Taking a break

No, I’m not taking a break from Live Journal. I’m taking a break from my manuscript because I feel the need to rant. What a surprise.

The set-up:

A couple or three years ago, Manhattan’s lovely Oscar Wilde Bookstore, like so many small and specialty bookstores, was on the brink of closing. In stepped Lambda Rising Bookstore to buy it and try to keep it afloat. Whatever they did must have succeeded, because it’s now financially solvent and has new owners who are committed to it. I love it every time an indie avoids ruin, because I believe specialty bookstores are a vital part of the communities they serve. There may be years when they are neglected by their customers, but especially if/when catastrophe strikes, they can be not only a place to buy books but a place to get news and connect and possibly take action when it is warranted.

That being said, in an article I read about the store, targeted I’m sure to a GLBT readership, the Oscar Wilde staff made book recommendations. Excellent! They listed Joe Keenan’s new one. For those who don’t know, Joe Keenan was a writer and producer of the TV show Frasier, which kept him so busy that he couldn’t write a third novel in his Gilbert and Phillip comedies that began with MY BLUE HEAVEN and continued with PUTTING ON THE RITZ. Well, Frasier is history, and Keenan has just released MY LUCKY STAR, and you can bet I’ll be buying it because Joe Keenan’s novels have been sheer pleasure for me.

So I read their other recommendations with eagerness. And they are excellent books, but they are almost all books that have been out for a long time, and anyone who reads GLBT books knows about them. Some of them have garnered their authors literary awards, and some have provided great financial success, and some have been made into movies. You can’t shake a bookmark in the library of even a moderately loyal reader of GLBT books without hitting most of these titles. We don’t have to merely hope that these books will find new readers; they are almost guaranteed it. They will always be in stock in the indies and the chains because they are part of the GLBT literary canon.

So where the hell are the other new titles? Where are the titles that need a little publicity? Are they all such stinkers that we don’t want even a mention of them to pollute our rarefied air?

This reminds me of something Tim pointed out to me one time as we began exploring the worlds of blogs and book groups and web sites. So many, many people list the heavyweights as what they are reading or what they have read. I’ll take their word for it. But…

Let’s take, oh, ME, for example. I graduated from college with a degree in English. I did all the course work for my Masters degree in English. Outstanding teachers and scholars continued opening for me a world that I first found through my parents: the world of great literature. And I suppose there may have been a year or so that I was as big a literary snob as anyone such programs can turn out. But you know, it’s hard to maintain an elitist attitude when I will read nearly anything, either because it’s well-written, or it’s highly recommended, or it’s vastly entertaining, or it’s fresh. (And if no dog dies within its pages.)

And this is where the wider world of book promotion simply does it better than those who publicize GLBT fiction. There is room for everyone in the library. In the bookstore. On the bestseller list. In reviewers’ columns. One man’s trash is another man’s masterpiece. One woman’s masterpiece is another woman’s I-couldn’t-make-it-through-the-first-chapter.

And IT’S OKAY! Some of the most brilliant people I know read books that I wouldn’t even consider–like science fiction or horror. It’s nothing against those genres–I just don’t enjoy them. The way that some people don’t enjoy mysteries and others don’t enjoy romances and others don’t enjoy long-dead authors who are considered Important. Along with the Important Authors, I read–and probably write!–books that would make my former fellow scholars arch an eyebrow and look like they smelled rotten eggs. Frankly, I don’t give a damn.

Frankly, I don’t give a damn… How well I remember the affronted tone of the teacher who acutely felt as injustice that Margaret Mitchell’s GONE WITH THE WIND won the Pulitzer in 1937, beating out William Faulkner’s ABSALOM, ABSALOM! One novel romanticized the South; the other exposed its dirty secrets. One is considered popular fiction; the other is called a literary masterpiece. For good or ill, I’m sure millions more people have wept over Melanie’s fragile dead body than have pondered Faulkner’s tragedy of the morally decaying South.

So I’ll make a confession. I’ve probably read GONE WITH THE WIND more than a dozen times. Apparently, I enjoy being emotionally manipulated by dying mothers and children, unrequited love, and spunky heroines who won’t be daunted by damn Yankees. And (I hope my professors never read my LJ), in spite of answering numerous essay questions on Faulkner and even writing a paper or two on Faulkner, I never made it all the way through any Faulkner novel. Faulkner’s themes are incredible; his sense of place astonishing; his characters truly flawed and mesmerizing. I know this because I read criticism and summaries of his books, but honestly, when a single sentence stretches 11 pages, I get a headache and close a novel because I don’t know what the hell is going on. There. I said it. Publicly.

What I found interesting when I began to delve into popular fiction–the kind that makes scholars say, “Oh, that,” was that many of the writers were far, far better educated than I am. Many of them have advanced degrees from those lovely ivy-covered buildings up North. They’ve read their French and Russian novels IN FRENCH AND RUSSIAN. But they may write books that sell as movies to Lifetime starring one of a half-dozen television actresses. And though some of those writers may end up phoning it in, writing the same book over and over because they can, I believe that they at least began with a feeling–and some of them continue to feel it–that they were writing a good story with engaging characters that would give their readers some pleasure or some tears. They don’t care any less about their 400-page epics produced yearly than does the author who struggles with writing and rewriting ten pages a day for three years and wins a prestigious literary prize.

Nor are their readers any less devoted than people who read only “literary fiction,” a term that has a lot of definitions but frequently means that everyone dies or is miserable or morally bankrupt and society sucks and love is a lie–except when it isn’t, and then it usually brings a character to ruin or makes him or her a social outcast.

And all of that is okay, too! Whatever makes us read–for pleasure, for enlightenment, for a way to pass the time–there’s a book for every audience, an audience for every book. But somebody needs to tell the audience that it’s there. I LOVE a bookseller or a reviewer or a reader who doesn’t bullshit me and act like there are only ten people writing GLBT fiction. The rest of you–come out of your book-lined closets and start telling the truth about those other books you’re reading and loving.

‘Cause you know, the rest of us struggling authors have bills to pay, too. And even if we write because we simply can’t stop ourselves from doing what we love, we cherish the readers who are willing to take journeys with our characters and tell other people about them.

Rant over. Must write.