07/19/2005
The Desegregation of Gay Fiction
In this week's NYT books section, author David Leavitt took a stand to desegregate the gay fiction section and questioned the purpose and relevance of the gay bookstore. Leavitt argues that we're now in the world of post-gay fiction where the sexuality of the characters is incidental, not the center of the novel's universe:
"A gay bookshop (or a gay shelf in a general bookshop) implies that there is such a thing as a gay book. When I started writing, a gay novel, at least, was fairly easy to define. In it the hero or heroine's homosexuality stood by necessity at the dramatic center of the plot. More than that, such a novel presumed that any gay person's homosexuality stood at the center of the plot; that in the paper-rock-scissors game of identity, gay was always the rock...More and more, gay fiction is giving way to post-gay fiction: novels and stories whose authors, rather than making a character's homosexuality the fulcrum on which the plot turns, either take it for granted, look at it as part of something larger or ignore it altogether."
He does make a good point about the confusion the mainstream bookstores have in classifying certain novels: "On a recent expedition I found my books on the gay men's fiction shelf, along with Edmund White's and Alan Hollinghurst's. But Michael Cunningham's and Colm Toibin's were shelved under general fiction, while James Baldwin's were under African-American fiction."
Although he suggests it may be inevitable (and it may), I'd still lament the closing of small bookstores like A Different Light and the Oscar Wilde Bookshop. For me, like Leavitt, they are a nostalgic tribute to my own early days of coming out where I found in them both reassurance and excitement — a promise of things I had yet to discover.
Out of the Closet and Off the Shelf [ny times]
Sphere: Related ContentPosted 1:00 PM EST by Andy in Print Media | Permalink
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I agree with you about the demise of the gay bookstores around town. I was very disappointed when A Different Light closed. It made me feel as though I lost a piece of my personal history. For those of us too young to have been involved in Stonewall and the like, the bookstores around town represented our first connections with gay culture. Who can forget the first time they tentatively stepped in the A Different Light or Oscar Wilde? When I think of it now, it seems like a lifetime ago. It is sad to see them go.
Posted by: MT | Jul 19, 2005 1:18:36 PM
I'm always annoyed by this subject. Years ago, when I worked in a Borders in San Francisco Armistead Maupin would occasionally drop by and bitch because his books were shelved in Gay Lit. What he failed to realize, and what David Leavitt fails to realize, is that the decision to place their books in a certain section is about increasing the visibility of the product, not about classifying literature. This essay says much more about David Leavitt's ego than anything else.
Posted by: Tom | Jul 19, 2005 1:22:53 PM
There are no real gay bookstores in Holland (the ones that are called 'gay bookstores' exclusively sell porn), but quite a few bookstores have GLBT bookshelves or just put gay books in with straight books (so to speak). I think gay books should continue to be written. After all, there are still lots of people who struggle with their sexuality. They will find comfort in gay literature, as I did.
Posted by: DutchECK | Jul 19, 2005 1:24:53 PM
It may be music, but I really want rap put into its own section, its just easier to not find.
Posted by: rex90048 | Jul 19, 2005 1:25:49 PM
Do I hear a bit of self loathing in Mr. Leavitt's words? I agree with Tom that it is about visibility. If I am looking for poetry, I go to the poetry section of the bookstore. Mr. Leavitt should be happy that a person who wants to explore gay fiction, any gay fiction, might stumble upon his book in that section. Or are we going to usurp a tired adage - "it's not a gay book, it's a book that just happens to be gay." If Mr. Leavitt doesn't want his books in the gay fiction section, he should stop writing gay fiction. And if he wants to be included in the general section instead with the likes of Michael Cunningham, he should write a better book.
Posted by: robert | Jul 19, 2005 1:44:00 PM
It seems like personal nostalgia is often a reason, whether acknowledged or not, for older gay people to grumble over the "desegregation" of homosexuality. I just don't get it when people wax nostalgic over things that resulted from having to live a lie and do things surreptitiously, or at least having to operate under the belief that homosexuality is wrong because it's different.
