Blog - www.richardjespers.com

TOLLIVER LIVES FOREVER

11/22/2024

A WRITER'S WIT:
The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people.
Marjane Satrapi
Author of
Born November 22, 1969

M. Satrapi

MY BOOK WORLD

Maupin, Armistead. Michael Tolliver Lives. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

This is a pleasant bookend to the seven-book (I think) series. Michael Tolliver, now in his mid-fifties, is married to a man twenty years his junior. The novel comes full circle, chronicling Michael’s mother’s death (and their prior reconciliation) and the near-death of Anna Madrigal, who Michael considers more his mother than the woman in Florida dying of cancer. Loose ends are also tied up with Mary Ann, who flies in to see Anna in her hospital bed. If you’re really into the series, this book may seem a bit bland, but I do believe it brings a suitable finality to the series’ characters who for so long have inhabited 28 Barbary Lane and environs in San Francisco, the City.

TUES DEC 3: A Writer's Wit | Michael Musto
WEDS DEC 4: A Writer's Wit |Barbara Amiel
THURS DEC 5: A Writer's Wit | Joan Didion
FRI DEC 6: A Writer's Wit | Jason Reynolds
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

THE SAME DAY, ONLY DIFFERENT

11/15/2024

A WRITER'S WIT
I’m a Puerto Rican, gay, Midwestern, educated, former working class, liberal, atheistic, humanist, American, male, ex-Mormon, ex-Catholic, pseudo-Buddhist, teacher, reader, global, and popular culture-informed poet. These are a few of the adjectives that I’ve come to own and that inform my poems.
Rane Arroyo
Author of Same-Sex Seances: Poems
Born November 15, 1954

R. Arroyo

MY BOOK WORLD

Cunningham, Michael. Day: A Novel. New York: Random, 2024 (2023).

The novel revolves around one day, yet the same date, in 2019, 2020, and 2021: April 5. Right away one might recognize these years as the before, during, and after of the COVID pandemic and US lockdown. But, of course, the novel is more complex and more flexible than that (the disease serving more as wallpaper than plot substance). Cunningham fluidly explores the dynamics of two couples and their families. Dan and Isabel live with their two children, Nathan and Violet, and Isabel’s younger gay brother, Robbie, age thirty. Only not for long, because Robbie is off to Iceland to live by himself in an (understandably) cold little cabin. The other family is comprised of Garth (brother to Dan) and Chess, and their son—not quite a family because Garth does not live with his wife and child (who now acknowledge that Garth is the son’s father). Both families seem to be coming apart but readers aren’t sure why (perhaps, in part, it is because of the pandemic, invisible but insidious). Cunningham explores their dynamics quietly and assuredly so that by the end readers have a good idea of what has gone on in their lives, before during and after the pandemic. The last few chapters are each mere paragraphs long, providing a soft-landing denouement. Cunningham is the best.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Ruth Sepetys
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | President Joe Biden
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Andrew Sean Greer
FRI: My Book World | Armistead Maupin, Michael Tolliver Lives

MYSTERIES OF 'UNTOLD STORIES'

11/8/2024

A WRITER'S WIT
Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.
Martha Gellhorn
Author of The Face of War
Born November 8, 1908

M. Gellhorn

Alvarez, Julia. The Cemetery of Untold Stories: A Novel. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2024.

I loved the author’s novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents. It was quite poignant and enlightening to learn about the culture of the Dominican Republic. In this recent work, readers deepen their knowledge of the DR. Noted author, Alma Cruz inherits a questionable piece of property in her homeland (she selects the sorriest of four plots, her three sisters fighting over the “better” properties). There she encloses the land and forms a cemetery, not for bodies, but for her manuscripts of untold stories—primarily for the characters, whom she feels are as deserving of an eternal home as humans. The characters come alive from DR history, one being dictator Trujillo’s wife, Bienvenida. But there are lesser ones whose lives are just as interesting: Pepito, Manuel, Filomena, and more. It is a book of some complexity, so I know I shall return to it again to gain full advantage of its treasures.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Naomi Wolf
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Whoopi Goldberg
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Roland Martin
FRI: My Book World | Michael Cunningham, Day: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: TONY KUSHNER

7/16/2024

People in a boat, waiting, terrified, while implacable, unsmiling men, irresistibly strong, seize . . . maybe the person next to you, maybe you, and with no warning at all, with time only for a quick intake of air you are pitched into freezing, turbulent water and salt and darkness to drown.
Tony Kushner, Playwright
Author of Angels in America
Born July 16, 1956

T. Kushner

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Phyllis Diller
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Nelson Mandela
FRI: My Book World | Nell Freudenberger, The Limits

GAY HISTORY AFTER STONEWALL 1969

3/15/2024

A WRITER'S WIT
How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice, 1993-2020
Author of My Own Words
Born March 15, 1933

R. B. Ginsburg

MY BOOK WORLD

Denneny, Michael. On Christopher Street: Life, Sex, and Death after Stonewall. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2023.

