Literary Voices: an appreciation of Mark Merlis and William M Hoffman

Have you ever read a novel only to have the effect of it come back to you like a boomerang that knocks you in the back of the head until the tears spring out?

Such is the case with Mark Merlis' An Arrow's Flight. When I read it almost 20 years ago, I thought it was smart and brilliant. Since the author's death on August 15, I decided to reread it and find copies of his other three novels.

William Johnson wrote this remembrance for Lambda Literary Review. "Merlis’ writing cannily explored the emotional and sexual lives of gay men, in all of their messy, nuanced, and wondrous splendor."

In writing for The Advocate, author Christopher Bram wrote, "His books share a family resemblance: fine literary texture, a keen sense of gay history, a moral complexity worthy of Henry James, and strong sexuality."

 The Washington Post obituary covered his life, and includes this quote:

“I am, of course, a gay man whose... novels are swarming with gay characters,” he once told an interviewer with the website EchoNYC.  “And I have allowed myself to be marketed as a practitioner of a genre called gay fiction. But this is a commercial category, not an artistic one. I write, like anybody else, about how it is to be human.”

Medals or Bullets: possible fates in fiction vs. reality

While many readers of my last two novels have asked for a third companion piece about the later lives of Reid Conniff and Everett Forrester, I have yet to write so much as a sentence of such a project. But with historic and contemporary events reflecting what could be parts of their lives, the ideas keep forming like distant clouds. And by noticing current events, the fate disabled character Everett could be become one of either athletic glory or fatality from the end of a police gun.

First the Paralympics return, following the Rio, Brazil Olympics. Already, controversies have begun.
 

The Brazilian edition of Vogue magazine published photos of two soap opera stars that had been Photoshopped to make them look like amputees.

In ads for the Rio Paralympics, able-bodied models were hired, and then their limbs were Photoshopped to make them resemble amputees. This MetroNews article explains.  

What I Didn't Write: Terrible Tragedies, Tempests & Teabaggers

Penn campus Ben Franklin statue

In setting a pair of novels from 1979 to 1983, I had the fortune of discovering historical events that matched the stories I wrote. But omitting several other events, while big on a local scale, weren't relevant to the stories. And recent odd controversies, gave me a bit of anachronistic relief for not including them.

Pennsylvania played a strong part in establishing the setting of Every Time I Think of You, my fourth novel. The energy crisis and the nuclear plant accident at Three Mile Island in Harrisburg are given a mention. But narrator Reid is distracted by his boyfriend Everett's situation. His mother even shows surprise at nature-loving Reid's disinterest in the environmental hazard. 

Stonewall: Getting History Right, and Wrong

Outside the Stonewall Inn, June 1969.
Used with permission of the Estate of
Fred W. McDarrah,
All rights reserved © 2015

The new film Stonewall has become the object of ridicule and preemptive boycotts over claims of misrepresentation of the pivotal riots in June 1969 that are credited with unleashing the civil rights movement for homosexuals. But that story in itself varies, and some harsh critiques have quickly become strident and shortsighted.

As an author and journalist who has balanced facts and fiction for nearly three decades, with a mostly gay focus, it's been fascinating, and distressing, to see this near sacred event turned upside down to fit differing agendas, all based on a two-minute trailer.

First, some facts. The Stonewall riots emerged when drag queens, gay men, some white, some Black, some Latino, and some simply self-proclaimed 'queens,' were harassed by New York City cops as yet another raid on the small gay bar in Sheridan Square faced more harassing intimidation. People refused to get into paddy wagons, and violent reactions ensued.

Message of Love: Bibliography

Since I've got a few great group readings with other authors coming up, the next one being in a library, I thought I'd share a list of the nonfiction books that were basically my homework while writing Message of Love, the sequel to Every Time I Think of You.

In the interest of variety, I'll link as many books as I can to Alibris, which features all my books, and is a nice alternative to Amazon.com. Just don't buy the overpriced listed editions. I got most of these books used online, and had fun finding them.


Out & About
For scenery and setting, I enjoyed perusing several travel and nature books.

The Peterson Field Guides for Wildflowers (Roger Tory Peterson, Margaret McKenny, editors) and Eastern Trees (George A. Petrides, Janet Wehr, editors) gave me accurate information about the flora of the area. Living in California makes for a little distance from knowing which kinds of trees and plants Reid would work with in his classes, his job, and elsewhere. They're also the sort of books Reid would use a lot.

Message of Love: Spring Break, 1982; chapter excerpt

One of the great pleasures of writing a novel set decades ago is resurrecting long gone places. I decided to let the main characters in my latest novel, Message of Love, go on an impulsive Spring Break trip at about this time of year, back in 1982. 

While most of this novel is set in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, I thought, why not let the boys get away?

The gay beach scene in Fort Lauderdale was surprisingly active, and after some research through old gay travel guides and magazines, I found a few tantalizingly retro posts about a specific place, The Marlin Beach Hotel, written about by famous gay blogger Joe Jervis, on his site JoeMyGod.

Jervis' personal recollections are mixed in with some wonderful historic visuals, which also link to some other resources. 

The vacation is completely fictional for me, but serves as a shifting point in their lives, being in the company of many older gay men. While a crash course in gay life, for Reid and Everett, some other things - and one person in particular- prove to test their love and trust. 

Pennsylvania Pride

As LGBT Pride events fill our national (and international) calendars, I want to focus on Pennsylvania, and the setting of my two most recent novels, where it seems the fictional dreams of my protagonists have come true.

Some background about the two novels Every Time I Think of You and Message of Love (with some minor spoilers).

Dancing in the streets of Pittsburgh

In 1979, Everett Forrester's sister and father live in Pittsburgh, and in the first novel, the two young men's first awkward romantic night is spent in Squirrel Hill, a scenic neighborhood similar to Shadyside.
 
This May, people were dancing in the streets in the neighborhood of Shadyside after Pennsylvania's same-sex marriage ban was declared unconstitutional. (Photo by Michael Henninger/Post-Gazette)

Student Bodies

May 4. 

It's a day I avoid thinking about, a day somewhere in between the May Day protests that usually end up at nearby Civic Center Plaza, with resultant noisy media helicopters overhead, and Cinco de Mayo, with its accordant bar party invites.

But as someone who grew up in Ohio, and attended Kent State University, May 4 is a haunting morbid anniversary, historic proof of just how awful America can be.

These days, you can Google "campus shooting" and see dozens of horrifying events documents in thousands of news stories. Deranged students have been the culprits, usually.

But back in 1970, at the peak of U.S. anti-war protests, after several days of increasingly crowded student rallies, Ohio Governor Rhodes called out the National Guard, and after a tense stand-off, 60 shots were fired, four students were dead and nine others injured.

Livin' in the Eighties

Brits celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher

The death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher serves as the final nail in the coffin of the 1980s. While politicians, including our own duplicitous president, chose to commemorate Thatcher's "strength" and power, others, including British citizens who survived her  establishment, know from their life experience, that the decade was one of hardship, capitalist corruption, and utter cruelty.