Now comes more bad news for readers:  Barnes and Noble’s Lincoln Triangle store is closing.

The Lincoln Triangle Barnes and Noble is a particularly beautiful bookstore and its closing is a tremendous loss to New York City.  In addition to hosting a wide variety of author readings, it also presented memorable performances by Broadway stars and cabaret artists.

And what is the cause for this cultural catastrophe?  Why has Barnes and Noble chosen to shutter one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world? Are people buying fewer books there?  No. Are the performers failing to attract standing room only audiences? No.  There is one reason why this store is closing:  its landlord is greedy.

Three years ago, the landlord of my local Barnes and Noble chose to double its rent. Barnes and Noble made the rational decision to close the store.  And for two and a half years the huge space was vacant. Then recently a new tenant moved in:  Trader Joe’s.

So here is my message to all you New Yorkers living in the Lincoln Center area:  Say goodbye to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmund White, Raymond Chandler, Toni Morrison, Andrew Holleran, Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wilder, Armistead Maupin, Oscar Wilde, Barbara Pym and all those other writers of quality fiction. Say goodbye to all the fine non-fiction. Say goodbye to performances by Barbara Cook, Michael Feinstein, Cheyenne Jackson and Carol Channing.

And say hello to gourmet olives.

I began this website on a down note, but as I have written before, I am no longer depressed.  Queer Lit which had all but been pronounced dead two years ago, now appears to be making a modest comeback.

In the coming months, many changes will be made to QueerReader.com.  Most of these you will not be able to see. Some of them you will.  One of these changes will be a new “Strong Recommendation” logo.  As you’ve probably noticed by now, all of the QueerReader.com reviews are to some degree or another recommendations.  The new “Strong Recommendation” logo will underscore exceptionally high quality titles.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the digitization of books.  Much of that talk is quite dire.  I myself think the net effect on queer lit will be modestly positive.  More on that later.  The immediate effect will be to increase the number of titles available. And there will be increased pressure on publishers to re-release out-of-print titles in e-editions.  That’s why I’m announcing the beginning of a new QueerReader.com feature:  ”Out-of-Print Watch.” I encourage all of my readers to contact me with out-of-print titles worthy of e-edition reprints.  With your help, we can make these editions profitable for the publishers and the authors.

Unfortunately, another change you will eventually see is advertisements. I will try to keep these ads as tasteful and non-intrusive as possible.  And I will never take ads for any of the books I review.

I have never taken nor will I ever take any form of payment for the reviews at this website.

“All you’ve got is your integrity,” my partner said to me the other day.  He said it in a tone that suggested he wished I had something more.  Like maybe a car.

Nevertheless, I am thoroughly enjoying myself.

Mr. McCauley’s work is sometimes likened to that of Armistead Maupin.  And there are some clear similarities.  Both have naturally humorous dialogue, both have solid structure–and even suspense.  And both authors have a strong sense of place.  For Armistead Maupin it’s San Francisco.  For Stephen McCauley it’s Boston. But for me, this novel more closely resembles the work of John Updike–particularly his last two “Rabbit” books.  Like Updike, McCauley demonstrates a surprisingly loving attention to detail. And at the same time, the narrator has a certain ironic distance from his subject. In fact, the title of this book is ironic. Because these “others” don’t turn out to be so “insignificant” after all.  Far from it.

As the title implies Insignificant Others is about a man who discovers his long term partner is having a potentially serious affair.  The narrator, Richard Rossi, is at the same time negotiating a long term affair with a man who is married with children.  It says something about the maturity of Mr. McCauley, that this character is rendered sympathetically.  But Mr. McCauley knows too much about humanity to present any of these characters as villains. Or for that matter, heroes.  There are none of them in this book.  Only beautifully written complex, fascinating characters.

And yes, you will laugh out loud.

Stephen McCauley’s Insignificant Others is published by Simon and Schuster.