Christopher Street is a place, a street that is at the heart of gay life in New York City. Christopher Street was also a gay publication that opened up life for its gay subscribers. This book is a compendium of essays that Denneny wrote for CS, or speeches he made for various organizations from the 1970s to the 1990s (mostly). Denneny was the first openly gay editor to be hired at a major publishing house: Stonewall Editions at St. Martin’s Press. During his tenure there he was responsible for publishing over one hundred titles by gay authors.

Why is this book important? For someone my age (in 1987 Denneny read a novel MS of mine and recommended to me that I should pursue the small presses—whatever that may have meant), it is a good review of history that I lived through (though not in New York). For gay people under the age of forty, it is a history from which they could learn where their gay privileges today come from. Without the courageous acts of civil disobedience in 1969, there would be no Grindr, few LGBTQIA+ films or books. No marriage. Those brave people also taught us that we must remain alert and keep fighting. There are those on SCOTUS and in Congress who would still deprive our hard-won community of its rights. In some sense, unless we at last develop a more inclusive society, there will always be a Stonewall rebellion in the offing. We should be prepared to bear arms at any time.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Garth Greenwell
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Emily Giffin
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Thomas Frank
FRI: My Book World | Ethan Canin, A Doubter's Almanac

A WRITER'S WIT: SUSAN SONTAG

1/16/2024

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in kingdom of the sick.
Susan Sontag
Author of Regarding the Pain of Others
Born January 16, 1933

S. Sontag

Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Newton Minow
THURS: A Writer's Wit | A. A. Milne
FRI: My Book World | Patricia Highsmith, Edith's Diary

Blog Is Back

1/2/2024

My faithful readers! I am back.

Brief word about my absence: Bladder cancer (don't get it). Cancer treatment. Great fatigue brought on by treatment plus greater fatigue by being allergic to Lipitor (a statin I'd been on for 19 years). I could do very little. Seems about 3-4% of patients can develop this reaction, the first pill or the thousandth. Seems I was among the latter. Anyway, I'm still recovering, in physical therapy to regain muscle tone and strength, but I do feel like writing again and getting my blog back up. BTW, my cancer is "cured," but will need to have another scope later in January. Oh, and I must also have hernia surgery. Yikes (don't get one, or two in my case)! RJ

A WRITER'S WIT

Many critics speak about coming-of-age love, about initiation, about young libido, and so forth. I've never seen it only this way. We continue to examine things ever so minutely, we interpret obsessively. We may be less bold at forty than we were at seventeen, but we're familiar with the road map; we know the bumps in the road; we recognize the sudden turns, the one-way streets, and the dead ends. And we are hurt just the same as when we were teenagers.
André Aciman
Author of Call Me By Your Name
Born January 2, 1951

A Aciman

Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | J. R. R. Tolkien
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Natalie Goldberg
FRI: My Book World | James McBride, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

PRINCE & FSOTUS FALL IN LOVE

11/17/2023

A WRITER'S WIT
The actor creates with his own flesh and blood all those things which all the arts try in some way to describe.
Lee Strasberg, Director
Three Sisters
Born November 17, 1901

L. Strasberg

MY BOOK WORLD

McQuiston, Casey. Red, White & Royal Blue. New York: St. Martin’s, 2019.

In many ways, this is a commercial romance novel, but for once, it is about two young men, not a heterosexual couple. And not two ordinary men, but one is His Royal Highness, Prince Henry of the UK, and the other is Alex, the First Son of the United States (FSOTUS)—whose mother is elected the first female president. In a way, the two men have known each other, at least by sight, since they were children. The inciting incident, as how-to-write-novels will tell, you occurs when Alex attends the royal wedding of Henry’s brother in the UK. During a tussle, the two fall into the £75,000 wedding cake.

