Gay Fiction

Gay Fiction

The Gay and Lesbian Category

It’s a freezing day in December and I’m in a large Waterstones bookshop in Birmingham. On the top floor, at the back of the store, as far away from the steel drum rendition of “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer’ wafting from the street below I find a small section devoted to “Gay and Lesbian”. It will be another thirty minutes until my dining companion arrives, so I decide to engage myself in discovering the answer to one of the most pressing questions of our age; “what are gays reading?”

           

Amazon bestseller lists, endless Radio 4 programmes, puff piece news stories, stacked displays in bookstores and supermarkets, seem to have answered the question “what are women reading?” with the resounding cry of “Twilight fan-fiction!”  On my train journey up to the second city I sat across from a grey-haired woman engrossed in EL James’ second book with her eyes slightly glazed over, her tongue slightly protruding from her open mouth, reminding me of a friend’s Chocolate Labrador.  Despite the lack of great critical acclaim, and despite being too late to win a coveted Man Booker Prize which this year was to be awarded to Hillary Mantel for her far less popular Bring Up the Bodies, I fully expect Ms James to be regarded as the great literary figure of 2012, for impact if nothing else; Time Magazine have already ranked her in “the 100 most influential people in the world”.

           

Yet I’m not aware of such a “ground-breaking” or “transformative” work yet published in the canon of gay and lesbian fiction. Perhaps I simply overlooked something, in the next half hour I am to redress this oversight.

           

“Gay and Lesbian”, for those who have yet to find this most hallowed section of their local Waterstones, is generally located next to “Sexuality”; while on the surface this seems perfectly logical it puts the category past about five rows of “Self Help” rather than alongside “Romance” and “Erotica” which is probably where the majority of books (mostly with cursory inspection seem fiction or semi-autobiographical) belong.

           

Owing to having so little time I have to resort to a primary school level faux pas and judge the few hundred books that make up “Gay and Lesbian” by their covers. From this all I can deduce is that they’re crap. When I take blurbs into account it occurs that not all of these books are strictly speaking gay or lesbian; several of them have protagonists or core relationships outside of gender binaries – transgendered or transsexual – one blurb tells the story of a man who discovered his homosexuality at the age of forty despite having a wife and one son, while I can’t claim to be an expert on human sexuality wouldn’t this make him bisexual? So wouldn’t this section be more appropriately named “LGBT Fiction”?

           

Popular cover illustrations include builders, policemen, and men in suits with open shirts and gleaming torsos. Like a 21^st Century Village People if the Village People included a sexy stockbroker in their line up. If the tasteful cover was part of Fifty Shades of Gray’s appeal then I have to report that Gay Fiction has not yet moved beyond the Harlequin or Mills and Boon stage of publishing design.

He's right, the title font is gauche.

The Lesbian contingent is not treated with any more subtlety. Here we are treated to heaving bodices, stockings and suspenders, black lace, and titles like “Hot and Bothered”. I turned one of the books over in my hand; it detailed the story of a “bull dyke” who found love in the 70’s punk scene, looking at the cover again it depicted a Megan Fox lookalike in a black lace bra and knickers lying on satin sheets while an equally gorgeous woman bit her shoulder. I wasn’t entirely sure that the illustrator had got the gist of the story; it seemed a photograph that was more likely to appeal to heterosexual men than the book’s core audience. Wondering whether this disconnect between cover images and readership was the same in the male gay fiction I pulled one again at random from the shelf and sent a photo of the cover of Wolfsbane to a gay friend of mine, he texted back two minutes later to tell me “the title font is gauche”, I assume that’s a yes.

       

What Constitutes Gay and Lesbian Fiction?

While there was a decent selection of genres loosely covered by Gay and Lesbian; a little modern gothic fiction, a few thrillers, some comedy, and even a little crime (including a serial killer novel about a drag queen who killed with her stiletto heels, a book I regret not buying); the vast majority of Gay and Lesbian is devoted to two basic plot-types, Romance and “Coming Out”.

A “Coming Out” story is basically a bildungsroman in which the protagonist struggles and eventually comes to terms with their homosexuality, think Jeannette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit or Hollinghurst’s The Spell.