Posted by: Graham | Jul 19, 2005 1:48:07 PM
Leavitt may be a great author, but the ability to turn a phrase, sell books, and become a "name" doesn't always equate with being smart. In fact, such space wasted on this lame idea proves that he is still, as a reviewer once observed, "not yet wise." At the same time, immaturity does not preclude arrogance or solipsism, both of which stain this essay as quoted.
Such book sections, sorry to inform him, do not consist soley of works of fiction--is he ignorant of the huge array of nonfiction LGBT titles or simply indifferent? LGBT book sections, and the handful of LGBT bookstores, do not exist for people like Leavitt submerged in the safe, warm bath of the NY literati scene. From personal experience going back 30 years, I know that many of them are willfully out-of-touch. In 1975, a NY gay book agent said to me, "Do gay people have problems? I don't know any gay people who have problems." Not only did many then, but too many still do, particularly the young. Gay book sections in general bookstores, and gay bookstores, still serve the practical purpose of being a shortcut to people finding books not merely for entertainment but to see a reflection of themselves shared with the author or his/her characters--whether their sexuality is central or incidental to the plot. Again, even if they were integrated with all of the other fiction books in, say, Borders, what would he have done with the LGBTY-specific nonfiction titles? The logical extension of his perspective is to eliminate any sectioning of books entirely. Fiction with nonfiction. Science with History. Sports with Cooking. But worse still, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, Davey, but the revolution has not been won. Perhaps if you read the news section of the "Times" occasionally. To paraphrase Sir Stephen Spender, who sued you in 1994 for plagiarism, for those countless LGBT people for whom such organization serves a useful purpose, it is their lives, not yours.
Posted by: Leland | Jul 19, 2005 1:59:02 PM
For my money I think it's very important for communities (big and small) to have a "gay bookstore". This is where you get to see, have and experience the full-range of stuff out there from porn to prose.
Do we really want to leave it up to the finance guys at Borders or Barnes & Noble to for instance one day decide that since cookbooks are more profitable and less controversial, they don't need to have a GLBT section or shelf anymore?
The day I found A Different Light in NYC is one I will always remember. I am sad that piece of NY is gone and don't feel that places like B&N could ever provide the same experience.
Posted by: hoyaboy | Jul 19, 2005 2:19:07 PM
I will never forget the day I snuck into the "Gay and Lesbian" section of Barnes & Noble (this was before bisexuals and transgendered people existed, boys and girls) and stumbled across "The Lord Won't Mind" by Gordon Merrick. I had found (to borrow from Waugh) my "low door in the wall which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden". To think that future generations of baby fags won't have that moment of supreme, visceral revelation is really heart-breaking.
I think Leland is precisely correct--those of us who live so comfortably in our own lives, our own worlds and our own skins lose touch with those who are in more difficult circumstances, or who are still finding their way.
There is a very good reason why no-one would ever put works by David Leavitt and Michael Cunningham on the same shelf. And it has very little to do with homosexuality.
Posted by: Zach | Jul 20, 2005 9:25:27 AM
Boy, a lot of people don't like David Leavitt.
Put me down for the continued flourishing of gay book stores and the desegregation of all literary fiction at Barnes & Noble and Borders.
Posted by: R J Keefe | Jul 20, 2005 10:27:43 AM
ok...then lets take out the African-American section..that element of society has assimilated into the culture..and lets not have an Asian American section, isn't it racist to separate? I have no idea where the antipathy towards Mr Leavitt comes from nor do I personally care....I am fairly outraged at the stupidity of one like Graham who foolishly thinks all is well and gay culture needs little encouragement...perhaps reading itself is a nostalgia at this point and the real reason gay bookstores have evaporated is because the new generations of gay people have no interest in reading, not the culture. And it is true, that for an older generation finding that revelation about being gay was probably found in a library or bookstore, while today's generation can turn on Queer Guy and see just how silly we really..sometimes I wish we could go back to lying.