To make amends, Alex flies back to the UK for photo ops to demonstrate to the public how the two really are fine friends after all. While visiting a primary school where Prince Henry (BTW he’s gorgeous, like a young Prince William) volunteers. Alex is impressed with the prince’s sincere largesse, but when firecrackers are mistaken for gunfire, the two are shoved into a dark, cramped, custodial closet (so symbolic), where once again they argue. Sometime later, New Year’s maybe, Henry sails the Atlantic (by air) to appear at Alex’s party held at the White House. At one point, Henry feels left out and ventures onto the snow-covered lawn, and Alex eventually joins him, where Henry plants a big one on Alex’s mouth: the real inciting incident, perhaps. Alex, also a handsome physical specimen combining the best of his mother’s Anglo and his father’s Mexican heritage, is stunned but suddenly realizes he may be bisexual.

All I’ve describe so far, of course, is plot, but McQuiston adeptly creates well-rounded characters whom you care for. She creates a future in which the US not only reelects the first woman president but also one in which people of all ethnic groups hold important positions in government, both in the US and in the UK. And . . . the state of Texas finally turns blue, handing the president the final thirty-eight electoral votes that send her over the finish line. It is a future many of us have held dear in our hearts for decades, and McQuiston makes it happen realistically (but with a bit of whimsy, of course). For that alone, I am most grateful. She also writes several of the most romantic yet erotic sex scenes I’ve ever read—ones that, however, do not detract from the importance of the novel. Kudos to the author, and may we hope for a sequel, in which Prince Henry and FSOTUS marry and have (or adopt) children? A bonus chapter from Henry’s POV may suggest that. We’ll have to wait and see!

Coming Next:
Nov. 23: HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
TUES Nov. 28 : A Writer's Wit | Rita Mae Brown
WEDS Nov. 29: A Writer's Wit | Peter Cameron
THURS Nov. 30: A Writer's Wit | Mark Twain
FRI: My Book World | Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

Not Good for Nigerian Gays

8/25/2023

A WRITER'S WIT
When you’re a writer you no longer see things with the freshness of a normal person. There are always two figures that work inside you.
Brian Moore, Irish-American
Author of Lies of Silence
Born August 25, 1921

B. Moore

My Book World

Somtochukwu, Ani Kayode. And Then He Sang a Lullaby. New York: Roxane Gay, 2023.

It would be a great understatement to say that the country of Nigeria is an unsafe place for the LGBTQ+ community to live. In this debut novel, Somtochukwu takes readers through the lives and loves of two young men. For one, neither set of parents offers any support for their gay sons. One man has a close relationship with his sister, which helps. Still, these two college men are on their own. On their own when one is beaten up by his very roommates. On his own in almost every context of his life. For those of us who complain about our LGBTQ+ lives in the US, we need only read this novel to realize we must be thankful for what we have and continue to fight against such bigotry here and abroad.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Matt Bell
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Molly Ivins
THURS: A Writer's Wit | William Saroyan
FRI: My Book World | Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

'Mysterious' Childhood

4/14/2023

A WRITER'S WIT
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
Arnold Toynbee
Author of Mankind and Mother Earth
Born April 14, 1889

A. Toynbee

My Book World

Heim, Scott. Mysterious Skin: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Among the best novels I’ve ever read concerning adult male-to-young male molestation. Heim explores the issue inside out, from all angles. The adult, like a hawk (thus, the gay slang, chickenhawk), knows its target’s weaknesses and exploits them: the child’s loneliness, his lack of parental guidance, his need for what seems to be love (though it’s only the predator’s skewed view of love), the child’s own possible homosexuality one day. But another side of it is the fact that the child may perceive he loves this man, as well, in the case of the novel, a baseball coach. One of the coach’s victims is positive the man loves him, all the favors he bestows upon him, other gifts, the apparent affection, even the $5 bill he tosses at his favored victims, already setting them up to become whores. From the beginning, the protagonist is sure he’s been abducted by aliens, and, in a sense he has. The experience of molestation must feel like an abduction—the child’s brain scrambling to make sense of this baffling situation—makes aliens from outer space seem a lot less threatening than dealing with aliens that seem to arise out of the very ground here on earth.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Susan Faludi
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Richard Hughes
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Aubrey de Grey
FRI: My Book World | Paula Fox: Desperate Characters

Plotting Marriage

4/7/2023

A WRITER'S WIT
The wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.
William Wordsworth
Author of The Prelude
Born April 7, 1770

W. Wordsworth

My Book World

Eugenides, Jeffrey. The Marriage Plot. New York: Farrar, 2011.

