by Richard Labonte
"The Empty Family," by Colm Toibin. Scribner, 288 pages, $24 hardcover.
Master Irish storyteller Toibin queers it up, after last year's essentially straight novel, "Brooklyn," in this collection of nine haunting, stunning stories set in different countries and different times, but linked by a pervasive sense of melancholy, longing and loss. It's tempting to read autobiographical elements into several of the stories – into, for example, "Barcelona, 1975," in which a now-mature narrator recalls his sexual romps, as a "raw and unhappy" 20-year-old Irish lad, with sexy Spanish boys. There's nothing autobiographical, however, in the novella-length last story, The Street," in which Toibin seamlessly enters the mind of a Pakistani lad, indentured to contemporary servitude as an immigrant in Barcelona, who dares to embark on a physical and emotional relationship with a fellow Muslim. Not every story in the collection is as queer, but there are whispers of gayness in most: in "One Minus One," the man who returns to Dublin from New York to care for his dying mother is the dutiful gay son. And there's not a single clunker in this no-word-wasted collection.
"Maye's Request," by Clifford Henderson. Bold Strokes, $16.95, 292 pages.
Henderson has a way with oddball families. Her previous novel, "Spanking New," (narrated by a fetus) mixed gay and straight folks anticipating the arrival of a feisty, gender-curious newborn. In this well-wrought novel about a young woman's uncommon upbringing, narrator Brianna is called home from a vacation – and newfound lesbian love – when her mother falls ill. Also brought to mother Maye's bedside: Brianna's long-gone father, Jake, who has been estranged from his daughter ever since Maye fell in love with Jake's twin sister, Jen – who Jake hasn't spoken to in years – and "Aunt Jen," who was Brianna's second mom but who has since moved on. All in all, it's an uneasy reunion of an unorthodox family, further complicated by a shocking adolescent secret that Jake has been keeping from Jen for decades. The novel's serious subject matter – shattered families, religious fundamentalism, emotional instability – is balanced nicely by Henderson's flair for lighthearted prose that carries the narrative without undercutting the serious issues she explores.
"Between Rock and a Hard Case: In Defense of Rock Hudson from the Ashes of Trial to the Light of Truth," by Robert Parker Mills. AuthorHouse, 492 pages, $22.50 paper.
Despite the fact that it's 200 pages longer than it needs to be and is larded with long passages of dense legalese, attorney Mills' enthusiastic re-litigation of the Rock Hudson "fear of AIDS" trial of 25 years ago is occasionally compelling. A refresher course: after Hudson died of AIDS, lover Marc Christian sued the estate, alleging he had been sentenced to death by acquiescing to unprotected sex. Mills was engaged, on short notice, to defend the interests of the estate; he lost, leaving "a bitter taste in my mouth all these years." Large chunks of this self-published, repetitious and presumably unedited tome can easily be skimmed – but just as many chapters, with their insider's view of how the court system handled the matter of AIDS and sexual activity when little was known about the virus, are fascinating. Mills never met Hudson, but this meticulous account concludes that the trial unfairly defined the actor's legacy: "It's time to take the head off this fallen idol and put it back on its pedestal," Mills writes, awkwardly, on the last page.
"After Sex? On Writing Since Queer Theory," edited by Janet Halley and Andrew Parker. Duke University Press, 336 pages, $23.95 paper.
The perception of academia's queer theorists as obfuscatory sorts prone to producing jargon-dense pages of cultural, historical, literary and political commentary and analysis is belied by many of this collection's two dozen essays. How so? Perhaps because scholars were asked to ruminate about the potential connection between abstract queer theory and good old queer sex. Not every contribution opens with as sassy a sentence as Neville Hoald's "After sex? My first response is a simple and personal one: A cigarette." But there's a lightness to the book that suggests the authors had fun with an aspect of their assignment from editors Halley and Parker: "Does the very distinction between the sexual and the nonsexual matter to queer thinkers…can work be regarded as queer if it's not explicitly 'about' sexuality?" Contributors who rank among the titans of queer theory include Leo Bersani, who notes he's found that queer intellectuals are often reticent about the sexuality they claim to celebrate, and "grande dame" Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who is compellingly (and subversively) critical of unexamined queer orthodoxies.
Featured Excerpt
When Malik moved towards him Abdul held him. At first he thought this was Abdul's way of saying sorry, of recognizing that they would not be together again, but soon he realized that Abdul had an erection and that his intentions were unmistakable. He had to decide what to do. "Maybe we should talk?" he whispered. "Can we talk after?" Malik waited for a moment before he replied. "Just say one thing now." "You're not to imagine…" "What?" "I promise I'll talk to you". "But say one thing now." "Can I do something?" "What?" Abdul leaned towards Malik and kissed him.
– from "The Street," in "The Empty Family," by Colm Toibin.
Footnotes
BOOKS TO WATCH OUT FOR: The travel essays of Paul Bowles are collected for the first time in "Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993," with an introduction by Paul Theroux, coming from Ecco Press in August…. DENNIS COOPER'S FIRST novel since 1995's "God Jr." is scheduled for November from Harper Perennial; the publisher says "The Marbled Swarm" is about "a son's unfailing devotion to a possibly insane father" – and there is come cannibalism… GREGORY MAGUIRE WRAPS up his series of novels, set in Frank L. Baum's world of Oz, with "Out of Oz," a William Morrow title hitting the shelves in November; the series started with "Wicked," followed by "Son of a Witch" and "A Lion Among Men.".. CHELSEA STATION EDITIONS is publishing "For the Ferryman," a new memoir by Charles Silverstein, co-author of "The Joy of Gay Sex"; also coming later this year is publisher Jameson Currier's own novel, "The Third Buddha," set in Afghanistan after 9/11… IVAN E. COYOYE and Zena Sharman are the editors, butch and femme respectively, of "Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme," a collection of stories expanding on the conversation launched almost 20 years ago by Joan Nestle, editor of "The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader"; among the contributors are Jewelle Gomez, Thea Hillman, S. Bear Bergman, Anna Camilleri, Zoe Whittall and Michael V. Smith, with a foreword by Nestle.
