By Richard Labonte
The Bill from My Father By Bernard Cooper.
Simon & Schuster, 242 pages, $24 hardcover
Cooper's cantankerous father, who died in 2000, has figured prominently in the author's two previous collections of autobiographical essays (as well as in the novel "A Year of Rhymes"). So it's pretty remarkable that "The Bill from My Father" – the title comes from an itemized invoice for $2 million that a piqued Edward Cooper once sent his puzzled son – is such a deliciously fresh memoir. The book's seductive energy stems from Cooper's tender, eloquently surgical dissection of the psychic and physical chasm separating an aloof, often baffling father – at one time a prominent L.A. divorce lawyer – and his gay son. Edward was certainly a man who relished distance from Bernard: in his dotage, years after his wife's death, he married again – but never did tell his son that his second wife left him not long after the ceremony; later, he hid an affair with his evangelical day-care nurse. Many gay men have tangled relationships with their fathers, but Cooper's masterful memoir, emotional and entertaining in equal measure, sets the standard for writing about dear old dads.
Featured Excerpt:
When I was 28 years old, my father sent me a bill for his paternal services. Typed on his law firm's onionskin stationery, the bill itemized the money he'd spent on me over my lifetime. Since he hadn't kept tabs on the exact amounts he'd doled out over the years, expenditures were rounded off to the nearest dollar and labeled "food," "clothing," "tuition," and "incidentals." Beneath the tally, in the firm but detached language common to his profession, he demanded that I pay him back. The total was somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million.
-from "The Bill from My Father," by Bernard Cooper
The Last Time I Saw You By Rebecca Brown.
City Lights, 105 pages, $12.95 paper
Love doesn't come easy, and memory is always suspect, for the lesbian narrators in Brown's dark-humored collection of a dozen brilliant, edgy stories. "Trying to Say" considers what a woman intended to tell her ex-girlfriend – "maybe I am trying to say "forgive me"" – but never did. The same emotionally tremulous turf is covered in "Other," a litany of anger and anguish laced with disturbing imagery directed at unfaithful lovers – "why did I swing by a rope from the thought of you." In the title story, a woman parses her past romance with gloomy uncertainly – "maybe we went to a bar… maybe I begged you for something you could not give." Every story is a stylistic and imaginative standout, but the most intriguing is "Aspect of the Novel," a truly original exercise in essayistic fiction that contrasts the closeted career of British novelist E.M. Forster – who wrote his queerest novel, "Maurice," in 1914, but wouldn't permit its publication until after his death in 1970 – with the secrets that the lovers populating Brown's unsentimental prose keep from one another.
Rhapsody in Blood By John Morgan Wilson.
St. Martin's Press, 288 pages, $24.95 hardcover
The first six Benjamin Justice mysteries were set in the wee city of West Hollywood, a milieu Wilson has mined admirably for its sexual, political, and murderous peccadilloes. "Rhapsody in Blood" drops Justice – AIDS widower, disgraced journalist, recovering alcoholic, unsentimental sleuth – into quite a different setting, a move that adds interesting oomph to the popular series. He has accompanied best friend Alexandra Templeton to an isolated down-at-the-heels hotel, where a film crew is re-enacting the murder, five decades earlier, of an iconic actress – and where a pushy-broad gossip columnist shows up, intent on outing one of the movie's stars. Murder happens, and a foul-mouthed moppet with a role in the film is the prime suspect – until Justice and Templeton sort things out, bantering all the way in fine Nick-and-Nora fashion. The busy plot touches on topics like racism, rap-music misogyny, and life on the down low, but in the main this latest entry in an engrossing series is less angst-ridden than earlier books – yet no less compelling.
About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews By Samuel R. Delany.
Wesleyan University Press, 432 pages, $24.95 paper
Despite the title, this is far from a facile how-to book for would-be writers – though an exacting 40-page appendix does discuss such basics as punctuation, point of view, dramatic structure, first-person perspective, and even the proper use of apostrophes. Delany's approach is a lot more philosophical, autobiographical, and – for readers who stick with his intelligently abstruse style – valuable than most books about the craft (or, as the noted science fiction/queer novelist prefers, the "mechanics") of writing. In one essay, he delivers a stinging "horse-whipping" to a story by an anonymous author, critiquing its cliches relentlessly. This seems mean – but every novice will learn from the intense dissection of the young writer's miscues. Four long letters from Delany to aspiring writers, evaluating their fiction, are equally stern, and immensely informative; at the same time, lengthy interviews of Delany by others – in which he discusses genre writing, literary canons, gay sensibility, and his own work – are hugely informed. "About Writing" is an invaluable tutorial.