Curiously Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit was not anywhere to be found in Gay and Lesbian, nor was anything written by Alan Hollinghurst, nor Baudelaire, nor Forster’s Maurice, nor Sarah Waters, nor Quentin Crisp, nor Christopher Isherwood, there was no Sapphic poetry, Chuck Palahniuk was not acknowledged as a gay author, even Wilde was missing in action.  It’s not that Waterstones did not carry any of these books; it’s just that anything of any literary value was stored with the bulk of the “heterosexual” collection.

In fact, despite being quite well read and abreast of literary news, I only recognised one book: Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg. I can’t claim to have read it but I vaguely remembered Germaine Greer discussing it on a book review show. That it’s still here is probably an oversight by whoever it is who Waterstones employs to rescue books from Gay and Lesbian.

Seeing the works that are included in Gay and Lesbian I can understand why Hollinghurst bristles at the term “gay author”, Waterstones have managed to curate an insult. But the truth is that there really shouldn’t be a Gay and Lesbian section at all.

 Gay Is Not a Genre

Quick! You’re stacking shelves in a DVD store; you have twenty Pedro Almodóvar films, where do they go? You answered World Cinema didn’t you? Of course you did, it’s where they go. You looked at a collection of films whose shared themes are transvestism, transexuality, homosexuality and drug abuse and decided that the most important aspect of the films is that they’re in Spanish with English subtitles. You have a box set of Queer as Folk, where does that go? It goes with box sets of TV series. Naturally. There’s still a Gay and Lesbian section in your store, what goes in that? DVDs whose only distinctive factor is that they’re Gay and Lesbian.

What does that even mean? Typically that the protagonist and key characters mostly gay or lesbian, if you can find any other key attribute to them you’ll put them elsewhere. If anyone’s likely to want to buy them you’ll still put them elsewhere even if they have no redeeming qualities. Brokeback Mountain has a gay protagonist, a gay antagonist, is both a “coming out” story and a gay romance; it’s also not that good. It’s a perfect fit for Gay and Lesbian, but due to being inexplicably popular it has escaped that fate.

The same goes with books. Hollinghurst had all of his books rescued from Gay and Lesbian when he won the Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty. Bookstores were already duplicating his work, keeping some copies in Gay and Lesbian and most in Fiction, owing to his Booker nomination for and popularity of The Swimming Pool Library. Forster’s posthumously published Maurice never had to face the ignominy of being Gay and Lesbian, Forster was already renowned long before it was published (and he’d been reviled for his heterosexuality a mere decade before). Wilde never belonged there, or Isherwood, despite the homoeroticism implicit in Palahniuk’s writing and the author’s own sexuality Fight Club was popular and straight enough to make it to the front of the store. Since the decline of Feminist bookshops and subsequently Feminist sections in bookshops Angela Carter has joined the rest of the competent writers discussing human sexuality in Fiction.

Gay and Lesbian is selection of books that are badly written, unpopular, and have no mainstream appeal or literary merit. It is an unnecessary section. It is an unnecessary section, worst of all it is dishonest.  While it may be true that the Gay and Lesbian section of Waterstones represents about 4% of the books the store stocks and this translates reasonably well into demographics it is not a true representation of the number of gay or lesbian authors or books the store stocks. The truth is that if every non-heterosexual author had his or her books in the Gay and Lesbian section Gay and Lesbian would account for about a third of the store.  It would include a massive number of classics, such a section could even arguably include Shakespeare.

I can’t give any reason for the disproportionate creative achievements of LGBT persons but I think we would all agree that such a division of our bookstores would be insane; it would be akin to having different sections for male and female authors.

I propose scrapping the section.

There would still be a place for the multitude of builder, soldier, sailor and businessman books. They could go with their trashy heterosexual kin in Romance, a section that could then be subdivided by sexuality and interest. Everything else could sink or swim in general fiction. It could be argued that “coming out” is a special interest sub-genre but as has already been discussed the great examples of this story are already selling well outside of the Gay and Lesbian ghettoised books.

I left Waterstones with the distinct impression that gays with any taste are already picking from the front of the store. At any rate during my time there, in a packed store, in the run up to Christmas, I didn’t see another human wander down those aisles.      

