PINK PRINT

April 6, 2011

David McGillivray’s verdict on new gay lit.

A new edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray (Four Corners, £11.95) reminds us that there was no gay subtext in Oscar Wilde’s only novel. On the contrary the book is screamingly gay from page 1, when Lord Henry Wotton (actually Wilde himself) falls in love at first sight of Dorian, “a young man of extraordinary personal beauty” (actually Wilde’s lover John Gray). As a result the novel caused a scandal when it was first published in 1891. It was banned by W.H. Smith and was later used as evidence in Wilde’s prosecution. It’s a terrific horror story with brilliant shock effects from beginning to end, very wordy, but what words! There’s a typically Wildean epigram on every other page. In one of literature’s most celebrated pacts with the Devil, Dorian surrenders his soul so that he can stay young while his picture grows old. Over the next two decades it reflects Dorian’s growing corruption, much of it gay-related. For all his lofty pronouncements about the purity of Greek love, Wilde as we know was also turned on by the seamier side of gay life, and his roman à clef reveals more about its author than any of his plays. (Dorian drags up, drives “that wretched boy in the Guards” to suicide, and is seen “slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in London.”) This new edition has been created by artist Gareth Jones, who intersperses the text with a series of ads for Gitanes cigarettes, which ran in The Observer in 1975. In each one a Gallic charmer with an ear-ring stares into the camera with come-to-bed eyes. Wilde would have been captivated.

From one fin de siècle gay literary genius to another, although we move up one hundred years to discuss Philip Hensher, who’s made his name with a succession of sprawling great novels. In three parts, his latest, King of the Badgers (Fourth Estate, £18.99), begins in a small Devon town where a young girl is abducted in a manner very reminiscent of the Shannon Matthews case. Various townsfolk come under suspicion and it seems we’re heading into Midsomer Murders territory. Then Hensher upsets the apple cart when charity worker Kenyon, whose wife hosts a book group, nips off for hot sex with lover Ahmed. Part 2 of the book is madly gay with drug-crazed bears having an orgy and one participant dying of a coke OD in a motorway toilet. In Part 3 gay and straight lives intermingle in an atmosphere of collective paranoia. There’s a solution of sorts but don’t expect a conventional narrative. As always, Hensher is unpredictable. He’s a strikingly gifted analyst of people and their environments.

Another gifted gay writer is Nick Alexander, noted for a series of novels featuring a narrator called Mark. In The Case of the Missing Boyfriend (BIGfib, £8.99) Alexander writes as C.C., a woman who works in advertising, lives in Primrose Hill and owns a cat named Guinness. She’s very, very like Bridget Jones. But because she’s the creation of a gay man, she keeps getting into gay situations and calls herself “London’s biggest fag hag.” Make no mistake, it’s a rare skill to get under the skin of the opposite sex convincingly. Alexander achieves it, but in doing so produces a piece of bog standard chick-lit, albeit one that hinges on a fag hag’s misconception of male sexuality. There are surprises along the way and it’s a great experiment. But Alexander is probably destined to write something more substantial.

Jeremy Reed keeps popping out of different holes. He’s a novelist and a biographer. He was the first writer to excavate the life of gay Carnaby Street mogul John Stephen. But he’s primarily a poet. His new collection of verse, Piccadilly Bongo (Enitharmon, £12.99), takes its title from Reed’s fascination with the Piccadilly rent boy scene. (He discovered it in 1982 and is now researching its history). He recalls shady Soho street life with a mixture of excitement and regret. But in most of his poems he writes about other sensual delights, particularly food and music. He name checks famous mates like Pete Doherty and Marc Almond. The book includes a 7-track CD in which fellow Soho traveller Almond sings plaintively about the “fun city” he knew – the whores and the junkies and touching up the guy next to him in the porn cinema. The last track, ‘Soho So Long’, laments the passing of that Soho parade. This unique, mixed media collaboration between two adventurous artists is both an evocative nostalgia trip and a shrewd investment.

Finally, how can we bypass a book with a title like Find Love in a Gay Bathhouse (Homohappy Books, £9.99)? This step-by-step guide to finding Mr Right in a milieu known only for casual sex is written by someone who knows his saunas. Marcel Wiel claims that he had around 1,140 steamy encounters before finding his partner Pierre “on a quiet Tuesday night.” He says that he wants to be positive about an age-old gay tradition with a bad rep; and certainly he gives the kind of encouragement we’ve never read before (“Cockrings and Viagra can really help”, “Embrace the idea of multiple contacts in a single bathhouse visit.”) Some of the hints verge on the bleedin’ obvious (don’t write down a new contact’s phone number wrongly). But generally Wiel makes us want to go straight round to Chariots to practice what we’ve learned.