I loved the author’s book, Middlesex, but this novel seems to lack movement. I saw little growth in the three main characters: Madeline, Mitchell, and Leonard. At the end, in this love triangle, Madeline is still no closer to deciding what she wants in life. Perhaps that is all right; she is just out of college, just like the other two. The young man who falls in love with her, Mitchell, is a fellow college student and her best friend since childhood, but when she rejects him to marry Leonard, another student, he takes a protracted world trip with his best male friend. And when Mitchell returns, he finds Madeleine in a mess because she has married Leonard (against Mitchell’s advice) who is diagnosed bipolar, and he has freed Madeleine to divorce him after his major meltdown. Mitchell then lives with Madeleine and her family (they love him) while she recovers. The two even have sex, a meh experience for both of them. The marriage plot, alluding to the title, turns out to be a reference to an academic essay Madeleine has written, finally published by an obscure journal within the last pages of this novel. Leonard has gone to live in the Oregonian woods with a buddy. Hm. Even if “sad,” it seems the novel could have a more satisfying end. Just me, I guess.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret of Valois-Angoulême
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Aleksandr Ostrovsky
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Eudora Welty
FRI: My Book World | Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

A Writer's Wit: David Ebershoff

1/17/2023

“Isn't a gay Mormon like an oxymoron?”
“Do I look like an oxymoron to you?”
“An oxymormon.”
David Ebershoff
Author of The Danish Girl
Born January 13, 1969

D. Ebershoff

Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Binyavanga Wainaina
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Patricia Highsmith
FRI: My Book World | Erika Krouse's Tell Me Everything

Sedaris: Always a Carnival

9/23/2022

A WRITER'S WIT
Propaganda is that branch of lying which often deceives your friends without ever deceiving your enemies.
Walter Lippmann
Author of America Tomorrow: Creating the Great Society
Born September 23, 1889

W. Lippmann

My Book World

Sedaris, David. A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020). New York: Little, 2021.

Much like Sedaris’s first journal, this one contains a mixture of “Dear Diary” items along with jokes people tell him, along with long anecdotes about people he knows, along with a certain political polemic (which I love), and more, like overheard conversations in public places. If I were teaching creative writing, I would lift portions of both of Sedaris’s diaries to demonstrate how writers can mine their own diaries for topics or scenarios for other works.

In the early part of his first diary, Sedaris is a poor writer. In this one, he is somewhat more solvent and becoming more so all the time. Now, the man is so busy with readings and lectures, he’s always on a plane, and the airport world alone must offer up some of his richest observations. His dated entries from all around the world show a man who is interested in people, what makes them tick, what makes them say the things they do. Not that he always understands, but he is curious enough to record some of the ridiculous, confounding, or even wise things they say to him. Overheard conversations. How his day has gone, if he’s at home in one of two or three dwellings he owns in England or France. How the day has gone for his husband, Hugh. Jokes. Yes, plenty of jokes people take pride in telling him at one of his readings as he is signing books.

“A guy finds a genie who grants him three wishes, adding that everything the man gets, his wife will get double. ‘Great,’ the guy says, and he wishes for a big house. Then he wishes for a car. Finally, he says, ‘Okay, now I want you to beat me half to death” (211).

“It’s night, and a cop stops a car a couple of priests are riding in. ‘I’m looking for two child molesters,’ he says.
The priests think for a moment. ‘We’ll do it!’ they say” (445).

Sedaris’s title is derived from this tidbit dated March 23, 2013, London: Frank and Scott went to an Indian restaurant the other night and took a picture of the menu, which offered what is called “a carnival of snackery” (289). Indeed, that’s what this book is, and the delightful thing is it doesn’t cost you one calorie to consume!

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Myrtle Reed
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Elmer Rice
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Gaskell
FRI: My Book World | Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

The Tedium of Suffering

8/5/2022

A WRITER'S WIT
Conversation . . . is the art of never appearing a bore, of knowing how to say everything interestingly, to entertain with no matter what, to be charming with nothing at all.
Guy de Maupassant
Author of "The Necklace"
Born August 5, 1850

G. de Maupassant

Price, Reynolds. The Promise of Rest. New York: Scribner, 1995.

Price has created what, at times, seems like a tedious novel. And frankly, in one sense it is. The story of a young man suffering a slow death, from AIDS, is both tedious and yet breathlessly fleeting. Millions of lovers (in the parlance of that era) and family members (those who didn’t shrink from caring) in real life have experienced the same tedium that Price re-creates here, and yet once you begin the journey of Wade’s slow demise, you don’t want to leave him behind. Even though this story is over twenty-five years old, it seems transcendent, timeless. Wade’s mother and father who’ve separated. His lover, Wyatt, who kills himself. Wyatt’s sister, Ivory, her quiet yet affirming love for Wade. All of Wade’s aunts and uncles. Secrets! Oh, my, this novel is loaded with them, none of which I shall divulge, but all of them are woven together to create a narrative marking an era that has never really ended—merely shunted aside.

