July 1999 Cover
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Will you make the cut?
By
Mitzel
Earlier this year, the publisher Modern Library, an imprint owned by the German outfit Random House, issued a list of what they purported to be the 100 best novels
of the 20th century. This list fell into the crunch of the news cycles and was promptly ridiculed and torn apart-- though I think it fair to admit that many folks,
myself included, actually read the list, though, if asked, I am certain I couldn't tell you one title on it.
Peyton Place?
The carping began. Too few women authors on the list. Too many titles published by Modern Library themselves-- imagine that! An act of total meretricious
self-promotion in the snarky world of New York publishing. When the talk turns to whorishness in NY, I ask: Where's The Headline?
Now comes forward the Publishing Triangle. The PT is a group of gay men and women who work as writers, editors, publicists, and others in the world
of publishing. They set for themselves the job of coming up with something to be called "The 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels." A group of distinguished folks from
our literary community struggled and came forth, in the second week of June, 1999, with their list. As a bookseller, I received their packet, which included the list. And,
yes, I read the list, as we are genetically programmed to do. There's lots of good stuff on the list, including some surprises, like Nabokov, Balzac, and Durrell. I'm a liberal.
I welcome all to the summer cook-out.
The minute I finished with the list, I wanted to make my own list. Apparently, such a response was not unique to me. In the press packet sent out by the
Triangle folks, there is a printed statement from dear Dorothy Allison, a sort of
mea culpa, but not really. Dorothy wrote: "What I hope this list will accomplish is to
provoke people to make up their own lists. I want young people to read Dorothy Bussy and James Purdy. I want readers and bookstore staffers to start arguing about why
Little Women may make this list and Sula
may not." I would recommend to dear Dorothy that one should not recommend that book store staff start arguing. Helen, I've
been there; not good!
But my own list, yes! On it would be Auntie
Mame, which is out of print. In the category of gay fabulousness, which I think should be a consideration, the work
of Boze Hadleigh. And, since some of the works selected by the PT are books with the ink barely dried on the page, perhaps we can put on my alternative list things in
the pipeline and yet to be printed-- my holy book called
The Gay Bible, for example
There's the rub. The list itself! The real fascination with lists is not just with who made it, but who was excluded-- sort of like High School all over again,
ghastly thought.
Regarding the PT list, an angry e-mail was sent off from Michael Gorman, author of the book
The Empress is a Man, which won a Lambda Award back in
1998. Michael was mad that Patricia Nell Warren had not been included in the Hot Hundred. And he had a good argument. He reminded the Triangle folks that
The Front Runner was the first gay love story to make the
NY Times best seller list (more lists!). Michael also reminded us that "There are hundreds of gay running clubs all
over the world who take their name from this novel." A bigger pitch is this: "It is a novel that literally saved lives!" I suspect that everything Michael Gorman notes in
his angry and hurt e-mail is true. Gorman even hints that the Publishing Triangle may have a hidden commercial agenda, this being unknown in So. California, wherein
we find dear Warren and her advocates.
But Gorman's challenge is real. Does a book like the
The Front Runner, which has enormous popular regard, and has indeed lent its name to running clubs, and
may have well prevented gay youth from suicide (I cannot judge) deserve, by these deeds, to be on the Hot Hundred? Do good works get you into heaven or just faith
alone? This is an old war. Speaking of that church, I have always wondered what criteria were used to place books on the Index, sort of the condemned books of the
Vatican terror. Did the PT have the exact opposite criteria for listing our G/L novels? Is theirs the anti-Index?
I find all this just too much fun for people with time on their hands at the end of the millennium. As a child of the 60s, I must say I have my inspiration. It was
a book by my inspirer Brigid Brophy, her husband Michael Levey, and their friend Charles Osborne. It was a madcap little book, surely the result of some great
dinner conversation over some great wine. Their result:
Fifty Works of English Literature We Could Do
Without. You know, even in the Old Testament, the great book of
the Jewish folks, there is the complaint about "this endless bookmaking."
One last take on the Hot Hundred. At least these folks had the wisdom not to include The Bible, a group work often read
in translation. And found in too many venues. One small step for
los ambientes-- if you're counting. **
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