(no subject)

[serene]

Stolen from supergee:

yonmei passes along a list of the 100 best queer novels (source not given; she notes that it slights sf). My notations:

* Have read it
** Have read it more than once
% Have read some of it

And I'll put some notes in next to the ones I've read.



* 1. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
2. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
3. Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
4. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
5. The Immoralist by Andre Gide
6. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
7. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
8. Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
9. Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
** 10. Zami by Audre Lorde [Audre Lorde is one of my top favorite authors, full stop. I want to be a poet/essayist of her caliber some day.]
11. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
12. Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
13. Billy Budd by Herman Melville
14. A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
** 15. Dancer From the Dance by Andrew Holleran [This is the book I read to Jeffy when he was dying. It still makes me cry.]
16. Maurice by E.M. Forster
17. The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal
* 18. Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown [Forgettable.]
19. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
20. Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima
21. The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
22. City of Night by John Rechy
23. Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal
* 24. Patience & Sarah by Isabel Miller [A favorite of cute-poet-chick; it was sweet.]
* 25. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein [Loved it.]
26. Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
27. The Bostonians by Henry James
28. Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
% 29. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison [Couldn't get past the tension leading up to the first trauma of the book. Some day I would like to be brave enough to read this book all the way through.]
30. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
% 31. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf [I was bored silly.]
32. The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
33. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
34. The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
35. Olivia by Dorothy Bussy
36. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
37. Aquamarine by Carol Anshaw
38. Another Country by James Baldwin
39. Cheri by Colette
40. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
** 41. The Color Purple by Alice Walker [One of my favorite books of all time.]
42. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
43. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
44. The Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault
45. Young Torless by Robert Musil
46. Eustace Chisholm and the Works by James Purdy
47. The Story of Harold by Terry Andrews
48. The Gallery by John Horne Burns
49. Sister Gin by June Arnold
50. Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall by Neil Bartlett
51. Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram
52. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
53. The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
54. The Young and Evil by Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler
55. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
56. A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan
57. Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
58. Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli by Ronald Firbank
* 59. Rat Bohemia by Sarah Schulman [This is the first book cute-poet-chick and I read together; we met Schulman and she was an annoying human being.]
60. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
61. The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
62. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
63. Lover by Bertha Harris
* 64. Moby Dick by Herman Melville [Read it in high school.]
65. La Batarde by Violette Leduc
66. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
67. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
68. The Satyricon by Petronius
69. The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
70. Special Friendships by Roger Peyrefitte
71. The Changelings by Jo Sinclair
72. Paradiso by Jose Lezama Lima
73. Sheeper by Irving Rosenthal
74. Les Guerilleres by Monique Wittig
75. The Child Manuela (Madchen in Uniform) by Christa Winsloe
76. An Arrow's Flight by Mark Merlis
77. The Gaudy Image by William Talsman
78. The Exquisite Corpse by Alfred Chester
79. Was by Geoff Ryman
80. Therese and Isabelle by Violette Leduc
81. Gemini by Michel Tournier
82. The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White
83. The Children's Crusade by Rebecca Brown
84. The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin
85. The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles) by Jean Cocteau
86. Hell Has No Limits by Jose Donoso
87. Riverfinger Women by Elana Nachman (Dykewomon)
88. The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon by Tom Spanbauer
89. Closer by Dennis Cooper
90. Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac
91. Miss Peabody's Inheritance by Elizabeth Jolley
92. Rene's Flesh by Virgillio Pinera
93. Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai
94. Wasteland by Jo Sinclair
95. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing by May Sarton
96. Sea of Tranquillity by Paul Russell
97. Autobiography of a Family Photo by Jacqueline Woodson
98. In Thrall by Jane DeLynn
99. On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ
100. Sita by Kate Millett

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I am *astounded* that _The Price of Salt_ is on this list. I love queer novels, and I love Patricia Highsmith, but that's just a bad, bad, BAD book.

-J

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

But what do you REALLY think? ;-)

[red-frog.livejournal.com]

No Jane Rule? She's probably--nah, no probably about it--my favorite queer fiction author.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Haven't read any Rule; any suggestions for a first book to pick up?

[red-frog.livejournal.com]

This Is Not For You is sad, but a fine, FINE piece of writing.
Memory Board is about family dynamics between a man, his estranged sister, and her lover as they're all getting older.

Come to think of it, they also missed Bar Stories. I forget the author and am too lazy to go look; publisher is Naiad Press. And Macho Sluts is good writing even if you have to skip past the bits involving pain--I generally do. I don't recall seeing Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, which is at least as much a work of queer fiction as some other books in that list. And I'm sure I did not see The Cunning Man, which is the story of a straight man but has several sympathetically drawn and very important queer characters.

