get behind Joe Alwyn as Malone, though. YU-MMY.

[quote] Speaking of Irish, Colm Toibin belongs on this list with The Master and it’s amazing presentation of James and his repressed homosexuality. Toibin writes so gorgeously both in a feeling so contemporary and as if he belongs in the 19th century.

I love Colm Toibin's writing. My favorite work of is his short novel "The Testament of Mary" but his novel "The Story of the Night" was the first gay novel I read as a teenager and was haunted by it for years.

OP, do you think that Aciman is really straight or you didn't like Cmbyn.

I just can't imagine anyone ever making a movie out of "Dancer from the Dance." It's lushly written, and Malone's story corresponds to that of a lot of gay men from the Silent Generation and the Boomer Generation (except for his quitting his job and doing nothing with his trust fund except fucking anonymous men for decades), but there's not much plot to it, and it's very, very dated, and not in a good way.

I could more easily imagine a film being made of Patricia Warren's "The Front Runner," although it would have to be very much a period piece.

I just read Ethan Mordden's You Can't Be Too Young or Too Pretty, and while it's not my favorite gay novel, it has my favorite gay character, a titanic marine into s & m. He's a southerner, too, with plenty of rustic idioms, which fits the stereotype.

Physically, he's like the guy in Reacher on Amazon Prime, which I've also just taken in. Except Reacher is fascinatingly laconic and focused while this marine is given to passing remarks about Oz books and so on, which is not the conversation you expect from the military. But I like oddball characters.

No one seems to have mentioned John Fox's The Boys on the Rock, which I remember quite fondly from many years ago, a coming-of-age tale. I vividly recall how when the boy was upset he would sit in the bathtub fully clothed and play with his Disney figurines. I had a set of those, too. It came with a toy theater to use with them.

Even though Evelyn Waugh had gay sex in college, he was not gay. All boys school, gay sex was the norm.

My favorite gay novel? A classic children's story.

Dancer from the Dance, A Line of Beauty and Faggots are three great books.

I am reading “Less” by Andrew Sean Greer, and I am in the minority but I am not enjoying it much. I find Arthur Less to be mostly annoying, albeit probably a sweetheart. But annoying and always sulking.

And his romance with his rival Carlos’ “son” Freddie isn’t cute or sweet to me. As I read, I cringe because it feels forced.

I never read any of these (other than Maupin) , but I read Inside Daisy Clover by Gavin Lambert and a few by James Kirkwood (on the advice of my ex boyfriend - who also loved Tales Of The City - which I didn't). Some of the Kirkwood books were not good but I liked There Must Be A Pony.

*Otoh I sort of liked the TV series of Tales Of The City

It's weird how some people are proud of a lack of a literary or film tradition, like only things written/made yesterday are worth talking about. I guess those people just don't have the knowledge or curiosity and are covering for their ignorance.

My favorite novel is Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited," but it is not only because of the relationship between Charles and Sebastian. It's also because of Charles' relationship with Julia.

A favorite gay novel is "The Swimming Pool Library" by Hollinghurst

Any Spanish speakers here? Has anyone read El chico de las estrellas? It looks good.

Op I love The Swimming Pool Library too!

I'm disobeying the brief by listing my favorite gay-themed books.

1. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 2. Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller 3. As Meat Loves Salt - Maria McCann 4. The Charioteer - Mary Renault 5. A Ladder to the Sky - John Boyne 6. The Vintner's Luck - Elizabeth Knox 7. Call Me By Your Name - Andre Aciman 8. Holding the Man - Timothy Conigrave 9. Days Without End - Sebastian Barry 10. Lie With Me - Philippe Besson 11 A Single Man / Christopher and His Kind - Christopher Isherwood 12. Aristotle and Dante books - Benjamin Alire Saenz 13. Swimming in the Dark - Tomasz Jedrowski

and many more lol. I wish we could also have a thread for gay poets like Richard Siken.

I really love this thread. Informative and sexy.

Two more recent-ish books by gay authors I enjoyed:

Dan Callahan's "That Was Something," which is set in the Manhattan art world.

Drew Nellins Smith's "Arcade," which is about a gay XXX bookstore on the outskirts of a small town.

Callahan's "That Was Something" has some very hot scenes...Edmund White was talking about how hot that book is at this gathering I attended a while back, which is why I read it.

And yes, "Arcade" is very vivid...it's like you're actually there in the bookstore with him...that novel deserves some more attention.

This book sounds good.

Has anyone read this? It sounds good.

Any new gay/gayish books this fall/winter?

Jean Genet dumps all over OP's list.

Christopher Isherwood sends his regards.

At Swim, Two Boys

[QUOTE] At Danceteria and Other Stories by Philip Dean Walker

FYI - Walker published a follow-up to that last year called Better Davis and Other Stories. There’s a quite memorable Natalie Wood story in it that takes place in Catalina the night she drowned. At one point, he implies that Christopher Walken was fucking one of the actors from “The Boys in the Band.”

