Let's Talk Queer Lit!
F-list, I need some help. I've been reading a lot of contemporary literary fiction lately, and while I've found a couple of queer lit gems in the bunch, I'd certainly like to read more. I'm looking more for literary fiction more than queer genre romance or gay erotica. I know that's a fine distinction, and it's definitely an arbitrary one, but I
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Other than that, I acquired one awful gay detective book which was just too camp for words. I picked up one at the library about a relationship between a songwriter and a academic world news pundit and that one didn't really ring right with me, so I never finished it. So, yes, gay romance can be really as bad as het romance.
Somewhere I have a half-read copy of Samuel R Delany's Mad Man, which does cover the whole 80s AIDS mileau (in NY, I think) and I would never recommend it for, uh, the sex scenes. There are a lot of them, but... I know more about "watersports" than I ever wanted to know. (and, thinking about it, that is not even the really gross part) I'm not sure where that one is right now (I picked it up, read half of it, went to uni, came back...). It's interesting and probably semi-autobiographical and if you like the idea of an incredibly promiscuous and undiscriminating academic investigating a quasi-literary mystery it might work for you. (I now want to look for it. Finishing books has become one of my worse points. I swear my attention span has been atrophying over the years)
I'm not sure why the following didn't come to me first, because really, it was what turned on my slash nodes. (Uh, that sentence is perhaps a sign I shouldn't try fic-writing today). "Marked for Life" by Paul Magrs. ONE OF MY FAVOURITEST BOOKS EVER. It is one of the most beautiful awesome things ever (especially if you have a tattoo kink or like magic realism) and it doesn't just fit into the gay or het boxes. It acknowledges that sexuality is fluid and it can change. Not exactly a sequel but set in the same run-down town mileau is Does It Show? featuring a rather torn gay english teacher, a girl with powers, and her transvestite mother/uh... father Liz. Just just awesome, omg awesome. Aisles has Virginia Woolfe talking to a jaded academic online; and how can you not love that? The books have everything.
(Magrs also wrote Who tie-in novels of varying degrees of fabulousness if you ever come across them. Iris is the ultimate unreliable narrator and passes off the Doctor's adventures as her own. Magrs also editted one of my favourite "how to" writing books, but by then I was a pretty hardcore fan. Also, fanfiction turns up in "To the devil, A Diva!" which makes me very happy)
Actually, I picked up a new Magrs at the library Saturday and I need to reign in the desire to read everything mentioned herein and finish my Dexter book and get onto his.
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... *finally remembers* It's "The Heart In Exile" by Rodney Garland a much better basement bookstore find...
*rather like the way M*A*S*H (the novel) treated the details of surgery and in M*A*S*H Goes to Maine, heart surgery and the fictionalised history of the "cardia nostra" of 1950s heart surgery and the quest for the heart and lung machine. I might rather like them (and want to track down the rest some time) and at one point wanted to write a fusion between the book version of MASH and SGA... scarily, my brother liked the idea.
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At the very least with Magrs, try Marked for Life. It's almost normal in places. Also my favourite, which counts for a lot.
I think he has written a couple more "normal" books; I know there's one about being a queer and geeky teen out there somewhere.
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