Gay Fiction Speaks
Conversations with Gay Novelists
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Today's most celebrated, prominent, and promising authors of gay fiction in English explore the literary influences and themes of their work in these revealing interviews with Richard Canning. Though the interviews touch upon a wide range of issues—including gay culture, AIDS, politics, art, and activism—what truly distinguishes them is the extent to which Canning encourages the authors to reflect on their writing practices, published work, literary forebears, and their writing peers—gay and straight.
Edmund White talks about narrative style and the story behind the cover of A Boy's Own Story.
Armistead Maupin discusses his method of writing and how his work has adapted to television.
Dennis Cooper thinks about L.A., AIDS, Try, and pop music.
Alan Hollinghurst considers structure and point of view in The Folding Star, and why The Swimming-Pool Library is exactly 366 pages long.
David Leavitt muses on the identity of the gay reader—and the extent to which that readership defined a tradition.
Andrew Holleran wonders how he might have made The Beauty of Men "more forlorn, romantic, lost" by writing in the first person.
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Toward the end of his interview here, David Leavitt abruptly states that asking if "gay literature" exists is the wrong question: "o me the important question is: `Is there such a thing as a gay reader?' That's infinitely more relevant. What's important is whether there are people who seek out books with gay content." This shift in focus gives much of this volume a fresh sense of purpose and meaning. Canning, who teaches American and English literature at Britain's Sheffield University, has produced in-depth interviews with 12 noted gay American and British novelists (John Rechy, Dennis Cooper, Patrick Gale, James Purdy, Edmund White among them). Aside from placing themselves within a social and historical tradition of "gay writing," the featured authors offer little evidence of an innate "sensibility." The pleasure of the interviews comes from Canning's ability to prompt quirky and ingenious responses from his subjects. Often, these include bluntly negative assessments of the works of others, though more commonly they are supportive and incisive, as when Dennis Cooper graciously underplays his enormous influence on other writers, or when Alan Gurganus discusses the place of homosexuality in the tradition of the Southern gothic. Each of the pieces clearly conveys the voice of the writer (James Purdy's idiosyncratic speech is captured beautifully), while as a whole, the book illustrates how these serious artists negotiate the cultural minefields of literary and identity politics in a marketplace that both values and devalues them as "gay."
