Posts Tagged ‘Gay Voice’

In which The Gay Recluse writes a book report. Just as the snow began, we finished Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking, a 2007 debut novel by Aoibheann Sweeney. The book is about a girl — Miranda — who grows up with her father on a tiny island off the coast of Maine; her […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates an earlier post. The other day we wrote about how depressingly straight the New York Times 2008 Notable Books list appeared to us. Guess what! Others agreed, and obv better informed than us, went one step further to recommend several gay-oriented titles deserving recognition: Among the missing are National Book Award winner Mark Doty’s […]


In which The Gay Recluse loves Carson McCullers. Not long ago we finished reading The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers. Published in 1940, the book — as the jacket tells us — made McCullers (only 23 at the time!) a literary star. In the book, which is set in a small town […]


In which The Gay Recluse is rather perturbed. Hey, apparently all it takes to win a Lambda Literary Award for Men’s Fiction — even if you’re not gay! — is to write a seriously homophobic treatment of a teen romance, get a bunch of testimonials from important straights, and put a smokin’ hot cover on […]


In which The Gay Recluse again laments the suffocation of the gay voice in American literature. If you’re like us, when you scanned through the list of books included in New York Magazine‘s recent “New York City Canon 1968-2008,” you had one reaction: wtf! where are the gays? In every other format, gays are represented […]


In which The Gay Recluse makes a clarification. Reader Gary Budlong (apparently new to The Gay Recluse) wrote the following comment in response to our most recent “mash-up” of the Modern Love column in The Times. dear pete, thank you. i’m 61, disabled, retired and gay. my partner has died 5 years ago. knew i […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides a more accurate obituary for Arthur C. Clarke than the one that just appeared in The Times. (For the AP version, click here.) Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 By GERALD JONAS and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: March 18, 2008 Arthur C. Clarke, a writer […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides a more accurate version of Arthur C. Clarke’s obituary than the one that was just released by AP. (For The Times version, click here.) Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: March 18, 2008 Filed at 6:41 p.m. […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: A Signal in the Sky Said: Marry Her Subject: A goofball straight […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: Me, My Daughter and Them Subject: A lawyer who sounds seriously bitchy […]


In which The Gay Recluse reads an acclaimed book of contemporary fiction and is more than disappointed. When we first received our copy of Call Me By Your Name (FSG, 2007) by Andre Aciman, we were a bit startled (but pleased, to be sure) that a book about a love affair between a 17-year-old boy […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: I Married a Republican: There, I Said It Subject: A (bland, suburban) […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides a fresh alternative to this week’s particularly bland and tedious Modern Love offering in The Times. “I Married a Lesbian Republican: There, I Said It” by Ann Hood and The Gay Recluse IT was happening again. I was at a cocktail party where the hosts were people I had […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: A Valley of Misery Between Peaks of Joy Subject: In this column […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: An Open and Shut Marriage Subject: Married woman describes doubts about “open” […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: Closing Night for My Bit Part Subject: Woman looks longingly at famous […]


We have long suspected that “Modern Love” — the weekly column in the Sunday Styles of The Times — has been a startlingly barren landscape for gay writers, particularly when you consider its location in what is undoubtedly the “gayest” section of the newspaper (and — oh yeah — the gayest city in the world), […]


Today – after more than two months of reading over 700 pages of tightly wound dream and remembrance – we finally finished A Book of Memories by Peter Nadas. If you remember, it was a Michael Kimmelman interview with Nadas a few months ago that prompted us to write a diatribe against the beleaguered state […]


In which The Gay Recluse offers approximately fifteen quotes from a modern masterpiece written in the “gay voice.” A Book of Memories by Peter Nadas: “[T]here’s nothing in the world with which I have a more intimate relationship than ruination.” “If one could learn the most important things in life, one would still have to […]