And Jim J. Bullock (“Too Close for Comfort”) has a story where he gets his HIV diagnosis and then has to go tape a very special episode where his character on the sitcom gets raped by two women.

Op They are all great. The Line of Beauty was great and the movie/miniseries was so funny.

Faggots was great as well as Dancer from the Dance. Reliving the good old days.

The Front Runners

The Hours

The City and the Pillar

Dennis Cooper's "The Sluts"

R270 washed poll without The Miracle Of The Rose and Our Lady Of Tne Flowers 😔

Anyone remember Christopher Bram? He used to be really popular and they made “Gods and Monsters” into a highly successful film. I remember liking his novel “Surprising Myself” back in the 80s. Funny how he has completely fallen off the gay lit radar.

Glenway Wescott's "The Pilgrim Hawk."

I think Holleran’s work is so full of self loathing poorly written that it’s almost unreadable. Similarly Vidal’s writing is so self conscious (look at me write) and angry. He’s the better writer but both are so full of their own crap that their stories become lost- or in Holleran’s case a loathing of his take on being a gay man. Not all gay men are self all destructive and miserable.

R280 Yukio Mishima was a self-loathing homophobic (and misogynistic) gay man, and he was one of the finest writers of his age.

R278, yes, I remember Bram. I, too, enjoyed “Surprising Myself” and was very moved by “Hold Tight.”

R280, agreed. Yet, it may be in telling stories of damaged, self-loathing men that the novelist explores hard truths of the societies in which they live. That's the beauty of Holleran's work for me.

Larry Kramer. I know that he was a cunt but I loved FAGGOTS. I have this deep reservoir of anger and Kramer tapped into it.

R284 = Boo Boo Bronstein

JUST ABOVE MY HEAD, one of James Baldwin’s last novels.

Fadeout by Joseph Hansen

I am happy to see The Passion by Winterson listed here. Not only is it a great lesbian novel, it's also one of the most beautifully written books I've read. It's by far my favorite book.

James McCourt's "Mawrdew Czgowchwz"

Agree with Swimming Pool Library.

Just finished "That Was Something". Very good - short read. So many memories of 1990s NYC (I moved there in 1995). The ending made me sad. Next - "Miss Memory Lane".

Waugh was merely temporarily homosexual.

Also just finished "That Was Something" and liked it...the ending is definitely sad...but wow, there are some very sexy scenes throughout, particularly towards the end. That dancer character Heinz Laranthal was so hot I could practically see and feel him, and the Easter party is crazy...I wonder if that party actually happened?

Have to admit that I bought "At Danceteria" because I googled images of the author and he's really sexy-looking....square-jawed, big arms...haven't started reading it yet...but have heard good things.

I'd like to see Philip Dean Walker naked...will buy his books eventually.

Dale Peck’s Martin and John deserves a mention. Beautifully written, elegiac novel of the plague years and family strife, charting familiar rites of passage of love and loss for a generation of gay men.

I think Giovanni’s Room would place higher in the poll if fans of this novel could actually read.

The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare

Dancer from the Dance, all the way.

Geoff Ryman's 'Was' remains a favorite.

[quote] Anthony Malone and Andrew Sutherland. How can you be a gay man and not know who they are?

Not all of us are professional homos.

R300, I can’t read “Was” again. It’s too sad, tragic; beautifully written. The author is a favorite of mine.

Is there a gay canon of world literature?

My Antonia

Remembrance of Things Past

What? No Gordon Merrick novels?

R304. My Antonia makes for an interesting queer novel if we think of Cather really putting herself in the novel as the male narrator Jim Burden. Another cryptoqueer Cather novel is the wonderful, strange “The Professor’s House,” and the story, “Paul’s Case,” which is my favorite American short story.

Would like to hear some candidates for sexiest novel by a gay author.

I heard "The Song of Achilles", "Was" and "A Little Life" are very good. They are on my shelf. I haven't mustered the courage to read them just yet.

Don't read "A Little Life"....it's torture porn written by a seriously demented pervert straight women who clearly has issues with gay men...the cat really got let out of the bag on these issues in her last book, "To Paradise."

OK - R310 Thanks!

The Vintner's Luck is gay-adjacent, moving, erotic, well plotted. I also enjoyed its sequel The Angel's Cut set from WWI to Hollywood in the 1920s.

Xas the fallen angel is played by the divine Gaspar Ulliel who died fairly recently.

This is a great thread.

Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance is one of my favourite novels of all time. It’s achingly beautiful. A remarkable achievement.

Other Please State

Now and Then, by William Cortlett

"London book editor Christopher Metcalfe is fifty when he returns to his childhood home after the death of his father. As he prepares for the burial, he unearths his own past: the one pivotal relationship in his life, which occurred when he was fifteen and fell in love with an older boy at boarding school who promised to love him but ultimately did not."