Here's the word from MLR Press on The Golden Age of Gay Fiction, Drewey Wayne Gunn, Ed.
It was the first great explosion of gay writing in history. These books were about gay characters. They were written mostly by gay writers. Above all, they were for gay readers. And, as this entertaining chronicle of the emergence of gay literary pride makes clear, it was a revolution that occurred several years before Stonewall!
Their characters were mostly out or struggling to get out. The books were d
efinitely out -- out on the revolving paperback book racks in grocery stores, dime stores, drugstores, magazine agencies, and transportation terminals across the nation for youths and senior citizens, in the cities and the rural areas alike, to find and to devour.
Here 19 writers take you on a tour of this Golden Age of Gay Fiction -- roughly the period between the first Kinsey Report and the first collection of Tales of the City -- paying attention to touchstone novels from the period but, even more, highlighting works of fiction that have been left unjustly to gather dust on literary shelves.
Written by authors, scholars, collectors, and one of the publishers, their essays will inform you. They will sometimes amuse you. They will take you into literary corridors you only suspected were there. And the some 200 illustrations, chosen for their historical as well as their artistic interest, provide a visual record of why this was the golden age.
It is guaranteed that you will emerge from reading this book with a long list of good reads to request from your favorite booksellers!
My initial impression? Well, I've only just started, but it's lovely and chock full of those delicious retro covers we all love. It's a fine collection of literary essays on the history of gay fiction presented by a well rounded group of authors and scholars. And it's obviously a labor of love by both Gunn and MLR Press.
I look forward to sinking further into this. How wonderful!
No buy link yet, but it's slated for release in October.
3 comments:
This looks like an awesome book!
It is. I can't stop flipping through when I'm supposed to be working...there's so much here.
Thanks for posting, Sweetbea. I think it's a wonderful, wonderful book. Wayne and MLR did some very good work here. (And the illustrations are SO cool.)
Dear God. My word verification is -- dead serious -- pronsup.
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