Items

• Moritz! : a comic novel
  A review of this novel described it as “a trashy book” but one that was nonetheless enjoyable thanks to its absurdist and silly humour. This satirical novel follows Jellico Moritz, a “well-endowed” young man, who travels from rural America to a new life and sexual awakening in New York City. The final chapter, entitled ‘Moritz Goes to a Garden Party’, was first published in ‘A True Likeness’ which was edited by Felice Picano. The book was published by Larry Mitchell’s Calamus Books which was one third of the Gay Presses of New York collective.
• Streetboy dreams : a novel
  ‘Streetboy Dreams’ by Kevin Esser (1953-) was published by two out of the three Gay Presses of New York, who note the “controversial and divisive” nature of its subject matter. The novel details the relationship between Peter, a teacher in his mid-thirties, and teenage Gito. Unlike Bruce, the adult protagonist of Wallace Hamilton’s ‘Kevin’, Peter is not presented as a gay character, per se – the novel opens with the end of “another fling at heterosexuality”. Marketed at the time as “a different approach” to what was euphemistically known as “man/boy love”, it is hard to read the novel today as anything other than the story of a grooming – a glorification of unequal power dynamics and dubiously consensual sexual experience.
• The terminal bar : a novel
  Self-published by Larry Mitchell (1939-2012) of Calamus Books, one third of the Gay Presses of New York collective, this novel is set in a real Times Square bar which was popularly known as the “roughest” in New York but which was a sanctuary for its clientele. Based on Mitchell’s experiences and those of his friends, the novel follows a group of lesbians and gay men against a backdrop of a decaying America, symbolised by the Three Mile Island nuclear incident in 1979. The novel has also been considered the first work of fiction to reference AIDS. The copy of the book on display is inscribed to Gay’s the Word by the author “In defence of the freedom to read”.