Coming Next:
TUES: AWW | Philip Larkin
WEDS: AWW | Suzanne Collins
THURS: AWW | Alex Haley
FRI: My Book World | Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo

A Writer's Wit: Edmund White on Stonewall Riots 1969

6/28/2022

The Stonewall riots were a key moment for gay people. Throughout modern history, gays had thought of themselves as something like a mental illness or maybe a sin or a crime. Gay liberation allowed us to make the leap to being a “minority group,” which made life much easier. --Edmund White, speaking of Stonewall Riots 1969

FRIDAY: My Book World | Lynne Olson's Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War

Young Gay Man Is 'Railroaded'

6/24/2022

A WRITER'S WIT
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
Henry Ward Beecher
Author of Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Born June 24, 1813

H. W. Beecher

My Book World

Woodruff with His Horse

Crawford, Phillip, Jr. Railroaded: The Homophobic Prosecution of Brandon Woodruff for His Parents’ Murders. Kindle: CreateSpace, 2018.

Full disclosure: I won this Kindle version of Crawford’s book by way of a goodreads.com giveaway. I am providing this review because I do believe it is a narrative worth reading.

This brief book is reminiscent of absorbing feature articles I’ve read in Texas Monthly—stories of true crime set in the Lone Star State. As a gay man who has lived in Texas for over fifty years, I felt drawn to this case I’d never heard of before. Woodruff is a nineteen-year-old boy charged with murdering his parents in their home. Crawford displays a fine grasp of the tenuous legal situation for gays in Texas, and he sets up the facts of the case for readers to see that Brandon Woodruff is wrongly prosecuted and convicted. At the very least the teen should be given a fair trial.

Throughout the book Crawford makes clear, among others, certain facts. A Texas Ranger from Austin is assigned the case, rather than a local or regional official. This Ranger conducts a smear campaign against Brandon because of his participation in a gay social life and for appearing in legitimate pornographic movies, “evidence” that has nothing to do with the case but which prejudices the jury. The Ranger also fails to take advantage of information that does exist, for one, cell phone records that would indicate Brandon is not anywhere near the location at the time of the murders. By such evidence alone, he could not possibly have committed the murders. While some guilty parties never show any emotion when hearing the news of loved one’s murders, reliable witnesses testify that Brandon loves his parents, particularly his father, who has a sympathetic view of his son’s homosexuality—and he is beset with grief from the beginning. Brandon’s sister, who is more temperamentally bent toward anger and violence against their parents than Brandon, is never fully investigated. What about her whereabouts on the night of the murder? Her phone records? A party or parties who might have committed the murders on her behalf? One suspect, an ex-friend of Brandon’s who is vehemently homophobic, lies to Ranger Collins, and Collins conveniently never puts the ex-buddy on the stand at the trial. The Texas Ranger takes the easy way out all around, and Brandon Woodruff, now nearing age thirty-six, still remains in prison, a long life-term ahead of him.

If readers want to help Brandon Woodruff’s cause, they can go to the website freebrandon.org to donate and/or sign a petition to be sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. This is a wrong that must be righted and soon. Thanks to Phillip Crawford, Jr. for documenting this case in such a decisive manner.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Lynne Olson's Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War

A Writer's Wit: Jill Johnston

5/17/2022

Man is completely out of phase with nature. Nature is woman. Man is the intruder. The man who re-attunes himself with nature is the man who de-mans himself or eliminates himself as man.
Jill Johnston
Author of Lesbian Nation
Born May 17, 1929

J. Johnston

FRIDAY: My Book World | Hermann Hesse's Rosshalde

Highsmith's Diaries and Notebooks

5/13/2022

A WRITER'S WIT
Take it from someone who fled the Iron Curtain: I know what happens when you give the Russians a green light.
Madeleine Albright
Author of Fascism: A Warning
Born May 13, 1937

M. Albright

My Book World

Von Planta, Anna, ed. Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks. With an introduction by Joan Schenkar. New York: Liveright, 2021.

