Items
Publisher is exactly
St Martin's Press
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Burton and Speke A historical novel of colonial East Africa in the mid-nineteenth century. Explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke drink gin, hunt big game and search for the source of the Nile. Burton is depicted as possibly closeted, Speke as probably gay, but the novel’s racist and imperialist overtones are all too blatant (note the unpleasant reference to “primitive Africa” in the inside book-jacket blurb). There is in addition a deeply misogynistic streak running through the book, including an episode featuring Female Genital Mutilation. The seventh novel from William Harrison (1933-2013), it was received positively by contemporary reviewers, one crediting Harrison with “uncovering a part of lost gay history”. Unusually for the time, ‘Burton and Speke’ was not aimed at a distinctly ‘gay market’. Harrison, who was himself heterosexual, also wrote short stories, nonfiction and screenplays, including for the adaption of this book as ‘Mountains of the Moon’ (1990).
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Death trick Written by journalist and author Richard Lipez (1938-2022), using the name Stevenson, this is the first novel in a series of sixteen to feature the private investigator, Donald Strachey. The story follows Strachey as he investigates a murder in Albany, New York, where the victim and prime suspect are both gay men. Strachey is also gay so can explore the otherwise closed ranks of the gay community. The back cover blurb includes a quote from author Armistead Maupin which makes the perhaps unavoidable comment, “At last a private dick who really earns the title”. Some other books in the Donald Strachey series were filmed for television. Stevenson’s series is often considered alongside books by Joseph Hansen featuring gay detective Dave Brandstetter, who first appeared in print in 1970. One of these books, ‘Death Claims’, was also seized during ‘Operation Tiger’.
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Facing up Featuring on the front cover a shadowy photograph of a man in silhouette and only four words, it is not until opening the book that the title and full author name are apparent, and it becomes clear that this is a photography book. The photographer, Arthur Tress (1940-), is described by Yves Navarre in the book’s introduction as a “prowler, voyeur, trickster, devourer, lover of his city and its life”. The backdrop to the sixty-five black-and-white photographs is New York, depicted predominantly as a place of urban decay. Juxtaposed with the cityscapes are (mainly) naked men posed in positions and with objects that explore ideas of male sexuality and power, dreams and the subconscious. Still producing work, Tress was recently described as “one of the most innovative American photographers of the postwar era”.
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Kevin Wallace Hamilton came out in his fifties, moved to Greenwich Village and began writing popular books and plays about the queer community. ‘Kevin’, about a relationship between a teenage runaway and a professional man in his mid-thirties, draws in part on Hamilton’s own experiences. Hamilton died after a fall at his home in 1983, aged 64. Various obituaries note his involvement in the international paedophilia advocacy organisation NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association). Criticised by one contemporary reviewer for its sentimentality and lack of realism, readers of ‘Kevin’ today may have more serious concerns about the abusive power dynamics at play. Hamilton’s novel ‘Coming Out’ (1977) was also seized in ‘Operation Tiger’.
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Parisian lives : a novel Samuel M. Steward (1909-1993) was, amongst other things, an academic, a novelist, a pornographer and a tattoo artist. During the 1930s, he befriended writer Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas. Both feature in this novel, which follows their painter protégé, Francis Rose (fictionalised as Arthur Lyly), in Paris just prior to the Second World War. The first paragraph sets a tone which blends fact and fiction, highlighting an ambiguity that was typical of Steward and which can also be seen in his writings under the pseudonym Phil Andros, some of which were also seized during the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids. Written and edited over a thirty-year period, this novel was published in 1984 by Michael Denneny at St. Martin’s Press.
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Ryder This first novel by modernist writer and artist Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) was published in 1928 and focusses on the experiences of Wendell Ryder. The story is relayed in over fifty chapters of differing lengths, via experiments with literary form and style (including in a faux Medieval style, complete with explanatory footnotes). Part prose, part poetry, part play and accompanied by Barnes’s own illustrations, the novel was, for a time, a bestseller. Before publication, however, the proofs were seized by the New York Postal Service, who deemed them “obscene”. Barnes responded by removing some sections of the text and replacing them with asterisks. These textual markings are retained in this 1979 edition, although Barnes’s original foreword critiquing censorship is not. This was the edition seized at Gay’s the Word, making ‘Ryder’ a doubly censored book.
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Special teachers/special boys “What happens here when a teacher comes out?” is the question this novel explores. The “here” is the fictional Lennox School for troubled boys, who are taught in small groups by a dedicated teacher – the special boys and special teachers of the title. Amongst the teachers is Bob Davidson, who is gay and comes out publicly on a television programme, an act which reverberates through the school and gives courage to two gay pupils. The novel was criticised in some quarters for the style of writing but praised for providing an antidote to prejudicial accounts of gay teachers. The authors, Peter Fisher (1944-2012) and Marc Rubin (1932-2007), were both gay activists. Rubin was also a teacher, and the book draws on his own experiences. It is dedicated to “the staff and boys of ‘The Lennox School’”.
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The AIDS epidemic In spring 1983, a “devastating, puzzling and fatal” new illness was spreading rapidly throughout the United States. At that time, some three to four years after the first cases of HIV/AIDS had emerged and under two years since the first cases were reported in the ‘New York Times’, New York City was the hardest-hit metropolitan area with 595 cases and 228 deaths. This astonishingly prescient book edited by physician Kevin Cahill (1936-2022) comprises the published proceedings of a symposium that took place at Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City. Doctors, epidemiologists and policy-makers gathered to discuss how they might combat the disease, stating that “there is every indication that we will soon be in the midst of a worldwide epidemic”. As of 2024, HIV has claimed over 40 million lives worldwide.
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Tricks : 25 encounters “Homosexuality”, Renaud Camus (1946-) reminds the reader of ‘Tricks’ in his foreword, “has a history, and of course, a geography”. These stories of sexual encounter, translated by distinguished gay poet Richard Howard (1929-2022), move from late 1970s Paris to Milan to the United States. In the preface, literary theorist Roland Barthes notes these short narratives’ simplicity, their repetitive nature, and also their status as literature rather than pornography. Each begins with a name and a date, before detailing a sexual liaison between Camus and a man he has never met before. Each ends with a note on their subsequent relationship (if any). Previously a columnist for ‘Gai Pied’ and a socialist, Camus is now a conspiracy theorist and white nationalist, who developed the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ theory.
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Who was that masked woman? Bertha Harris, co-author of ‘The Joy of Lesbian Sex’, described this coming-of-age novel as “an authentic slice of lesbian Americana”. The novel follows young lesbian Tretona Getroek, from her childhood on a farm amidst religious Revival meetings, through to university and travels that take her to Turkey and England. She also explores her sexuality while combatting the prejudices of the church, education and psychiatric establishments. Tretona is the masked woman of the title, hiding her identity. Noretta Koertge (1935-) wrote a sequel to this novel, 1984’s ‘Valley of the Amazons’, and was part of the Daughters, Inc. publishing collective. She is currently Emeritus Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Indiana University.