PARADISO MANQUÉ

The emerging prominence of gay life was part of the revolution in sexual behaviors, sexual mores, and sexual information that developed after the Second World War. The 20 years after the war was the first great emergence of gay writing in US history. The books were, mostly, written by gay writers and written for gay readers. Some got mainstream publishing distribution. Many more went into mass market right away and got jobbed out through that distribution stream and they were racked in drugstores--wherever paperbacks were sold.

In THE GOLDEN AGE, nineteen writers take you on a tour of this period of gay fiction--roughly from the first Kinsey Report up to TALES OF THE CITY. Contributors include: Ian Young, Michael Bronski, Victor Banis and others. Repos of book covers throughout.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF GAY FICTION is a trade paperback from MLR Press, 262 pages, $69.99

The novel is a melancholic piece. Set in the early 1960s, it is the story of a day in the life of George. George is late middle-aged; he has recently lost his lover as the result of an automotive accident. George goes to school, where he teaches undergraduates, goes to the gym, the supermarket, has a somewhat flirtatious encounter with a student, has dinner and drinks with a friend, goes through the motions of daily events. He also deals with the subtle effects of living in a homophobic culture--this eight years before the word homophobia was minted--and his lover is dead and he recognizes the chances are slim for him finding another. It's a profound book--and here is Isherwood's genius--deceptively packed into a quotidian tale. The author's voice is simple and direct and he goes all kinds of places with it.

A SINGLE MAN, in a movie tie-in edition, is from the University of Minnesota Press, trade paperback, $15.95

JOAN SCHENKAR has written a big biography. It is THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH: THE SECRET LIFE AND SERIOUS ART OF PATRICIA HIGHSMITH.

Highsmith has never really been absent from the American literary canon. She was born in her grandmother's boardinghouse in Fort Worth in 1921. The 1940s found her in Greenwich Village in NYC, which she called "the freest four square miles on earth." She worked various jobs and wrote. She got famous when Alfred Hitchcock made her first novel, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, into a film. She refused to meet Hitch when he was making the movie.

She had an adventurous erotic life, with women and men, mostly women. Her literature is on the dark side of life, exploring the lives of the clever and amoral criminals, like Ripley. She moved to Europe in mid-career and stayed there and became a tad reclusive--thus getting her the rep of The Dark Lady of American Letters.

Schenkar had unprecedented access to Highsmith's archives, journals, love letters, personal possessions and did numerous interviews with surviving friends. This is the definitive biography of one of America's elusive literary icons.

THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH is a hardcover from St. Martin's Press. It includes photos, notes, a selected bibliography and an index, $40.00

Schenkar is also author of the really wonderful book, TRULY WILDE: THE UNSETTLING STORY OF DOLLY WILDE, OSCAR'S UNUSUAL NIECE. $10.95

The intrepid Bunny LaRue, towards the end of a drug-saturated three-day party, takes a turn in the steam room in his hosts' mansion. He is quickly enveloped in moisture and nods off. When he wakes, everything is different and he seems to have entered another world. Is he dead? Was this Heaven? It's hard to tell.

There seem to be a lot of dead writers about in this heady new abode. Many more are in residence below, in the Elysian Fields. Bunny thinks the whole place needs a shaking up. He forms an alliance with Mark Twain and Voltaire--after managing the difficult  transfer of Voltaire from the Fields into the heady clouds--and they shake things up. Add in Marie, busy reformatting the French Revolution (the first one) so that no guillotine will be constructed and heads will stay on their shoulders.

DOUBLY CROST is a trade paperback from Calamus Books, $15.95

They were together until the day of Gertrude's death, 27 July 1946. As a couple, they went through the good times, the fabulous times, and the bad times--living in Nazi-occupied France during the war. Why they didn't leave remains a mystery--two American Jewish lesbians living in a town with the Gestapo lurking about. One morning in 1944, they woke up to find German soldiers occupying their house! It's quite amazing they survived the war.

Stein was a piece of business; Toklas the gatekeeper, a big job as Stein loved the company and the adoration and ran a court rivaling that of Natalie Barney. The Stein family didn't treat Alice so well after Gertrude died. Alice lived until 1967 and had her own career. This is a story due to last for a very long time.

GERTRUDE & ALICE has a new foreword by the author. There are black and white photos throughout,  a select bibliography and an index. This edition is a trade paperback from I. B. Tauris, $20.00

Some of Stein's works I have appreciated over the years; I certainly hope someone in the President's administration, as part of their outreach, is planning an event at the Kennedy Center, featuring all those good folks who have actually read and enjoyed every word of THE MAKING OF AMERICANS. It would be most instructive.

Leblang was raised in Cleveland during the years the area started its economic decline. This book is an episodic memoir through short essays. Family and a sense of place are the central themes. There was time in Florida before Leblang settles in Boston. His tone throughout is pretty much constant, though there are accounts that are darker and some quite amusing. All in all, this is a charming textual scrapbook of a look into his past. Many of these essays were previously printed or broadcast on public radio.

FINDING MY PLACE is a trade paperback from Lake Effect Press. $15.95

JEFFREY ESCOFFIER

The mainstream gay porn industry came out of nowhere. Yes, there were the 8-milimeter sales of the beefcake models, but the screening of hardcore homosexual films on major screens , starting in San Francisco and New York, and then around the country, was a huge cultural change, the product of changes in the laws, the sexual revolution, the changes in mores in the 1960s, and on and on. It was time.

I recall Donald Vining, in one of his GAY DIARIES, wrote about how surprised he was to be in a large legit theatre in NYC, watching a gay porn movie. It was BOYS IN THE SAND, and he remarked how taken he was to see Cal Culver (Casey Donovan) walk out of the ocean, nude, with a cock ring on. Vining noted that there was much buzz in the gay press of the time about the cock ring. I simply assumed it was product placement.

Escoffier's book is chatty, informative, has great info about the Gage Brothers and their productions, quotes from popular skin mags of the 70s and 80s--when they carried lots more text. This book is a delight.

BIGGER THAN LIFE is a hardcover from Running Press, $24.95

DONALD VINING self-published his diaries in the 1970s and 1980s. This volume, A GAY DIARY 1933-1946, is the 1996 reprint from Hard Candy Press. $8.95

This book is informative and written with a light touch.

MANHOOD is a hardcover from Reaktion Books, $35.00

His latest book is  MANLY LOVE: ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP IN AMERICAN FICTION. In this book, Nissen delves into the novels and short stories of 19th Century writing and reveals the widely overlooked phenomenon of passionate friendships between men. He explores a forgotten genre: the fiction of romantic friendship. It is in the works of Mark Twain, Henry James, William Dean Howells and others that Nissan identified the genre's unique features and explores the connections between romantic friendship in literature and real life. MANLY LOVE offers a fresh perspective on 19th Century America's attitudes toward love, friendship, marriage and sex.

MANLY LOVE is a hardcover published by the University of Chicago Press. It includes notes, a bibliography and an index, $45.00

THE ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP READER is a trade paperback published by Northeastern University Press, $15.95

Raised a Christian, Patterson become an agnostic while in biblical studies at a Methodist University. She married her college sweetheart. Seven years later, she accepted that she was a lesbian. Ten years later, she took time off from her legal career to do her research on the issue of homosexuality and the Bible. Thus this book.

HATE THEY NEIGHBOR is a trade paperback from Infinity  Publishing, $14.95