Festivus Continues with Victor Banis

Author friend Victor Banis stopped by for a cup of hot cider and a slice of Smithfield Pie. Welcome back to the blog, Victor. I swiped your bio from the MLRPress website. Because that's how I roll.

Lecturer, writing teacher and early rabble rouser for gay rights and freedom of the press, Victor J. Banis is the critically acclaimed ("the master's touch in storytelling" Publishers Weekly) author of more than 150 published books and numerous shorter pieces in a career spanning nearly 50 years. A native of Ohio and longtime Californian, he lives and writes now in West Virginia's beautiful Blue Ridge.

Here's Victor!

Victor stirs up the , uh, you know

Gee, I started such a forest fire the other day with my little blog about the Lammies, I feel like I ought to be quiet for a bit. And for the record, just as a practical matter, I have been wearing one of those false noses with the eyeglass and the moustache when I go out. You never know…

But that's not what I'm on about today – not exactly, though it does tie in. Here is what I wanted to share with you. This is a cover blurb from the just out The Golden Age of Gay Fiction (MLR Press):


"Indispensable. Anyone interested in popular culture, queer culture or gay literary history will find this volume filled with fascinating details and discoveries…and in Victor J. Banis we find a new cultural hero."— David Bergman, author of The Violet Hour

Now, ain't that sweet. As I said to my dear friend Nowell Briscoe (who is also in the book), "La, dearie, let's hitch up the carriage and drive right down past the Methodist Church like we was as good as anybody." Which, as near as I can remember, is a line from Lonnie Coleman, and as it happens, Nowell's contribution to Golden Age is a reminiscence about his friend Lonnie, and very touching it is, too. Most of you won't remember Coleman's gay works, but you might remember Beulah Land and the sequels, which were done as made for TV movies and which he refused to watch because he realized they'd taken out all the juicy parts. Hell, I'd have complained to. Leave my doohickies alone, thank you.

All of which is a way of starting to beat the drums for Golden Age, and not just because I am in it, though I am mightily proud of that fact. I'm adither about the book because it is all about those early days, those dangerous days, when a handful of us were struggling something fierce to establish a new genre in fiction: gay literature. And let me just add, in those days, when we said "gay," we included guys and gals alike.

This is a glorious book, starting with the cover. Laura commissioned an original work of art for the cover, and I'm going to attach it to this and hope LB figures out how to put it in the blog. (ed. note~CHECK!)I've also officially elected Laura a goddess.

The book is chock full of the artwork, too from those old books covers. I think probably 90% of the success I had in those halcyon days was due to the fabulous covers by Robert Bonfils that Greenleaf put on my Man From C.A.M.P. series. Understand, up till that time, covers on gay books were nearly always ambiguous, as likely to show busty women as hung men. But the C.A.M.P. covers jumped right out at you, there was no mistaking those books for anything but queer. Which was often said about me, too, but the book covers were prettier.

So, I am going to be talking and writing and blogging a lot about Golden Age in the next few weeks. I have a related piece in the next issue of Earl Kemp's ezine, eI, out mid-October, and I'll send LB a link when it comes out. And I'm blogging for JesseWave next month also and we're going to give away a copy (Just one, alas, or the goddess is likely to strike me with thunderbolts).

I just wanted to give you a tease, here. Also, and this is really important, I wanted to say most sincerely, Thanks, to all of you who commented in support of my Lambda blog. And to those who expressed concern about the fall out, forget it. There's nothing they can do to me. What? Cut back on the number of awards they're giving me? Ha Ha. Cut short my career? There's some, I'm sure, who'd consider that an act of kindness.

Plus I thought for sure if I didn't do it, some of you were going to, and it would have killed your chances of ever winning a Lammie, which some of you might still get, if you want one, so better I be the lightning rod.

Oh, and for the record (this is important, too, I think) between comments posted to the blog site and comments sent directly to me, I got more than 200 responses – and here's the important part: Yes, a lot of them were from straight women who write M/M fiction – but, not all, not by a long shot. There were posts also from lesbian, bi and transgendered women, from men, and from non-writers, which is to say, readers. So, we are truly a diverse community, and supportive, and exactly what the Lambda Foundation should be trying to emulate. Sigh.

Dorothy Parker was once asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence. Her reply was, "You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think."

I'm not saying that applies here, I just thought it was worth quoting.

Oh, and I was told that some of my remarks in that blog were naughty. I won't do that again. I promise.

No, really.