I really don't like a lot of queer fiction. Some of that's because the same story gets told over and over again and I've heard it, some of it's because the writing's just bad and the stories are trite. Kvetch, which I cited a few days ago, includes an essay "Why Gay Literature is So Bad". Better now than when he wrote it, maybe, but I think he's got a point. All the books I mention here are good writing and good stories.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks! Gotta make a memory of this post so I can consult it next time I go to the library.

[red-frog.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome. If I think of more, I'll note 'em here if you like. :)

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Nisa Donnelly is the author of Bar Stories.

Macho Sluts is a short story collection, so it really wouldn't count as one of the best queer novels? I don't recall seeing any other short story collections on the list.

(I hope that's not why they neglected Bar Stories, though, since I tend to see that as a more coherent whole.)

[rsc.livejournal.com]

No Jane Rule?

My thought exactly. And the presence of Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing made me wonder at the absence of The Education of Harriet Hatfield.

[illandaria.livejournal.com]

But I don't understand how some of these qualify as queer fiction. Is it because the authors themselves were gay? I'm still totally boggling over how L:ittle women is a queer novel, since all the girls basically end up getting married and having children and, to my knowledge, not having randeom trysts with their female friends.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Don't know.

HelpfulSerene

[red-frog.livejournal.com]

Some of them are definitely reaching really hard. Don't get me started, but suffice to say that IMNSHO the author of a book being queer (e.g., Wilde) does not make the content queer. I don't write queer computer books.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I'd pay to read a queer computer book.

serene, who will be writing software documentation for the first time in years, starting today, meep!

Perhaps I write queer computer books after all

[red-frog.livejournal.com]

You'd pay? Let me email you with where to get one... ;)

Someone once complained that the magazine had a "feminine" take. Um, well, all of the regular writers but two are male and just how, exactly, does one make writing about computers "feminine"?

Re: Perhaps I write queer computer books after all

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Do email me! :-)

And *snrch*. Let's see, you put one hand on the mouse and the other on your VAGINA. ;-)

Re: Perhaps I write queer computer books after all

[jinian.livejournal.com]

*laugh!*

I don't know about this list either. I was thinking, hey, more things for the library hold system to bring me!, but they don't sound compelling at all. I loved Orlando and should read it again, but nothing on the list that I haven't read sounds at all interesting.

[halibut.livejournal.com]

*grin* My computer books are queer!

Seriously, I'm trying to write a story about queer geeks. (They say to write about what you know ;))

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Cooool! I'd love to read it. (Have you read "Nearly Roadkill"?)

[illandaria.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Queer computer books. How would one write such a thing?

[ailbhe]

Emma Donoghue. Obtain, read, opine.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

* 18. Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown [Forgettable.]

You know, after rereading this one a couple of years ago I kinda agree with your comment ... but when it first came out, and my friends were handing around the one dog-eared copy somebody discovered in a feminist bookstore somewhere, it seemed utterly, wonderfully revolutionary. So I have a sentimental fondness for it, even if it ain't great literacher.

I'm slightly boggled to see Moby Dick on the list, although I've always thought it a rousing good read. OTOH, I can *see* Little Women as, erm, queer-inspirational, in a peculiar way. There was a time when it was one of the few mainstream books available with a strong, stalwart girl as the main character, and many of the queer women I know would confess to having had huge literary crushes on Jo March. Myself included. (-:

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

While I also had a crush on Jo (and I'm of a slightly younger generation), I think that made the list because the author of the list is assuming Alcott was a lesbian.

Which, um, I hadn't realized. And which I'm a little dubious about.

[pameladean]

What a peculiar list.

All lists are, though, in the end.

About Sarah Schulman's being an annoying human being -- quite a lot of writers are, either naturally or as a result of being put into strange artificial situations they don't know how to handle. I haven't read Rat Bohemia. Elise and I read People in Trouble together and I later read After Delores, a book I found deeply weird. I don't think I know enough about New York to get it.

This list needs more Mary Renault, particularly The Charioteer, which is her best contemporary book; and also The Last of the Wine. I mean, I've read at least two copies of The Friendly Young Ladies literally to pieces, but at the end, it's weirdly dismissive both of queerness and of women; and its structure is extraordinarily peculiar.

Pamela

[rsc.livejournal.com]

This list needs more Mary Renault... The Last of the Wine.

Yup. Throw in The Mask of Apollo and Fire From Heaven while they're at it.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Per Yonmei zirself, btw, this is "sourced to Publishing Triangle, an organization of more than 250 gay and lesbian writers, editors, agents and publishers. This list is dated June 1999, and defined as "the 100 greatest LGBT novels for the 20th Century"."

[halibut.livejournal.com]

Lots of interesting-looking reading. Pity the credit card!

BtW, you haven't read "The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon" yet? Read it! Read it! I loved it.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

No credit card, my friend. Library. :-) Just reserved myself a copy. Thanks!