Gaya Scienza

Best Gay Books of 2009: Waiting for John Cromer

The traditional lists have not provided any clear outstanding book this year...

In the TLS, fifty-seven writers make their selection from around the world. These are the gay books nominated:
The secret lives of Somerset Maugham (Selina Hastings, John Murray, 2009, 624p), which reconstruct an immensely successful writer's life in term as adroit, suggestive, eloquent and sad as the best of his own work (Roy Foster).
John Carey's compelling, revealing and very readable William Golding - The man who wrote 'Lord of the flies' (Faber & Faber, 2009, 592p). This is 'official' biography but nothing seems to have been off the record (Seamus Heaney).
Michael Bloch's enjoyable biography of James Lees-Milne (John Murray, 2009, 416p) (Simon Jenkins).
The long tradition of the Irish acting out, and up, in the US is powerfully evoked by Colm Toibin in his short novel Brooklyn (Scribner, 2009, 262p) (Paul Muldoon, also mentioned by Bernard O'Donoghue and Graham Robb).
Finely researched and documented, Ulrich Raulff's Kreis ohne Meister (C.H. Beck, 2009, 544p) examines the literary, historical and political afterlife of Stefan George, a fascinating study of myth and ideology (George Steiner), unfortunately not yet translated.

The New York Times, among their 100 notable books of the year, mentions:
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, 2009, 528p).
Blake Bailey's Cheever - A Life (Knopf, 2009, 784p).
Edmund White's City Boy - My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s (Bloomsbury, 2009, 304p).
Brad Gooch's Flannery - A Life of Flannery O'Connor (Little, Brown, 2009, 464p).
Thomas Mallon's Yours Ever - People and Their Letters (Pantheon, 2009, 352p).

The Economist:
William Golding - The man who wrote 'Lord of the flies' (John Carey, Faber & Faber, 2009, 592p).
The secret lives of Somerset Maugham (Selina Hastings, John Murray, 2009, 624p).

The Financial Times:
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell published in English this year, after winning the Prix Goncourt in 2006 (translated by Charlotte Mandell).
Brooklyn (Colm Toibin, Scribner, 2009, 262p).
Hitler’s Private Library - The Books That Shaped His Life by Timothy Ryback (Bodley Head, 2009, 320p).
Animal Spirits - How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism, by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller (Princeton University Press, 2009, 264p), not really gay, but the title of which echoes Keynes.
Caravaggio: The Complete Paintings, by Sebastian Schütze (Taschen, 2009, 480p): a new catalogue raisonée in large format, published to mark four centuries since Caravaggio’s mysterious death while on the run for murder in 1610.
Sprout, by Dale Peck (Bloomsbury, 2009, 288p), for young adults.

The New Yorker:
Flannery, by Brad Gooch (Little, Brown, 2009, 464p)): the quiet life behind Flannery O’Connor’s fantastic fiction.
The Collected Poems and Unfinished Poems, by C. P. Cavafy, translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn (Knopf, 2009, 624p and 144p): Modern Greek’s great master.
Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín (Scribner, 2009, 262p): emigration, love, and homesickness.

***

The Band of Thebes very wisely asked gay writers to name their best books for the year. Fifty-seven have answered. They provide many interesting perspectives. Read the post. Vestal McIntyre's first novel Lake Overturn (Harper, 2009, 448p) gets several mentions and is the most cited book in the lot. The translations by Daniel Mendelshon of the poems of Cavafy gets two mentions (The Collected Poems and Unfinished Poems, by C. P. Cavafy, translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn, Knopf, 2009, 624p and 144p). In the non fiction category, Christopher Bram's Mapping the Territory - Selected Nonfiction (Alyson, 2009, 300p), also gets several mentions. Stephen McCauley, without any shame, mentions a book by Sebastian Stuart, without disclosing that Sebastian is his room mate, partner, companion, significant other, husband, whatever...

***

The best books I read this year are in French: Biasi's Gustave Flaubert - Une manière spéciale de vivre (Grasset, 2009, 494p), a lively, knowledgeable portrait of the great French writer not avoiding any facets of his life (more here); Jean-Luc Steinmetz's excellent new edition of Lautréamont in La Pléiade (Oeuvres complères, Lautréamont, Gallimard, 2009, 796p) (more here).