This more than fifty-year compendium of Highsmith’s 8,000 pages of diary and notebook entries is a stunning read—particularly if you savor the voyeuristic practice of reading someone’s private thoughts. Her diary entries are brutally honest about everything from her current girlfriend(s) with whom she is madly in love to resentments toward her mother, estranged father, and stepfather. Though bright enough to graduate from Barnard, she never quite masters the art of achieving a meaningful love relationship; her tone seems the same for fifty years. I can’t understand why this relationship has failed. And yet, I believe she does know why: her profession requires much alone time, which is not compatible with a needy lover.

Her notebooks, on the other hand, are about her current and proposed works, sometimes a poem here and there. She also talks business. About her agent(s), once her sales go international. Her publishers. Friendships, lasting ones at that, with a broad range of writers. Strong female writers (mostly part of a lesbian group of professionals) mentor Highsmith on how to navigate the heady waters of being a single woman sometimes writing about being queer. Early on, when she is young, she has sex and “love” relationships with a few men, but none of them is every satisfying.

What may be most fascinating is to watch how her life and living influence particular books. The Ripley series of five novels has such an authentic, European backdrop because besides being multilingual, Highsmith lives in Europe much of her life. Still, having been born in Fort Worth, Texas, she does return there to visit once her parents move back from New York. Yet she harbors deep resentments against her abusive mother, who lives to be ninety-five (PH nearly perceives it as a punishment), and, because of her own health problems, fails to visit upon her mother’s own funeral. A sad but triumphant ending for a triumphant but oft-times sad and lonely life. If readers have time, it is well worth theirs to read these 1,000 pages, especially if they’re curious about the writer who authored Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series of five novels, a total of thirty-two books.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Hermann Hesse's Rosshalde.

Latinos Love Kissing Stories: Bésame Mucho

5/6/2022

A WRITER'S WIT
The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment . . . . Hungry women are not fed by this, battered women are not sheltered by it, raped women do not find justice in it, gays and lesbians do not achieve legal protections through it.
Martha C. Nussbaum
Author of Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach
Born May 6, 1947

M. C. Nussbaum

My Book World

Manrique, Jaime, ed. With Jesse Dorris. Bésame Mucho: New Gay Latino Fiction. New York: Painted Leaf, 1999.

On my shelf for a long time, I finally took this collection down and enjoyed most of the stories very much. Among the best, I believe, are Manrique’s “Señoritas in Love,” “What’s Up, Father Infante?”, a gripping story by Miguel Falquez-Certain, and “Ruby Díaz” by Al Luján. The entire collection blends together a beautiful chorus of gay Latino voices, from South America to New York to California. So much that the non-Latino community has to learn what gay Latino men face with regard to their families, their communities, and their relationship to the Roman Catholic Church. They face immense pressures to conform to cultural norms, even more so than the Anglo population, I would dare say. Kudos to these men for sharing their stories by way of lively and enlightening fiction. It never dates.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Anna Van Planta, Ed. of Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks 1941-1995

Meridian of Blood Still flows

4/29/2022

A WRITER'S WIT
Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.
Humphrey Carpenter
Author of J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography
Born April 29, 1946

H. Carpenter

My Book World

McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian: Or The Evening Redness in the West. New York: Vintage, 1985.

It might be that McCarthy brings to fruition that which Hemingway and Fitzgerald could not—due not only to publishing constraints concerning swear words and graphic violence but also the reins the authors may have held tight on themselves. The makings of complete literary honesty were there via Hemingway’s forthright sentences, at times extended to paragraph length (with little inner punctuation) and Fitzgerald’s fortitude in portraying the brutality of capitalism’s clutches on early twentieth-century America. But in this novel, McCarthy returns to the latter half of the nineteenth century of the West to extend his page-long sentences lyrically to rival the two authors mentioned before. And he does so in a way that somewhat softens the inherent mayhem of this novel.

At first, I had some difficulty in following the plot: that a sixteen-year-old Tennessean (the kid) ventures to the Southwest to see what’s in store for him there. The kid is tough, though, and becomes tougher as time passes. He joins a band of men who seek to scorch the earth of natives and anybody else with dark skin (the N word, due to Twain’s use of it in his books, seems to be used without restraint by these characters). But as the book shifts from one episode of killing to another across this physical and moral wasteland, I sense that the narrative is largely impressionistic. I am reminded of Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage—the wildly episodic nature of war—for that’s what this book is about, the White Man’s war to tame the West and all its human and animal critters.

