JAMES McCOURT's latest novel, and fasten your seat belt while I tell you its title, is NOW VOYAGERS: THE NIGHT SEA JOURNEY. SOME DIVISIONS OF THE SAGA OF MAWRDEW CZGOWCHWZ, OLTRANO, AUTHENTICATED BY PERSONS REPRESENTED THEREIN. BOOK ONE.

Yes! Mawrdew Czgowchwz is back! And none too soon! It's not as though McCourt breaks any rules--it's as though he pays no attention to that realm and makes up his own, or at least manages that seductive illusion. When you think of all the 42.7 gabillion words ever written--who's counting?--what's striking is that McCourt's voice is so distinctive. I understand that you are reading this newsletter with a full expectation that I will be able to offer a thumbnail summary of McCourt's story. This is something well beyond my ken, as for most others, I suspect. In McCourt's world, it just works that way. You don't read a McCourt novel--you swim in it! Or--let's be racy and go for a serious simile--like being dunked into a vat of very rich Belgian chocolate and coming up smiling. McCourt's fictive world is such a dizzying amalgam of everything from the old world of the Grace Moore opera queans up to and including the liberated faggots of the 60s and 70s--and maybe, just maybe, a soupçon of the show world of the late Paul Lynde (adding spice to the stew)--and these are only the Welcome Wagon Folks to the Fun House!  Some who read this novel  might want to keep their oxygen masks nearby. You just never know!

NOW VOYAGERS is a trade paperback from Turtle Point Press. I'd give it four ****, but, you know, that's just not enough, $17.95

Jack Nichols was among the group of men and women who got the ball rolling for the same-sexers. An All-American boy and sexual liberationist, Nichols was ready to go out of the box. He was an activist and a journalist. He was co-founder of the Mattachine Societies in Washington DC and in Florida. He was editor of GAY, the first weekly newspaper in the USA. Nichols was at the time a managing editor for SCREW, and while there kicked around the idea of starting a gay rag. Al Goldstein, the publisher of SCREW liked the idea and it was launched. At that time, so many things seemed possible. Jack's lover was Lige Clark. Together they wrote a sweet little book about Fire Island. Then, while on a camping trip in Mexico, they were attacked by banditos and Lige was murdered by the thugs. Jack went on with his work. In 1984, Nichols was diagnosed with Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia. This is an incurable blood cancer. He was given five to ten years to live. He lived to 2005, beating the odds big time. In his last years in Florida, he was editor of the on-line publication, GAY TODAY, and his influence was clear.

JACK NICHOLS: GAY PIONEER is a trade paperback from Harrington Park Press. It includes some black and white photographs (I should mention that on one of the pages of photos we find a snap of Lige Clark and his successor in Jack's affection, Logan Carter, who looks strikingly like Lige; I know this is not an uncommon phenomenon, and people don't much wander from the type they like, but I still find it a little unnerving--why is that?), extensive notes, an equally extensive bibliography and an index, $29.95

EVIL FRIENDSHIP is a fictional account of the Parker-Hulme case in New Zealand, a sensational case wherein two schoolgirls plan and execute one of their mothers--this later became the subject of a movie. WHISPER HIS SIN features two college boys, who, when in New York, find out they are in love. The plot thickens. Again, Packer based this sensational story on an actual case,  the Fredan-Wepman Champagne Murders.

This is a trade paperback, $19.95

Jeff Koons writes, in his introduction: "It's hard to think of contemporary culture without the influence of Pierre et Gilles, from advertising to fashion photography, music video and film. Their highly saturated images, making reference to art history and religious iconography, create a visual impact that transcends cultures around the world. They appropriate references East and West, North and South. This is truly global art."