My great disappointment is the absence of news about Adam Mars-Jones's sequel to Pilcrow, his overwhelming novel of 2008.

I leave the conclusion to James O'Neill who says to The Band of Thebes: "I regret to say I haven't read any books this year, save Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (again). There are a few gay bits in that, by they're mostly hidden in the Latin."

2009.12.13

Lautréamont in La Pléiade

Les Chants de Maldoror and their author are even more mysterious than Rimbaud and his poems. Very little is known. Jean-Jacques Lefrère has still been able to put together a thick biography (Isidore Ducasse - auteur des 'Chants de Maldoror, par le comte de Lautréamont', Fayard, 1998, 690p). His style, by moments, is very unpleasant ("le monsieur venu habiter la capitale"), with irritating easy punning. It is unfair to blame him for waiting until page 487 to ask: "Ducasse était-il homosexuel?". At least the question is there. Its frankness, though, masks a disappointing discussion.

Jean-Luc Steinmetz, in his recent excellent edition of Lautréamont in La Pléiade (Oeuvres complères, Lautréamont, Gallimard, 2009, 796p), does a better job.

The first half of the volume is dedicated to the complete works of Isidore Ducasse, the Montevideo-born author who published Les Chants under the name le comte de Lautréamont and died at 24 in Paris in 1870. In addition to Les Chants the works include Poésies I and Poésies II, as well as a few letters.

The second part of the volume, Lectures de Lautréamont, is a selection of the most significant papers published on Lautréamont since a brief review, signed Épistémon, appeared in the short-lived journal La Jeunesse in 1868, to an interview with Philippe Sollers in 1997. It is amazing that nowhere in these texts is discussed, even obliquely, the homosexual content of Les Chants. Yet, the references are clear and ubiquitous:

Ô poulpe, au regard de soie! toi, dont l'âme est inséparable de la mienne; toi, le plus beau des habitants du globe terrestre, et qui commandes à un sérail de quatre cents ventouses; toi, en qui siègent noblement, comme dans leur résidence naturelle, par un commun accord, d'un lien indestructible, la douce vertu communicative et les grâces divines, pourquoi n'es-tu pas avec moi, ton ventre de mercure contre ma poitrine d'aluminium, assis tous les deux sur quelque rocher du rivage, pour contempler ce spectacle que j'adore! (chant premier)

Steinmetz's short introduction and extensive notes shed a comprehensive light on what he describes as "une obsession, qui pour une part, semble avoir motivé l'écriture":

Le monde des pédérastes (c'est le nom que l'on donnait aux homosexuels de ce temps) environne Rimbaud et Ducasse. Milieu des séminaristes d'Un coeur sous une soutane pour l'un. Pour l'autre, réalité de l'internat, éveil sensuel dans un milieu dépourvu de femmes. Admirations et répulsions entre élèves.

Isidore Ducasse was familiar with the places where homosexuals cruised in Paris:

Cet enfant, qui est assis sur un banc du jardin des Tuileries, comme il est gentil! Un homme, mû par un dessein caché, vient s'assoir à côté de lui, sur le même banc, avec des allures équivoques. (chant deuxième)

And he had, clearly, read some of the medical books that began, by mid century, to be published on the topic of "pederasty and sodomy", in particular Ambroise Tardieu's Étude médico-légale sur les attentats aux moeurs (1857):

Ô pédérastes incompréhensibles, ce n'est pas moi qui lancerai des injures à votre grande dégradation; ce n'est pas moi qui viendrai jeter le mépris sur votre anus infundibuliforme.

Bruno Guitard wrote, several years ago, an excellent paper decrypting Les Chants de Maldoror as a love song, love between boys (Tendresse de Lautréamont, revue Europe, août-septembre 1987, nº 700-701, 68-77). The paper, which is cited by Steinmetz, argues, convincingly that homosexuality is Les Chants's generator (it would have deserved to be included in Lectures de Lautréamont...). So, as Guitard,

Lisons Lautréamont comme nous écoutons Puccini: à la fois goguenards et subjugués. Bel canto du vieil océan, aria de l'hermaphrodite, romance de Mervyn, et cette musique parfois si ténue: 'Les paupières se recherchent comme deux amis.'

2009.12.06