Other than superficial features, the characters, as such, show little traditional development, but that may be McCarthy’s intent. These killers act as a single body, it would seem. In fact, little tolerance for the individual exists here. You act with the others, or you are fighting for your own life. And as an impressionistic work can be dreamlike in which a figure returns to you dream after dream, these characters keep running into each other, regardless of the miles and days or months between them. They can’t seem to remove themselves, if they should desire to, from this wanton way of life or death. And in most cases, it is the latter that guides them through their days heading toward McCarthy’s oft-cited orange sunset or that blood meridian.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Jaime Manrique & Jesse Dorris's Bésame Mucho: New Gay Latino Fiction

A Writer's Wit: Christopher Bram

2/22/2022

Being a Boy Scout saved my life. I was a bookish, introverted kid, shy and withdrawn, unhappy and easily bullied. I was also gay, although I didn't know it yet. I should've been miserable. But being a scout got me out of myself and into the world.
Christopher Bram
Author of Surprising Myself
Born February 22, 1952

C. Bram

FRIDAY: My Book World | Cara Robertson's The Trial of Lizzie Borden

A Happy Troubled Family

7/9/2021

A WRITER'S WIT
Employment is the surest antidote to sorrow.
Ann Radcliffe
Author of The Italian
Born July 9, 1764

A. Radcliff

My Book World

Haslett, Adam. Imagine Me Gone: A Novel. New York: Little Brown, 2016.

Having loved Haslett’s previous work (luuvved Union Atlantic), I jumped in with all limbs once again, and I was not disappointed. In this novel, an American woman meets a British man, they marry, and settle down for a time in London. All three of their children are born there but wind up being raised in New England, where the mother is from. The father is apparently normal (wife gets one big hint he is not just prior to the wedding, but she does not change her plans) until he is not—first losing his career and then sinking into a deep depression. He’s a kind man, a good husband and father, but he wanders into the woods and kills himself. One no longer has to imagine him gone. The title become a multifaceted jewel in which each member (as the first-person POV indicates) can imagine such a thing for themselves.

Another great feature of the novel is that Haslett passes the narration around from family member to family member, thus lighting every corner of this household (the first person is subjective and messy, but that may be Haslett’s intent). Michael is the eldest child, a brilliant person, who, in one chapter writes letters to his aunt about their transatlantic voyage from America to England, letters parodying perhaps the writing of Oscar Wilde; they are that hilarious. The facts are all there, but he is letting the reader know this is how he expresses himself best—at a sardonic slant. Celia may be the most sensible and peacemaking of the three siblings, winds up being a shrink. Alec, the youngest, finally comes out as gay. I like that his story does not take over the novel, that it is just one of five narratives, yet it is handled as sensitively and fully as the others.

The dynamic that sets the tone for this family is how everyone deals with Michael, who has difficulty establishing himself in a career, is always in debt and dependent on his family for help—a family that through the very end is willing to sacrifice everything to save him. Michael is an ultrasensitive person, feeling the hurts of the world yet a bit deaf to the needs of his family. His character is the one who determines the lives of the other four: his actions, his failures, his medical complications, his addictions. The tragic ending is both expected and not. Michael is obviously on a downward spiral, but one hopes, as do all his family, that he will pull out of the dive before it’s too late.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | TBD

Cheever's Son Brings Father's Letters Alive

6/25/2021

A WRITER'S WIT
Books are something social—a writer speaking to a reader—so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.
Yann Martel
Author of Life of Pi
Born June 25, 1963

Y. Martel

My Book World

Cheever, Benjamin, Ed. The Letters of John Cheever. New York: Simon, 1988.

This collection of letters from the 1930s to 1982 is as much about the editor, John Cheever’s eldest son, as it is about the senior writer. So many times in reading a compendium of letters, one is left alone to solve certain puzzles the letters may contain. For most letters Benjamin Cheever glosses events, dates, but most important, personalities, and by doing so he allows readers a deeper view into his father’s letters, his father’s life, the life of their family: John Cheever’s wife, Mary; daughter Susan, Benjamin, and a second son Fred (born Federico in Italy).

Having read Cheever’s journals some years ago, I again encountered his wicked wit, in which he slices humanity a new asshole but also a humane man who loves that very flawed humanity and is kind enough to portray his characters that way. For the wicked sense of humor: “About a month ago Mary took a job teaching English at Sarah Lawrence two days a week and so she journeys out to Bronxville on Tuesday and Fridays and comes home with a briefcase full of themes written by young ladies named Nooky and Pussy” (124).