The nineteen-eighties were not a particularly good time for me.  I came to New York to be fabulous, to fall in love or at the very least get laid–a lot. None of that happened to me. Instead I spent a lot of time visiting friends in hospital rooms and wondering why I was one of “the lucky ones.” There wasn’t much that was good in the nineteen-eighties. The few fond memories I have of that period were the times I spent in clubs in the East Village where performance art was thriving.  I saw some amazing performances at clubs with names like: 8-BC and The Limbo Lounge. There were also a few decent plays going on there too.  One of my favorite playwrights then was Sebastian Stuart.  He wrote a play entitled:  Smoking Newports and Eating French Fries. It featured a couple of geriatric gals who discover the joys of poppers or as they called it, “that sniffy stuff.” Yes, Mr. Stuart could make me laugh. So I wasn’t surprised that his novel The Hour Between featured natural, frequently humorous dialogue.  Nor was I particularly surprised that this novel was seamlessly constructed.  No what surprised me the most about this book was the overall quality of the writing.  Put simply this is the most beautifully written novel I have read in years.

In this memory novel, our queer hero, Arthur MacDougal, finds himself landing in a 1960’s boarding school with the gently evocative name:  Spooner.  This almost-magical school seems to capture the spirit–if not the letter–of Christian Science.  In the Christian Science cosmology, Love–a synonym of God–literally fills all space. It’s a belief system so unrealistically optimistic that it’s bound to come in for a reckoning eventually.  But as one of the more fabulous characters puts it:  ”…darling things do fall apart.  The trick is not to fall with them.”

To paraphrase Ionesco, it is the ephemerality of this school that gives it lasting value. Because the Spooner School represents adolescence itself:  magical, ordinary, fun and above all temporary.  Arthur understands this intuitively and yet he can’t help but bask in the warmth of an instant friendship with the most fabulous girl in the school: Katrina Felt. Her mother is a movie star and she is something of a star herself–frequently changing her perfectly selected outfits, inserting French phrases into her conversation and eventually getting photographed by Cecil Beaton–although I don’t want to give away too much.

Arthur seems as surprised as anyone that he is now friends with her.  And it opens up new worlds.  He gains a circle of friends and access to a few recreational drugs. His aversion to marijuana is perhaps understandable, given that the whole school already seems to be a mile high.

Again, I don’t want to give away too much of the plot.  Let me, instead, close with this: Read Sebastian Stuart’sThe Hour Between.

Sebastian Stuart’s The Hour Between is published by Alyson.

Boy was I wrong.  The Kid is a poignant, deeply moving, frequently hilarious musical.  I couldn’t be more surprised.  How did Mr. Savage’s memoir become a successful musical? As with all musicals, the answer is literally a collaboration of factors. This is a first-class production with a beautiful set, complemented by remarkably seamless multi-screen video presentations.  The actors are all very, very good. The songs are tuneful and perfectly suited for this intimate musical.  But what struck me specifically about this production was the quality of the writing:  both of the lyrics and also the dialogue.  It wasn’t an easy thing capturing the spirit of Dan Savage’s dry wit. And I actually found myself going back to Mr. Savage’s book to see if he had put it that way himself.  One of my favorite lines isn’t in Mr. Savage’s book:

Dan:  (Panicked.)  We’re going to be dads today?  We’re not ready!  The only diapers we have are the ones we wore to the White Party.

A good line, yes.  And it also perfectly crystallizes the story in a way that is faithful to the spirit of Mr. Savage’s fine book.

Some may fault the show for its lack of a show-stopping Andrew Lloyd Weber-style finale. I don’t. Because the end of this story is in fact the beginning.

I strongly recommend this show.

The Kid opened last night at The Acorn Theatre, 410 West 42nd Street.

