Items

• A brother's touch
  Angus Rivers, a young Vietnam veteran from upstate New York, ventures to the city to discover the truth about his teenage brother’s death. Earl, a gay sex worker, has been found dead of a heroin overdose on the West Side piers (a notorious cruising ground), his body “stuffed into a rusty oil drum”. This mass-market crime paperback depicts the New York gay scene as a sleazy underworld of addicts, hustlers, self-serving politicians and corrupt priests. But it also introduces gay politics and campaigning, through the activities of the ‘GLP’ or Gay Liberation Party. Positively reviewed in the ‘New York Times’ on publication, Owen Levy’s debut went on to sell very well. His second novel, ‘Goodbye Heiko, Goodbye Berlin’, was published in 2015.
• The coming out party : a novel
  Jaded by West Hollywood gay life, long-term lovers Cal and Sidney yearn for a new distraction. In this queer reworking of ‘My Fair Lady' they find one in a young gay man, overweight college student, Hal. They take him on as a project, schooling him in Tennessee Williams, ‘Brideshead Revisited’ and E.M. Forster’s ‘Maurice’ and putting him through a punishing programme of physical transformation. Republished in 2001 via self-publishing platform iUniverse, this second edition is described as “A novel so outrageous it was banned in England!”, a possible reference to ‘Operation Tiger’. The blurb also claims Caffey won a PEN Award for an Outstanding First Work of Fiction, receiving a Special Commendation in 1983. However, no evidence either for this specific award or this commendation can be found.