Or this, with a scintilla of rage: “I got back to work on the book about a month ago, but was dealt some crushing financial blows three weeks later and now I’m back in the short story business. I want to write short stories like I want to fuck a chicken” (125).

And a sweet cat story: “The cat, after your leaving him, seemed not certain of his character or his place and we changed his name to Delmore which immediately made him more vivid. The first sign of his vividness came when he dumped a load in a Kleenex box while I was suffering from a cold. During a paroxysm of sneezing I grabbed for some kleenex [sic]. I shall not overlook my own failures in this tale but when I got the cat shit off my face and the ceiling I took Delmore to the kitchen door and drop-kicked him into the clothesyard” (235).

But ultimately, as I said, Cheever loves humanity and declares as much by way of a Time magazine interview chronicling his career: “My sense of literature is a sense of giving not diminishment. I know almost no pleasure greater than having a piece of fiction draw together disparate incidents so that they relate to one another and confirm that feeling that life itself is a creative process, that one thing is put purposefully upon another, that what is lost in one encounter is replenished in the next, and the we possess some power to make sense of what takes place” (240).

Now for the sex part of this profile: Editor Ben, eldest son to Cheever, discovers that his father is not bisexually bicurious in a furtive, shameful sort of way but has had sexual-emotional relationships with many different men over his lifetime. Cheever’s letters attest to having done the deed with (grad student of Cheever’s) Allan Gurganus (about his son’s age) and photographer Walker Evans about whom he tells this story: “When I was twenty-one Walker Evans invited me to spend the night at his apartment. I said yes. I dropped my clothes (Brooks). He hung his (also Brooks) neatly in a closet. When I asked him how to do it he seemed rather put off. He had an enormous cock that showed only the most fleeting signs of life. I was ravening. I came all over the sheets, the Le Corbusier chair, the Matisse Lithograph and hit him under the chin. I gave up at around three, dressed and spent the rest of the night on a park bench near the river” (304).

I must say that I admire John Cheever’s zest for life, an enthusiasm he did not relinquish until the day he died. And even then?

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

A Writer's Wit: Truman Capote

9/30/2020

At one time I used to keep notebooks with outlines for stories. But I found doing this somehow deadened the idea in my imagination: If the notion is good enough, if it truly belongs to you, then you can’t forget it . . . it will haunt you until it’s written.
Truman Capote
Author of In Cold Blood
Born September 30 1924

T. Capote

FRIDAY: My Book World | Marilynne Robinson's Novel Gilead

Not a Boring Star

9/18/2020

We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy.
Chris Hedges
Author of America: The Farewell Tour
Born September 18, 1956

C. Hedges

My Book World

Lane, Byron. A Star Is Bored: A Novel. NY: Holt, 2020.

Twenty-eight-year-old Charlie leaves his night job writing news copy for a Los Angeles TV station to become “personal assistant” to actor and movie star, Kathi Kannon. When one learns that author Lane once served as Carrie Fisher’s PA, one wants to turn Kathi’s voice into Carrie’s, Gracie Gold’s (Kathy’s mother) into Debbie Reynolds. As with any competent fiction, however, Lane creates two great characters that only reflect that he once knew them both, not that he’s out to recreate them.

And this book is full of so many unforgettable voices. Begin with Kathi’s: off the bat she renames Charlie “Cockring.” From there, it’s only a short step to all the other outrageous things she says while he shops with her, travels with her, sees her in and out of hospitals for . . . well, read for yourself to find out what. Cockring’s head is full of voices: his father bellowing at him through the years by way of sentences in all caps: “WE ALL HAVE TO DO THINGS IN LIFE WE DON’T WANT TO DO!” (66); his own fears as he speaks to his inner Siri: “Hey, Siri, I want to impress. I want to be the best assistant. I want to rescue my failing grade” (77); the voice of Cockring’s Therapista; the voices of all the other PAs to Hollywood stars, all with their own nicknames, who collectively write what is known as The Assistant’s Bible, chock full of information every great PA should memorize.

Cockring realizes early: “I have to be: to accept life as it happens, to be still and rest in knowing the universe is friendly, that good things will come, that good things are already here, that ‘good things’ include tidying her house, getting her car serviced, sorting her pills, surrendering my needs to hers” (91).

At a certain point, however, Cockring will learn this lesson a bit too well, and, like all good young protagonists, will have a crisis of identity. How that turns out will have to be the reader’s adventure. I’m not spoiling it for anybody. For laughs and tears, for good feelings and bad, you must read this book.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | E. M. Forster's A Life to Come