PIERRE ET GILLES is new in hardcover from Taschen, $49.95

Luongo explains the interwoven issues of law, sexual behaviors and cultural interpretations that Westerners bring with them to travel in Islamic societies, often full of misperceptions. I think of the recent visit by the President of Iran to Columbia University, in New York City, and his laugh line that there were no homosexuals in Iran. Perhaps something got lost in translation; perhaps he meant that his culture did not have a vibrant and activist same-sex community as we have in the West. But I did wonder: if there are no homosexuals in Persia, where do they find them to execute them? I've also wondered how homosexuality is different for the Iranians than the Arab cultures in the gulf. Cultures are complex; it's nice to learn something more about places not often in discussion, outside the newspaper headlines.

GAY TRAVELS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD is a trade paperback from Harrington Park Press, $19.95

Newly promoted Det. Lt. Rebecca Frye once again assembles her unorthodox team of lovers and friends with the goal of nailing a deadly informant in the police department and seeing that justice is served. Frye is assisted by JT Sloan, a cyber sleuth with a personal score to settle. But Frye discovers that the malfeasance runs outside the PD and into shady places.

Driven by her private need to avenge her murdered partner, she must put one officer's life at risk and her own heart on the line. JUSTICE SERVED is a trade paperback from Bold Strokes Books, $15.95

Have you ever been to a cat show? I have. I will save my remembrances of that event for another occasion, but I found it touching and somewhat sad. Not all cat people have this experience. van Vechten was a charter member of the Cat People. His book, THE TIGER IN THE HOUSE: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE CAT, was first published in 1920. We start in Egypt, totally appropriate (the ancients worshipped the cats because the felines killed the rodents who would otherwise have eaten their stored grain); Carlo writes about cats and the occult, from my POV a bad rap; he writes about cats in fiction; cats and poetry, and literary folks who loved cats. van Vechten left all his stuff to the Beineke Library at Yale University. Someone once told me that one entire room is full of VV's cat books! I hope this is true.

THE TIGER IN THE HOUSE, with an introduction by STEPHEN BUDIANSKY, is a hardcover from New York Review Books, $22.95

Benderson's latest is SEX & ISOLATION AND OTHER ESSAYS. In these meditations, we encounter eccentric street people, Latin American literary geniuses, a French cabaret owner, a transvestite performer--BB casts a wide net. Benderson also shares his theories about the connection between art, entertainment and sex. He has his thoughts  on the rise of Internet culture and the loss of public space. His essays are full of sharp observances, a biting wit and challenging new ideas. Reading Benderson is always a pleasure and, in this case, a provocative experience.

SEX & ISOLATION is a trade paperback from The University of Wisconsin Press, $24.95

BLISS is a hardcover from Bruno Gmunder, $33.00

This is the best kind of memory writing. The vignettes are short and punchy. Vidal seems to have met everybody and he writes about many of them. There are the famous--Princess Margaret, Tony Richardson, Tennessee Williams, Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy--there are the authors and the Hollywood people. He writes with sweetness of his domestic life with Howard Auster. The recollections are not in any particular order. The result is like a long dinner conversation--in a house with a good wine cellar (which I suspect Gore had at his palazzo at Ravello, a residence which seems to have been a destination point for people whose names are often printed in bold face when reported in the news rags) and, thus, this book has a ROSHAMON quality to it, which adds to its charm. "Anyway," Gore writes, in an affectionate riff of his friendship with Johnny Carson, "a few of us once heard the chimes at midnight"--perhaps a sly dig on the fact that Carson always put Gore into the last slot on his show!--"and were better for it."

POINT TO POINT NAVIGATION is now a trade paperback from Vintage International, $14.95

A Special Visitor!

A very attractive and friendly English gentleman dropped by on Tuesday afternoon (Oct. 16). He asked about travel information and this led to a pleasant conversation. I looked at him--I can be slow about these things, but the light bulb went on--and asked: "Are you Stephen Fry?" "I am." He's in the States working on a BBC doc (wherein he has to visit every state in the USA!). He noted that I had his books on my shelves, and I asked him to sign them, which he did. We shook hands; I wished him well; he was off.