In the acknowledgements, Mr. Hofler describes how it all began with a rhetorical question: “Is Allan Carr a book?” A more concise question might simply be: Why? Allan Carr was, after all, the man who brought us such laughably bad movies as, Can’t Stop the Music, Grease II and–let us not forget–Survive:  the cheapie Mexican version of the Andes plane crash survivors’ cannibalism.  He is also perhaps the only person to be banned from producing the Oscars–the direct result of his casting Rob Lowe in a singing duet with Snow White. It’s really pretty easy to write this man off.  But like it or not, Allan Carr was the most powerful gay man in Hollywood for over a decade.  He produced the most successful movie musical of all time:  Grease.  (That is until Mamma Mia knocked Grease off this pedestal.) And he also produced La Cage aux Folles:  the first Broadway musical with two gay male leads.

And yet, Allan Carr remains a pathetic enigma–a grandiose Hollywood flop.  I found myself straining for some larger theme beneath the narration of his life.  Could he be a latter-day Jay Gatsby?  His parties, like Gatsby’s, were legendary.  Even those who laughed at him behind his back, dutifully showed up for his parties, including a two-night affair–the guests required to show up in alphabetical order.  Ifpink suits, Carr had his caftans.  Allan Carr even entertained the contemporary Meyer Wolfsheim–Roy Cohn–in his basement disco.  One can almost feel Mr. Hofler himself straining to to find the great significance of his subject.  As when he paraphrases F. Scott Fitzgerald n the title of the epilogue: “No Second Acts.” Fitzgerald didn’t live to see his own “second act.”  And neither did Allan Carr.  That is perhaps where their similarity ends.

Whatever your reasons for picking up this book, I suspect that you, like me, will find it difficult to put down.  And the reason for this is quite simply the quality of Mr. Hofler’s writing.  His chapter on Allan Carr’s Oscars show is, quite frankly, hilarious. Mr. Hofler also describes Allan Carr’s high school experiences in detail and illustrates how these experiences informed the movie production of Grease.

The most relevant–and topical–chapter is the one dealing with the original production of La Cage.  It’s easy to forget that this show was very much Allan Carr’s brainchild. And it’s doubtful it would have ever come together without his leadership. Particularly interesting to me was the role of Harvey Fierstein. Mr. Fierstein wrote the book for the musical and he also had some pretty strong opinions on the production. He believed that the role of Albin should be played by an out gay man.  And he hated the ending: a Rockettes-style dance number at the end of which the “real” woman appears.  These quasi-political questions will be re-visited once again, because the show’s revival opened on Broadway last night.

I wish I could report that this delightful book is flawless.  But alas it is not.  I unfortunately found a most egregious error on page 174.  Here Mr. Hofler describes Village Voice columnist Arthur Bell as a member of ACT-UP.  But Mr. Bell died in 1984. And ACT-UP was formed in 1987.  Proofreading truly is the dying art.

Nevertheless, I recommend this book.

Party Animals:  A Hollywood Tale of Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll Starring Allan Carr is published by Da Capo.

I had several problems with Men from the Boys. First, the set up:  the boys are re-united in the present day to “celebrate the life” of Larry–the first in the group to die. Unfortunately this scenario is way too optimistic.  This particular age group of New York gays was decimated by AIDS.  (By 1993 five of the original cast members of the play–and movie–had died of AIDS.)  And those who survived were transformed by the crisis.  Many were politicized for the first time.  Others were completely turned around.  Gay Republicans found themselves getting arrested at ACT-UP demonstrations.  But the characters in Men from the Boys don’t seem transformed at all.  Rather they seem almost frozen in time. They don’t have any more of a social conscience. They are no more interested in politics. They still have the exact same character traits. Michael still over-spends. Emory still speaks in rhymes and alliterations.  For these reasons I came to view Men from the Boys as a fantasy play: a situation comedy in the most literal sense of the term.  All that said, I found this play to be absolutely delightful.