         

Home House

I spent last night getting drunk with artistic types.

I should probably clarify that this isn't usually the type of thing I do on a Monday night; it's not usually the type of thing I do any night. Well getting drunk is a not irregular occurrence and many of my friends could be described as fairly artistic but the arty-ness of the attendees of Home House's Poetry Salon was of a level that myself and some friends in a quiet Buckinghamshire pub could never hope to attain.

I'm not exactly sure why the four of us - dressed as a geography teacher (myself), an estate agent (Mylz), that kid who always gets bullied in school (George), and Marilyn Monroe (Alexis, the only one who seemed to treat the night with the gravitas that it evidently merited) - were invited to share the space with fashion designers, visual artists and a man who collected cravats. Nevertheless they were wonderfully hospitable, served excellent wine and soon we were on a balcony discussing Reiki and star signs as though spiritualism wasn't completely fucking retarded.

I soon started structuring my drinking around cliches:
"I think science is really only one way of looking at the world" I took a sip
"I have my own version of faith taken from all over the world" I took a sip
"Feng shui's been around for thousands of years, it can't be all nonsense" I took a sip
"You always know when you have a spiritual connection with people, it's like souls" I took a sip
"I think in eastern countries they have a much more holistic world view." I finished my glass and returned to the bar for another.

Outside of the musings on the theme of 'reality is subjective' the conversation had a rather flamboyant feel. All greetings were enthusiastic, all compliments effusive, and all criticisms had multiple layers of meaning. The dialogue could have been scripted by Hollinghurst.

After one of the world's most famous hat designers, a man who was only a Sea of Fog away from being the subject of a Friedrich painting, had paid complement to our host in the form of a poem he had written called 'Don't Bet Your Money on a Disco Bunny' (one in which Simon, the host and enthusiastic cravat collector, was killed by a falling mirror ball - this poem incidentally was one of the few of the night that at least had the decency to rhyme), it was our turn to recite.

My poem was rather warmly received so I'm including it here for posterity.

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I Hate Students

You boast of your post-sexuality,

Your craven carnality, your gender duality,

Your great versatility, your great self-discovery,

Your “creative facility”, your spiritual alacrity.

You recollect some great voyage when you were guided by fate,

You were leading the world to a far greater state;

Fought for Palestinians in Pakistan, sued for peace in Uganda

Although, from your continued existence, I gather

You did both while straight.

You bear the great burden of being born middle class,

With your moral duplicity and internalised fallacies

You don’t sense any antipathy for your cross-cultural farce.

How does one travel the world with one’s head up one’s arse?

Strictly out of interest, please sate my curiosity

What exactly the fuck is pan-sexuality?

What makes you not bi, straight or gay?

Do you fuck furniture or beasts of the forest?

Yes you worked as a florist and once wore a dress

Neither’s courageous, neither outrageous

The former’s a job and the latter is clothing

Though I can’t help but noting that you carried it quite well

You’ll be a gorgeous young woman when your breasts finally swell.

You talked about Tennyson, opined on Dickinson

While, as is my habit, I gave your bookshelf a scan

And you read aloud Tony Harrison as we sat in your garrison

Two hundred students and twats to a man

Occidental Philology sits with Oriental Philosophy

Not one title under a century old

The dust, while aesthetically pleasing, is very revealing

Cracked spines of red leather and I’m wondering whether

You’ve read between a single fold.

No, to your credit (with my complete condescension)

You’ve read Siddhattha and Veda without comprehension.

You hold some ludicrous notion of a great Eastern School

Get thee to an ashram; you know nothing at all!

But you know what I hate, what I really despise?

Your universal empathy and all that belies

You’ve done persecution, poverty, faced eviction and starved

You’re a public schoolboy, that gap year must have been hard.

You’ve been terribly oppressed you complain without fail,

Oh how awful it is to be white, straight and male.

      

Letter From Belgium - Dated 20th September

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Dear Emily,

The country of Belgium is having an election. On the 22^nd the people will decide between the men from the Blue Party, whose leader believes in employment and speaking French, and the men from the Red Party whose leader believes in work and speaking Flemish. While to a non-resident the question might seem immaterial, after all Belgium has managed to function perfectly well for about a year without a government, the citizenry seem very excited about the upcoming election and who can begrudge the excitement of citizens.

