Our Price: $19.96 | You Save: $4.99 (20%)   

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"Coming Out: A Handbook for Men"
by Orland Outland
This light but comprehensive survey of gay life (an update of a book by the same publisher called "Coming Out Right") provides practical advice geared to young men, especially those who don't live in the gay meccas of New York and San Francisco. Outland covers both sexual and social basics, such as the wisdom of being out at work, and the best times of day to scope out a new bar without having to deal with a giddy, aggressive crowd on your first visit. (Always bring enough money for a quick getaway in a cab, the author reminds his readers, should your evening end in tears.) Most of the information is useful--no young gay man should go without reading the safe sex section, the drug section, or Outland's "Definitive Gay Glossary," a pocket guide to gay slang--but some is too basic for those born with frontal lobes. There are also a few amusing errors (women, for instance, do not have a "button on the outside called a labia"--"labia" is Latin for "lips"). And some of Outland's advice, however well meant, will surely fall on deaf ears: "When you're talking to your friends [in public], don't gesture wildly, make big, dramatic, silent-movie faces, laugh too loud, or do anything to attract attention and make people think you're interesting." Read more

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"Gay Planet: All Things for All Gay Men"
by Eric Chaline
If the evening news, a fundamentalist tract on your doorstep, or the latest issue of The Advocate has you down, pick up this appealing coffee-table book and lose yourself for an hour or two in a fantasy of international gayness. Lavishly illustrated with beautiful, buff men, oddly devoid of body hair (the only Bear shows up in a section on sexual subcultures), "Gay Planet" is a celebration of gay life that manages to put a positive spin on nearly everything. A quick overview of gay rights and visibility in developed nations yields to an exuberant survey of gay men in film and a large travel section on glamorous gay destinations (not only San Francisco, South Beach, and Fire Island--have you no imagination?--but Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona, and the fantastic Sydney). Frivolous sections on gay style, Circuit parties, and familiar icons such as Bette Davis and Barbra Streisand are supplemented with a brief but indispensable overview of gay art and literature of the past 30 years. Author Eric Chaline also provides a basic primer of gay achievement that's sure to get anyone through a dinner-party conversation or an awkward moment at a fundraiser. This is Gay Culture 101 for the visually oriented. Read more

Our Price: $17.46 | You Save: $7.49 (30%)   

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"Ceremonies"
by Essex Hemphill
The title of this revolutionary book by the African American gay writer Essex Hemphill takes on an ironic tone in light of the author's death in 1995 and the attempts of his family to erase his gay identity and the work for which he was so justly celebrated. Hemphill's papers, which he had bequeathed to the New York Public Library, have disappeared. Surely the ceremony that would have greeted the deposition of those papers will now never occur. Even at his funeral, as his friend Charles Nero recounts in the foreword to this much-needed reprint of "Ceremonies" (first published in 1993), it was clear that Hemphill's family was working to silence the dead man, suggesting that Hemphill himself, in his last weeks, had renounced the views of a lifetime. At least we have the poems and essays in "Ceremonies," which affirm the vibrancy and complexity of African American culture and the resiliency of black gay men. Hemphill's work is political in the broadest sense, always aware of the violence and poverty that racism has wrought in African American communities. His anger is tempered with sadness, his bitterness undercut with a sly, cynical humor. No one who heard him speak so movingly at the OutWrite conference of 1991 will forget his biting critique of Robert Mapplethorpe's sexually obsessive photographs of black men (included here in part) and the links he drew between the objectification of black men throughout the 1970s and 1980s and their stunningly rapid deaths from AIDS. He is the literary heir of James Baldwin with a shot of testosterone added. Although Hemphill was an accomplished poet, the most affecting works here are his essays, among them "Miss Emily's Grandson Won't Hush His Mouth," an essay describing his battles against censorship and self-hatred, and "If Freud Had Been a Neurotic Colored Woman," his potent refutation of the antigay arguments of black nationalists. An excellent introduction to Hemphill's work for both gay and straight readers, "Ceremonies" must now serve as his memorial volume as well. Read more

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"The Spell"
by Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst writes like a dream about the nightmare of unequal affection. In his third novel, "The Spell," four men dance around one another, their emotions and actions ranging from casual cruelty to anxiety to adoration. Hollinghurst's painful but smiling roundelay alternates between Dorset--where fortyish architect Robin shares a house with the impossibly self-involved Justin--and London. When Justin's ex, Alex, arrives for a weekend in the country, the atmosphere is instantly rich with jealousy and power plays. And after the trio is joined by a younger gay man, Danny--who turns out to be Robin's son--the attractions and duplicities multiply exponentially. Alex, for instance, soon admits to Danny, "I've got a ruinous taste for takers," and they (and we) are off and running.

As ever, Hollinghurst's prose is musical and sensual but also deeply witty. Even the birds in this novel modulate their song from somnolent calls to outright chuckles--echoing the pleasures and absurdities of the humans they circle. And the author's feel for the easy intimacies and brutalities that his characters exchange is unmatched. As Justin (clad only in a tanga) escorts Alex around the cottage, he points out some vases: "These pots, darling, were made by potters of the greatest probity." Hollinghurst's descriptions are marvelous, whether of landscape or human frailty. After leaving a rather unrelaxed restaurant with Alex, "Danny recovered his air of bossiness and mystery, like a prefect in the school of pleasure." And when the two obtain some Ecstasy and hit one of Danny's haunts--a brilliantly realized club--the author reveals the rapture and idiocy in each moment:

The boys glistened and pawed at the ground. They looked like members of some dodgy brainwashing cult.... Alex saw that what he most wanted was happening and groped marvellingly between the different kinds of happiness, the chemicals and the sex. It seemed that happening and happiness were the same, he must remember that, to tell everyone.

But as amusing as Alan Hollinghurst is, his forte is loss. Again and again he reminds us that solitary sadness is a wink away from comedy and sexual possession. Read more

Our Price: $10.36 | You Save: $2.59 (20%)   

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