49 Other Essays I Can Recommend

I've a unique problem, for me anyway, one with which I've never had to grapple before, and probably never will again. About the time of the recent annual inventory at the bookstore where I work, I happened to notice that there was just the one copy in stock of this particular book. The book's been around for some months now, mind, so it's not as if it hasn't had its chance, and the only reason there's still even the one copy is, well... me. It's quite sweet, really, the bookstore keeping even that one all these months. Not my doing, you understand. Frankly, I hadn't thought to look at the thing for ages. When I checked the sales record for the title, I blushed a bit more. Had it been almost any other book, with a sales history like that, it might well have been out of the inventory altogether well before now. So I was touched, you understand, to see even just that one copy.

The truth is, I never intended to write about this book, Fifty Gay & Lesbian Books You Must Read, edited and introduced by Richard Canning. ( That's him, by the way, in the picture, the Brit with the big grin. Quite adorable, really. No idea why he's so shy about being photographed. Had to cop this one from the Internet.) I'm in the book, a contributor. Through the agency of a good friend, a writer who was asked to contribute an essay, I somehow made my way into print for the first time in... let's just say ever, and leave it at that. I wrote a piece on Coleman Dowell's novel, Too Much Flesh and Jabez. That was my contribution. The very nice editor seemed pleased with it. I was certainly pleased to buy copies of the book when it was published and give them to friends. The publisher, months later, even sent me two copies. Just that. Still. Anyway, the idea of writing, even here, about a book in which my own bit appears seemed, and still seems, uncomfortably self regarding, so heretofore I've contented myself with just reproducing the book jacket, and rather coyly captioning the post with the page number for my contribution. Even that seemed a bit too like bragging, though you'll note, I've never taken the post down.

Having read all 'round my essay now, I must say, the book's actually quite good. (I can't reread what I've written, as I may have mentioned here before, without wanting to never write another word again, so I haven't reread my essay in the book since it was published. Neurotic, I know, but there it is.) Still, much as I've enjoyed reading all the other contributions, and while I will admit that I've recommended the book to a customer or two, without mentioning myself, I've never been able to write so much as a Staff Recommendation for it to put on the shelf.

So why then, with this history of blushing, dithering embarrassment, should I decide to mention the book again, if only here? Well, that one copy left on the shelf, remember? I should very much like to think that one copy might be justified in the bookstore with an actual sale, to someone other than me, before another annual inventory rolls around. I know this may not be a very effective means of achieving that eventuality, but this is the best I can do.

The title, I now feel safe in saying, since it's so well after the fact of the book's publication, is, I think, just awful. To give just a bit of history, there was a famous American academic attached to the project at an earlier stage, and that command sounds very much in keeping with his usual sort of literary pronouncement. Personally, I think most sensible readers avoid books about books they've been told they "must read." Smells of fiber and leafy greens, that kind of title, doesn't it? I've no idea how or why the esteemed, bombastic professor withdrew from writing the promised introduction, and it doesn't much matter. I do think that unfortunate title may be his legacy to the project, or a contribution from the publisher, who must also be held accountable I should think for the amazingly drab cover, which only contributes to the unnecessarily sober impression of the charming editor's charming book.

Because this really is something of a free-for-all, this selection. In the few reviews I've read online, as is the usual way with anthologies like this, much was regularly made of who and what are absent, Forster, Crisp, etc. Fair enough. Always happens. But what is in the book is wonderful. The reader mustn't be put off by my rather obscure selection. The editor happens to share my taste for Coleman Dowell, but it's to be expected if no one much else has ever heard of him. Despite the title of this anthology, it's really to read these other contributors that I would recommend the book. It's the editor's premise that every essay here is personal; the form varies from piece to piece, just as the period, style and importance of the books recommended do, and the book itself is in no way meant to be taken as establishing some sort of canonical list. As Canning says in his introduction:

"... the leaps, counterstatements, and incongruous emphases among the babble of gathered voices has become -- for me, anyway -- a quality I have come to cherish."

Me too. This then is a book not about books, but about reading, or more often rereading, and as such, it is a wonderful opportunity to look in on writers - some quite famous and others not -- doing something other than strictly reviewing, or teaching, or even necessarily describing in any detail the history of GLBTQ literature or anything so grandiose as that, but rather to be let in on writers reading, and not just reading as they might professionally, but just as a reader alone with a favorite book.

Not everyone is still or necessarily ever was in love with the book they've chosen to write about here. Some write about a book or an author for whom a youthful enthusiasm has faded, or about a book that did not prove to be the book they remembered. That's part of the pleasure of the thing -- not knowing, ever, quite what to expect.

Though in the most obvious way suggested by that hateful title, every book in this book is here for a reason, but, as the title can not suggest, the reasons are as often surprising as expected. And even the likeliest books, often have unlikely reasons suggested for why one ought to read them, or read them again. It is as an entirely idiosyncratic collection of essays and essayists that the book comes off, and that's the reason to ignore the title and read the thing.

I'm actually quite fond of lists, and rankings and that sort of time-wasting. I make them all the time, for myself, to amuse and or challenge friends. But this book is not Richard Canning's list, or anyone else's. If anything, our literature has already suffered too many such lists, which are invariably, simultaneously inexplicably incomplete and weirdly inclusive. Had Canning set out to address such a list, he might well have made some sort of contribution to the rather tired debate about sexual definition and identity, but I don't think he would have made such an interesting book as this. By inviting each essayist, as it were, to Bring Your Own Book, what the editor collected was instead an amazingly diverse "babble of voices," that invites the reader to join the conversation at any point; either because of a common interest in or affection for the book or the essayist, or just to mingle and meet readers and writers otherwise unknown.

It really is a rather marvelous party.

That's why I'm so glad I was invited, really, and why, though I'm not very good at this sort of thing, I'm still eager to invite other readers to join in.

Don't really know why I've been so shy 'til now.

So do, please, consider taking that last, rather drab looking copy off the shelf. More fun than it looks, I can tell you. Honestly. If I do say so myself.