            Posters are plastered up everywhere - outside houses, shops, and restaurants. Billboards, Red and Blue, clad the taller of the buildings and from them bear down the faces of the potential potentiates of the plurality of provinces. Wealthier neighbourhoods support Blue, poorer neighbourhoods support Red; the colour coordination seems reassuringly like our own.

            For those disturbed by any perceived similarity between the parties I was delighted to discover a third way. The Pink Party. While I have no idea what they believe in, I know that they have a van, are running a candidate in our province, and are not supported by those who support the Red or Blue Parties.

            There are also advertisements for a charity that supports the blind in all of the metro stations of Brussels. Done in the style of one of the party posters they bemoan politics based on linguistic differences and suggest standardising on braille instead.

            Communication has been a theme of this holiday. I am writing to you from my bedroom in a Cistercian monastery where silence is the lingua franca. The silence has a lushness to it, it is enveloping, one could quite easily become lost in the silence – two hundred monks already have, sunk into it, it is a most majestic absence

            But it is not true silence. Listen closely to the silence and a hundred thousand things are clearly audible. In the silence one’s hearing sharpens immensely. I can tell that there is a woman walking in a passage below me at the other end of the guesthouse, I can tell that she’s short and thin, that she’s in good health, that she’s walking towards me. The man in the room across from me is writing something in biro. Three of the swallows that nest under the eaves of the smaller chapel are in flight, the light breeze is rustling the leaves of the three hundred year oak in the ruins of the old abbey.

            My own nib sounds like a rodent tentatively appraising food. And when I stop writing and concentrate inwards I can hear noises that are deafening. I can hear blood as it’s pumped around my head, I can hear my eardrums themselves each time they vibrate in an attempt to capture a noise. I am no longer using my ears to hear, I am using touch, sensation, contraction and loosening of muscles, I can hear my body and it’s sublime.

            Only in the mornings do we talk, and in the mornings meaning is lost in the noise. Belgium has three languages. Us forty guests have maybe ten, and the sale a manger, a great stone hall whose windows display fantastic beasts and scenes of the resurrection, echoes in Italian and German, Dutch and Afrikaans, Spanish and Portuguese, English and French and Flemish. We search together for common tongues, French is the most widely spoken and so the most often heard. Yet the French spoken here is different entirely: It is more accent tolerant than that of France, words are substituted for other Belgian languages – ‘fromage’ becomes ‘kaas’ for instance – and word order is often German or English. It no doubt appals the French guests and also the monks who deliver all their prayers in French, but for me whose French is – as you well know – lousy it’s a much easier language. It’s a relief also for Joe whose French is worse even then mine, we used sit across from each other in GCSE French back in school all those years ago. This easier more liberal French is naturally of no use to the Americans who don’t speak anything other than their bastardised English.

            We’ve adopted two American kids at the monastery, eighteen year olds, who despite some impressively dogmatic belief in scripture (but very little textual understanding or background knowledge of it) seem to be finding the whole ‘being in Europe’ thing rather difficult. One’s called Felix who’s here because he’s “struggling with his attraction to men” (this is almost the very first thing he told me!) and the other’s Alex who’s there to support him and find God or some such thing. They don’t drink, smoke, or have impure thoughts (except Felix who’s fighting them valiantly), they’re quite dull really but they’re sort of sweet in their own way.

            We don’t get any news here, there’s no radio or television naturally but also no newspapers, and so I have no idea what’s happened in the world in the last few days. It has the curious effect of making time not seem to pass. I may miss the results of the Belgian election, although I’m sure if they manage to form an elected government while I’m here that the moratorium on outside knowledge will be temporarily lifted; us Catholics are very keen on miracles. Keep me abreast of anything interesting in world and UK affairs.     

Anyway I’m conscious that this letter’s becoming a tad long so I’ll sign off here and wish you the best of luck with your own holiday. Oh and thanks for the birthday text, a monk brought me beer and biscuits yesterday as well.

            Love, Daniel

Kitchen in Hailsham House