More than 10 years after the publication of his acclaimed short-story collection The Language We Use Up Here, gay writer Philip Gambone has returned with his gorgeous and compelling debut novel Beijing (U. of Wisconsin Press, 2003). In the novel, Gambone tells the story of David Masiello, a gay man in his late 40s who, feeling frustrated with his life in Boston, shortly after the death of his lover Johnny, decides to take a job working as an office manager in a clinic in Beijing for one year. With care and skill Gambone gives the reader a passport into terrifying and exciting territory, by making us care about both the characters and the place in which they are interacting. Exotic and erotic, Beijing is a sensual reading experience that crosses boundaries of culture and sexuality.
Gregg Shapiro: Where do you teach?
Philip Gambone: I teach in two different schools. I teach English and social studies to 8th and 9th graders here in Boston; and I teach creative and expository writing at Harvard Extension School to adults.
GS: Do you enjoy teaching?
PG: Yes. I've been at it about 25 years. But it does sap a lot of energy. Energy that could go into writing!
GS: More than 10 years went by between the publication of The Language We Use Up Here and your new novel. In addition to your non-fiction book Something Inside, were you doing other writing during that time?
PG: Yes, I worked for 4-5 years on another novel that never got published; and I wrote a lot of essays, book reviews and travel pieces.
GS: Are you still trying to get the other novel published?
PG: No. It was apprentice work. I'm glad I wrote it because I learned a lot about writing novels, which are very different beasts than short stories.
GS: Would you like to write another novel or would you rather write short stories?
PG: It's hard to tell. I think the story, or novel, finds the author. Right now I am kicking around lots of ideas for stories, but don't seem to have found the germ of a longer piece. I will probably go back to writing stories for a while, which I love writing.
GS: You were a contributor to Lucy Jane Bledsoe's 1998 book Gay Travels. Were there parts of Beijing that appeared there?
PG: No, that was a nonfiction piece, and my novel, Beijing, is fiction. While parts of the novel are based—loosely based, I want to stress—on my experiences during the three months I taught in China in 1996, the novel really is a made-up piece of work.
GS: Were you also publishing in literary journals?
PG: No, I was so busy working on the two novels, the first of which I began right after The Language We Use Up Here was published, that I really did not have time to write stories for journals. Interestingly, however, Beijing started as a story.
When I returned to the USA in late December 1996, I had tons of ideas for stories. I had met many gay men in China, who had told me stories, and of course I'd had my own experiences and impressions. I think the first story I wrote became the seed of the chapter in Beijing where David meets the worker in the park and they have a totally platonic, very nonverbal little romance up in that pavilion overlooking the pond. That story—oh, yes, I forgot that some of these chapter/stories were published—that story ended up in an anthology, as did a few other stories that were early versions of some of the chapters of the novel.
GS: One of the subjects of Beijing, the existence of a gay subculture in such a repressive society, is handled with grace, wit and an abundance of emotion. Was this the way you envisioned telling this story?
PG: Yes, because that's the way I encountered gay life in China. It was full of grace, wit and emotion. I went thinking that I would (1) never meet any gay people; (2) never be able to have a relationship with any gay people; (3) that gay life would be totally repressed. None of that proved to be true. The gay men I met were as varied in their tastes, styles, manner, and feelings about being gay as any similar sampling of gay men here.
GS: The book is also full of heart-pounding moments of tension, most of which revolve around David's encounters with gay culture in Beijing—the park, the Ta Ta Club, the bathhouse. It's like bringing the reader to the brink and then rewarding them with the payoff.
PG: Yes. I do not want to give the reader the impression that gay life in China is easy. It's not. Any gay man planning a trip to China—at least to Beijing, which is NOT the center of Westernized culture—should be careful about assuming that he can find lots of gay life. The city still, as far as I know, has only one (small!) gay bar.
GS: How do you think a gay man living in China might respond to reading Beijing?
PG: That's a good question. I don't know. I would hope that readers in China, or anywhere for that matter, would find the humanity that I was trying to ring out in David's attempts to penetrate another culture. At one point in the novel he tells his friend Stewart that finding gay China is his entrée into understanding China at all. That was definitely my experience.
GS: You have established an affiliation with University of Wisconsin Press, which published both Something Inside (1999) and Beijing. Can you, as someone who has also published with a mainstream publishing house, say something about the way that university presses are picking up where many mainstream houses have left off in regards to gay literature?
PG: For about 10 years—say, 1985-1995—gay writers enjoyed a wonderful ride with the mainstream houses. That's all changed now. The publishing houses are hyper fixated on the bottom line, which means that 'mid-range authors,' like me, and a host of others, have been left out. That's where the independent publishers and university presses have stepped in and filled a necessary role. I feel very fortunate to have a wonderful relationship with Wisconsin.
GS: Are you planning a return to China?
PG: Yes. I am going for the two weeks of my spring vacation back to Asia. I'll be about five days in Japan (where I've never been before) visiting a friend from college, and then going back to China. I'm passionate about Chinese history and culture, and plan on doing a lot of touring.