Words To Our Now: Imagination and Dissent By Thomas Glave. University of Minnesota Press, 264 pages, $25.95 hardcover
The essays in this politically and poetically powerful collection, though they cover a lot of ground, have in common an abhorrence of racism and homophobia, a celebration of black gay sexuality and creativity, and a never-gratuitous, well-directed rage. Glave, author of the acclaimed short story collection "Whose Song?," writes with amazing grace about topics both personal and universal: hateful prejudice in the Bronx, where he was born, and in Jamaica, where he has lived; how the AIDS death of poet Essex Hemphill affected him; how the horrors of sanctioned torture at Abu Ghraib affected him; about the ice-pick slaying in 2004 of Jamaican gay rights activist Brian Williamson; and about the 1999 dismemberment of young Steen Fenrich – "not a candidate for Matthew Shepardhood" – by his homophobic stepfather. Among the most stirring pieces: Glave's address in 2002 to the first Fire & Ink black gay literary conference, where he called on his peers to build on the "moral imagination" of writers like Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, Assotto Saint, and Essex Hemphill to "nudge into life words" that will be passed on to others.
Sweet Creek By Lee Lynch. AMAZON Strokes Books, 360 pages, $15.95 paper
There's a heady sense of '60s back-to-the-land communal idealism and '70s woman-power feminism (with hints of lesbian separatism) to this spirited novel – even though it's set in contemporary rural Oregon. Partners Donny (she's black and blue-collar) and Chick (she's plus-sized and motherly) are both in their 50s, owners of the dyke-centric Natural Woman Foods store, a homey nexus for "Sweet Creek"'s expansive cast of characters. Among them: Rattlesnake, the mysterious matriarch of womyn's land; Sheriff Sweet, the sort-of-closeted town sheriff; free spirit Jeep, who lives for her music; wanna-be tranny Abe, Donny's best but weirdest friend; and a slew of gay radical faeries, sympathetic straights, homophobic loggers, and quirky townspeople. The result is a wonderfully textured read. Lynch, with a dozen novels to her credit dating back to the early days of Naiad Press, has earned her stripes as a writerly elder – she was contributing stories to the lesbian magazine "The Ladder" four decades ago. But this latest is somehow sublimely in tune with the times.
Secret Anniversaries of the Heart By Lev Raphael
Leapfrog Press, 248 pages, $15.95 paper
Readers with long memories will sense something familiar about half the stories in this compelling collection: A dozen are reprints from the Lambda Literary Award-winning 1990 book, "Dancing on Tisha B'Av." The earlier work has aged well: Raphael's writing has matured over the years, but even early on he was one of the best storytellers among the generation of queer writers who succeeded the likes of Felice Picano and Andrew Holleran. Anti-Semitism and homophobia, and the conflict between Jewish identity and queer desire, are themes common to many of the stories, among them "Welcome to Beth Homo," in which a self-loathing young Jew nonetheless longs for an all-gay synagogue. The lives of Holocaust survivors haunt others, including the title story, in which a son reflects on his late mother's painful memories. These are serious topics, to be sure, but they're leavened with a smattering of erotic passages and flashes of quiet wit. In recent years, Raphael has turned to mysteries as his main outlet, but this passionate collection is a fine reminder of his range as a writer.
Tales: From a Distant Planet By Felice Picano. French Connection Press, 252 pages, $18.75 paper
The title suggests that this is a collection of science fiction stories set in outer space, but the book ranges across more genres than that. The longest, "Ingoldsby," is a time-travel tale with queer overtones that brings to mind the fabulist fiction of Ray Bradbury. In "One Way Out," the spookiest story, a young man opts to live inside a horrific hallucination induced by doctors in the real world. In "The Guest in the Little Brick House," the ghost haunting his home seduces a beautiful man, and "The Perfect Setting," as much mystery as psychological thriller, is about landscape paintings depicting crimes never witnessed by the artist. Picano does eventually get interplanetary: "The Lesson Begins" is a first-person oddity told in the voice of a camera that has landed on Mars; "Secrets of the Abandoned Monument" is an AIDS allegory about a dying race on a distant world; and "Food for Thought" sets space travelers down on a seductively dangerous planet. Readers familiar with Picano's gay memoirs and novels will find this collection a quirky change of pace.
Footnotes:
MARTIN MORAN'S MEMOIR about childhood sexual abuse and adult recovery, "The Tricky Part," is one of three nonfiction titles selected by Barnes & Noble for its 2006 Discover Great New Writers Award – an honor that guarantees the gay book prominent display in the chain's bookstores and hefty advertising support… U.K. LESBIANS HONORED: Scottish poet and playwright Carole Ann Duffy has won the $17,500 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for her collection "Rapture" (Picador), a book-length love affair written in verse; Ali Smith was awarded the prestigious British Whitbread (and about $9,000) for her third novel, "The Accidental," published in the U.S. by Pantheon; and Jeanette Winterson – whose first novel for young adults, "Tanglewreck," will be published by Bloomsbury in June – received the Order of the British Empire (OBE)… THE ARCH AND BRUCE BROWN Foundation is soliciting unpublished novels or collections of related short stories based on, or directly inspired by, a historic person, culture, work of art, or event – "you may think your affair with the dancer from the Russian ballet was historic, but it doesn't count," caution the award's administrators. Deadline for submissions is Nov. 30, 2006; the winner will be announced in 2007 at the annual Lambda Literary Awards dinner – and receive $1,000. The award is sponsored by playwright and filmmaker Arch Brown in memory of his life partner of 28 years, Bruce Allen Brown, a pharmaceutical chemist who died of a brain hemorrhage in 1993. For info: www.aabbfoundation.org.
