Derek Jarman

Derek Jarman's memoir, At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament-- I was constantly surprised how how different his world was, for someone only ten years older than me, and how innocently he reacted to it all with the trauma saved up for later. The films are so perfect, so knowing-- Where did that all come from? The memoir doesn't give much of a clue, but the garden at Dungeness does. I've only seen pictures, but it seems as perfect as his cinema. Dark, silent, alive. Is that garden still there? By the power plant? Could I go see it for myself? I'll try to make my own one of these days.

Home at the End of the World

Michael Cunningham is the novelist I'd like to be. Denizen of used bookstores that I am, I usually only read novels years after they come out. Home at the End of the World is twenty years old, but I only discovered it this past weekend. This story of Jonathan, Bobby and Claire and the life they make by fits and starts reminded me of my own youth (I'm roughly their age) and the possibilities for family I had back then, too. Another masterful book from Cunningham about the times we 50-something gay men lived and live in.

Jack the Modernist

Why has it taken me twenty-five years to discover this novel? Robert Glück, in writing the story of Bob and Jack, writes about two individuals whose on-again, off-again affair rivets the attention of the reader. This postmodernist work requires readerly effort, but we are rewarded. Jack the Modernist makes gay people complicated, instead of the cartoons we usually are in fiction. Glück surprised me on every page with his language and his perceptions, his humor and his ironies. Do I want to be Bob? Or Jack? No. But I want the taut energy that leaps off the page whenever they appear.

Beauty Salon

Who has read Mario Bellatin's novella, Beauty Salon? It only takes a few minutes. I thought it would be the salon stylist's dying guests who interested me the most; but no, it was the exotic fish in the aquariums. The men who go to the salon to die, I've known for a long time. But the fish are new to me, only recent acquaintances. And as Bellatin concludes, they already "respect the loneliness to come." A gift from the future, indeed.

Another recommendation

I've just finished Tim Dean's book, Unlimited Intimacy, which is the best critical book in Gay Studies I've read in some years. It's a brave look at the subculture of barebacking, and its representation in visual pornography. Especially insightful and useful is Dean's analysis of the "barebacking community"'s kinship networks and how they play off and on the ongoing movement for same-sex marriage.

I'm rereading Dale Peck's 1990s novel Martin and John and remain in awe of it. He was a young man when he wrote it, but he already had a language of his own. He subsequent work retains some of that idiom; but this one book alone was enough to secure his reputation. I recommend it to everyone.