When it comes to one-liners, Mr. Crowley is at the top of his form here.  And once again it is the most effeminate character, Emory who gets the lion’s share of them. Such as when he refers to the non-introspective host, Michael: “He’s here.  He’s veneer.  Get used to it.”

I was surprised that Harold didn’t get more good lines.  This notoriously pock-marked character got the best lines in The Boys in the Band, including: “Give me Librium or give me meth.”  But in this update, his character came up short.  A new younger character picks up the slack though–more than holding his own against these LBJ-era queens. His best line: “You need help, Michael. Professional help. Your mind is like a bad neighborhood. You shouldn’t go in there alone.”

If the rumors of an upcoming New York production are true, I myself will be near the first in line for the tickets.

The Collected Plays of Mart Crowley is published by Alyson.

UPDATE 5/28/10:  Last night it was announced that The Collected Plays of Mart Crowley won the Lambda Literary Award for drama.  Good call!

As an example, let me quote this paragraph explaining how the novel’s narrator learned that he was broke:

My reaction wasn’t what I would have expected.  I didn’t know what not having money was like.  Over the next few days, I kept myself busy packing things in boxes (for no reason I could pinpoint) and drank heavily.  This seemed like the natural continuation of the strange frustration I’d felt before.  I was constantly changing my mind. I was going to call a friend, then I didn’t want to .  I was going to find work in a museum, then I decided that was a bad idea.  I ate in expensive restaurants.  I had no care for the little money I had left.  I slept badly.  I’d never felt so powerless.  I was happy.

Long before Tennessee William’s Blanche du Bois lost Belle Reve, Chekhov covered similar territory in The Cherry Orchard. But niether of them did so with this efficiency.

I’m reluctant to go into the plot of The Silver Hearted, because the plot is one of the key pleasures of this novel.  Suffice it to say, it is a genuine page-turner.  And let me also add that Mr. McConnell is particularly skillful at conveying a sense of doom–a gloomy foreboding–throughout the novel.

It’s worth noting that the homosexuality of the narrator is incidental to this tale.  So while the main character is homosexual, the book isn’t really about his homosexuality. This just happens to be a first-rate adventure novel with a narrator who just happens to be gay.  I strongly recommend this book.

David McConnell’s The Silver Hearted is published by Alyson.

Abraham Lincoln is depicted as a tall, handsome–even sexy–young man who displayed virtually no interest in women.  He had several intense–even romantic–relationships with men.  And he probably had sex with at least a couple of these men.  His marriage to Mary Todd is described as pragmatic. They had four children and they also had separate bedrooms at the White House.  When Mary was away, President Lincoln would sometimes share his bed with David Derrickson–the captain of the White House Guard.  Yes this makes for quite an interesting read.

Unfortunately, Mr. Tripp died before the editing of the manuscript was done.  I suspect that, given just a little more time, Mr. Tripp would have engaged in a bit of “judicious pruning.”  And–perhaps more importantly–at least a few gaps would have been filled in.  As it stands, this is an uneven text; some chapters are better written than others. For me, the best was “Yours Forever”:  Mr. Tripp’s description of the intimate friendship between Abraham Lincoln and a handsome young man named Joshua Fry Speed. The two gentlemen lived together for four years.  They shared the same bed–even though there were other beds in the house.  They shared this bed in the warm as well as the cold months. This is just one piece of circumstantial evidence in what amounts to an inconclusive case.  But when taken together, this queer reader came away with the impression that Mr. Tripp might just be right.

After all, we can’t get just James Buchanan.

C.A. Tripp’s The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln is published by Thunder’s Mouth.

David Francis won The Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award for his novel, Stray Dog Winter.  And Nick Burd won Stonewall’s first children’s and young adult literature award for his book, The Vast Fields of Ordinary.

Congratulations to the winners!

UPDATE MARCH 2, 2010:  Mr. Frank’s book is available in paperback today.  As the Obama administration finally is addressing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” it’s more important than ever for us to be informed on this subject.  Please buy this book today.