Lesbigay writers are big recently. The New York Times ( 4/2 ) reports that Yale and Larry Kramer have been negotiating over Kramer's literary papers like Red China and the U.S. have been negotiating over the spy plane. Kramer and Yale had a tiff about what might be done with his estate, which he planned to give to Yale also. Kramer has done a lot of good vis-a-vis AIDS in the gay community, but no one this side of a saint will ever conclude he's easy to get along with. Good to hear that his legacy and perhaps his estate will fund gay studies. Kramer has advanced liver disease, but at 65 he goes on confronting those he disagrees with.
Another writer with a bit of temper, Jeanette Winterson, was interviewed in the Chicago Tribune ( 4/11 ) . Winterson, the lesbian writer of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and The Passion has a new book out, The Power Book. The new work describes real and imaginary lives intersecting on e-mail. Winterson's currently furious at a cyberpoacher who attempted to register her name as his domain property. ( He also did this to 128 other writers, with the intent to sell them back to these writers for big bucks. ) Winterson so far is ahead, at least in British courts.
Spontaneous Mind, the interviews of Allen Ginsberg, is reviewed in The New York Times Book Review ( 4/8 ) . The review points out that no interviewer was able to pin Ginsberg into a single stereotyped position, whether it was William F. Buckley after him for being a nasty radical, or Playboy for touting him as the homosexual crusader.
Edmund White's new book, The Flaneur is reviewed in the same issue of The New York Times Book Review. Not a novel, The Flaneur ( which means "the stroller" ) is a kind of cheerfully chaotic guide to Paris. Taking the reader to random and interesting places in the city he lived in for 16 years, he escapes the reputation he's gathered for existential gloom in his novels. And yes, he does take the tourist into Gay ( that is, homosexual ) Paree.
Servicemen, a new play in New York, was reviewed by The New York Times of 3/26. The plot sounds a bit like a wartime knockoff of Noel Coward's recently revived play, Private Lives, a three-some ( two men and a woman ) where the audience gets to speculate who's sleeping with whom. But this one has a drag queen doing Marlene Dietrich and Betty Grable singing patriotic songs. One hopes that the game of who gets the innocent sailor that night is witty because it certainly could be cliched.
Mirabile dictu! The Chicago Tribune ( 4/8 ) had an interesting, informative, and sympathetic article on transgenderism. Julia Deardoff wrote about "what men find when they become women." People in this situation notice numerous behavior changes that they neither anticipated nor planned for: changes in curiosity, competetiveness, color awareness, erotic behavior, social behavior, and other things.
Watch your mouth-;Ernestine's back and she wants the coat off our back, especially if it's fur. The Chicago Tribune ( 4/10 ) says Lily Tomlin has lent her famous telephone operator character to People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals who use the donated furs in anti-fur fashion show protests, and as giveaways to the homeless.
Achy Obejas reviews the gay play Glory Box by Tim Miller in the Chicago Tribune ( 4/13 ) . The play's theme is the implications, humorously, of gay marriage on gay life. Miller is specifically interested in how marriage impacts on immigration because his partner Alistair, an Australian, is in danger of deportation. Miller, in the review/interview, mentions that according to our government's General Accounting Office there are 1,049 special rights that come with marriage.