Posted by: rexless | Jul 20, 2005 3:09:08 PM
Ah, Zach, thank you for reminding me of that enchanting Waugh passage. And I hope you've had the pleasure of hearing it intoned by Jeremy Irons from the "Brideshead" series, shown in the States on PBS. I urge you or anyone who didn't see it to rent the DVDs. It's plot, IMHO, disintegrates into a bore once the focus is taken off of the gay relationship, but even then it still has a fabulous cast, costumes, and Castle Howard. To think that PBS paid that slimy homophobe William Buckley to comment on it at the time. It was pre-AIDS hysteria so he didn't suggest, as he eventually would, that the infected forceably have a warning tattoo applied to their asses, but his reptilian eyes and tongue and overall demeanor did come close to killing the high the early episodes brought. We were almost as innocent then as "Charles" and "Sebastian."
Posted by: Leland | Jul 20, 2005 7:46:53 PM
Wow, that's a bit harsh-- I didn't realize I would instill such hostile feeling in you, Rexless, when I said something not completely on message with whatever manifesto you're subscribing to. It's kind of sad that someone from a group of people that are supposed to be open-minded would call a person stupid just for having a different point of view, and then state off the bat that they have no interest in understanding where that other perspective is coming from.
Firstly, what reason is there for a seperate African-American section to exist? Sure, it might be convenient to find all literature that happens to deal with African-American issues in one place, but why not seperate every specific sub-genre of literature into different categories? Why are Richard Wright and other black authors taken outside of the main section and placed aside, rather than separating all fiction that has to do with the sea, or anything relating to being a woman? Creating sub-sections solely in the case of minorities ("African-American Literature", "Asian Literature", "LGBT Literature") is like saying there is something inherently different with these works, incorrigible with the "universal" definition of literature. "It's not white and straight, it should be seperated" is what this is saying.
Secondly, it's pathetic that you would give up so easily on a younger generation of gay people: 'oh, they don't even care about reading, they just define themselves by watching Queer Eye, so screw them!' If you actually gave a damn, wouldn't you try to do something positive about the way people learn about sexuality rather than just complaining that things are changing and then giving up? And I don't know where you're getting your impressions of gay youth-- I can't imagine you'd be that in touch with the younger generation since you antagonize them so much-- but I can tell you most of the gay teens and young adults I know (including myself) don't jump into the roles presented by the stereotypes on Queer Eye For the Straight Guy and similar mass media exploitations, but are much more prone to questioning the status quo and the images we're dealt. This sort of skeptical attitude towards expectations is not something that will contine to grow within a system that ghettoizes works of literature by LGBT authors into their own "special" section for help with understanding "who we are". Listen, don't think I don't care about our history, because I do-- but you know what? I am not the same as you. I'm not a makeover artist, but I'm also not inherently in the same place as the people who identified LGBT in the generation that preceded me, or the generation before that. I'm a guy that likes other guys-- why the hell do I have to go to a special bookstore for that?
Posted by: Graham | Jul 20, 2005 11:05:08 PM
Most of this "ghettoizing" debate ignores the practicalities behind Borders reasons for creating special sections and it also gives this categorizing a lot more significance than it deserves. Is anyone complaining that Video West in West Hollywood has a special gay film section as do most video stores?
Most book shoppers are browsers, as are most video/DVD renters. When your business depends on these people finding what they want, you make it as easy as possible to find merchandise that appeals to them. When I get the hankering for gay lit, I go to A Different Light or to Borders, never Barnes & Noble becuase they don't have a gay section. I'd wager that Borders sells a lot more gay lit than B&N for this same reason.
Posted by: Tom | Jul 21, 2005 1:12:15 PM
Oh Graham
i have no manifesto. I just find you silly.
Posted by: rex90048 | Jul 21, 2005 5:36:16 PM