Gay Panic!

That headline may be a teensy bit misleading.  This panic was real, though, unlike the old legal defense.  I'll explain.  It seems the new David Leavitt novel, The Two Hotel Francforts, doesn't come out from Bloomsbury until October 15th.  Hadn't noticed that until now, thus the panic.  Every month, usually on the 20th, my dear friend, Nick, announces the next book the Seattle Gay and Lesbian Book Club will be reading for the coming month.  With a new David Leavitt set to publish in October, how hard could it be?  But, no.  Hadn't read, as it were, the fine print.  Looks like Leavitt will now be the November selection.

All well and good.  Leavitt is one of the most consistent gay writers of his generation.  No question but that this new one will fit the book-club-bill -- but, in November.

Meanwhile, no book for the fast approaching month of October!  Not good.

The way this works is that Nick drops by every Thursday at the bookstore where I work and we have a short breakfast together -- consisting mostly of a danish and a bit of a chin-wag about books and whatnot.  Nick works at the smaller branch of the bookstore actually on the University campus. Once a week he comes by to transfer new books from the big store to the little.  What the club should read next is a regular part of our weekly chat.  I was with Nick when he started the club a few years ago.  He's still the host and facilitator.  He picks the books.  I haven't been able to attend the club's discussions for a long time.  I've remained involved however as something more like the club's dramaturge; suggesting new titles and classics to Nick that I think the club might enjoy.  Ultimately, it's Nick who picks.  He's the one who has to lead a conversation four times a month, not me.

Over the years, between us, we've picked some winners and not a few that weren't.  I'll put that almost entirely down to me.  Andre Gide?  Me.  Yukio Mishima?  Me.  Nick had of course read Gide, probably even read him in French.  Nick studied French literature in college.  (I can't even order off a French menu without ending up with unwanted tripe -- which unfairly suggests that there is such a thing as wanted tripe.)  Still, if the club read Gide, it was probably at my suggestion.  Not a success.  Likewise the Mishima.  I was still attending regularly when we did those books, may even have hosted a meeting or two.

I still get night-sweats thinking about it.

Unlike Nick who is a dab-hand at this, I was a pretty miserable host.  I tended to lecture.  I asked questions for which only I had the answer.  I did not know what I was doing.  Nick does.  With Nick, there is no such thing as an awkward pause.  If nobody asks a question, he will, and it will be a good one; something that engenders conversation rather than stopping it cold.  It's magic, or rather, he's magical.  My admiration of anyone who can lead a book club successfully is pretty much unbounded now, truly.  Nick's the best  (I've decided -- just now -- he is a witch, my friend is, a sweet natured, relentlessly enthusiastic, book-club-hosting, Sicilian witch.  Le Befana!)

The problem nowadays really isn't the want of authors or titles to consider, it's access.  Had we started this GLBTQ group twenty years ago, even ten, there would have been all sorts of resources available to us, resources that simply don't exist anymore: gay bookstores, women's and feminist bookstores, gay imprints from major publishers, in-print back-list titles from GLBTQ authors, including lots of minor classics from the English and American canon.

Just today, I spent the better part of an hour with the lists of the recent Lambda Literary Awards.  Excellent organization with an admirable track-record.  The club has read a number of books discovered just this way.  However, getting at some of the most recent nominees and even the prize-winners can be tricky, even for a bookseller, at least on short notice.  Small presses and limited distribution complicate matters.  Books going all too quickly out of print can be another major difficulty nowadays.

Even the best bookstores -- and here I include the company for which both Nick and I work -- no longer stock the kind of deep back-list that would once have allowed for last-minute selections.  Again, books go too quickly out of print, and even standard authors and titles; the kinds of books one used to count on as always being about the place, can simply be unavailable.  And then there's the new problem of having just one copy of something on the shelf.  That didn't used to be true, at least not as uniformly as it is now.

Too many books, too many good books, even too many great books, are simply not to be had at short notice, if at all in 2013.

That said, the solution that eventually presented itself was a remainder.  For any that don't know, these are the bargain books that occupy space in every bookstore nowadays; sold off by their publishers to bookstores at a considerable discount, maybe even a loss, these are discontinued books, or discontinued editions, usually sold as bargain books at half or less of their original cover-price.  Just such a book was on our bargain table.  The problem here being that we had only four copies, and no access to more.  Luckily, there is an edition in print and available, though at a price considerably higher and a discount to retailers considerably lower.  No matter.  It's an excellent book, Rough Music, by the British novelist, Patrick Gale.

I've read every book he's published in the US.  Gale is a marvelously attractive writer; humane and amusing, always relevant, clear and clever and queer.  Done, done and done.  In many ways, he is a perfect writer for the Seattle Gay and Lesbian Book Club.  I can't imagine his novels being disliked and I can't imagine them not sparking conversation.

So there's that.

Of course, getting additional copies for those club members not lucky enough to get one of the cheap copies from the bargain table will take a bit of doing.  (Worth it though.)  Nick has taken my word for the quality of Gale's novel and his writing in general.  I've promised him, no suicidal Japanese militarists in this one, so far as I remember, and no one arguing the philosophical justification for either married intellectuals "on the down low" or counterfeiting.

Still, this scramble for a good gay book points a lesson for us all, despite the happy ending of our search.  If we don't support our best writers, and the best books, how exactly are we to remember and commemorate our experience as a community?  What kind of community are we without our literature?  Keep that in mind, my dears.