PINK PRINT

David McGillivray’s verdict on new gay lit

Good morning, boys. Please take out your books. And we’ll start today with eye candy studies. The Mammoth Book of Gorgeous Guys (Robinson, £10.99). Discuss. At first glance it appears different because the pics were chosen by a woman, who claims that the totty “is aimed primarily at heterosexual women rather than gay men.” But, sorry, I just don’t buy it.

Three of the 46 photographers represented have used models with faces only a mother could love. The rest have pointed their lamps and lenses at standard, homo-erotic, pumped-up beefcake, the kind of sex god who graces the cover of QX every week.

In fact one of Jay Eff’s models is a QX coverboy! And one of James Stafford’s (porn star Carioca) is a QXMEN coverboy! This book is just so gay. But that’s why we’re turning its sticky pages.

A book of gorgeous guys genuinely aimed at heterosexual women would be Russell Brand, Phillip Schofield and worse, cover to cover. So enjoy. But don’t bother with Tom Bianchi’s foreword.

Talented snapper Bianchi is the Jancis Robinson of male nude photography. He reads something deep and meaningful into every picture. Me, I just see washboard abs, bubble butts and flimsy material barely containing the firm members beneath…excuse me, I must move on to the next book.

Perhaps a hundred years from now The Mammoth Book of Gorgeous Guys will be listed in They Were What They Were (Natalie Galustian, £8), a catalogue of rare gay books. 104 rarities, from 1862 to 1960, are listed and they encapsulate almost the whole of gay history of the period.

Famous names are here – Wilde, Vidal, Isherwood, Burroughs – but more interesting are the books and authors few have heard of. The pièce de résistance is Robert Scully’s “underground classic” A Scarlet Pansy (1932), allegedly the first novel to use “gay” in its same-sex sense.

At £4,000 it’s not cheap, but it’s a snip compared to a signed first edition of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (£33,000). The catalogue is far from a dry old bibliography. It’s very amusingly written by Neil Pearson.

Yes, the actor Neil Pearson. He’s straight. (But you’d never know it from the number of times he says “fabulous”). This is what he has to say about Dark Desires (1953) by W.M. Prezzi: “Wilma Prezzi was an artist and fashion designer. She wasn’t a novelist. I’ll go further: she couldn’t string a sentence together.” Fabulous!
Let’s turn to fiction, firstly Getting Orlando (BIGfib, £11.99), the latest novel by Anthony McDonald, who’s coming along a treat as a writer. At times his romantic adventure about two lorry drivers delivering suspect merchandise across Europe smacks of the classic Wages of Fear.

But it always rings true. Oliver is a 38-year-old economics graduate who’s reached an impasse. He meets 24-year-old Orlando. They get it on in chapter six. Oliver starts by bending the law in a way so many of us would.

But before you know it, he and Orlando are in over their heads and that means drugs, guns and murder. The action spreads across many cities McDonald obviously knows well. He’s a travel writer.

The clever plot is so well worked out that you can easily envisage the high-octane movie version. Except that Oliver and Orlando would become Oliver (George Clooney) and Orla (Mia Wasikowska).

Finally two novels by first-timers, one not that bad, the other not that good. North Morgan (most certainly not his real name) is the author of the – fictitious? semi-autobiographical? –  blog London Preppy.

He’s now developed this into Exit Through the Wound (Glasshouse Books, £7.99) in which a Greek with an identity crisis (his real name is Alexandros Giannopoulos but he changes it to Maine Hudson) has a 250-page mental and physical breakdown.

While just about holding on to a job with a business consultancy he has a sexless ménage-à-trois with student Sadie and model Guy and an equally sexless friendship with gay gym bunny Nathan. He also does a shitload of drugs and fantasises about killing people.

Morgan’s idol is Brett Easton Ellis and that’s crystal clear. But whereas American Psycho Patrick Bateman was obsessed with designer labels and cosmetics, Maine methodically records song titles and the time of day.

Morgan captures with sharp accuracy and acid humour the cadences of email and text messaging and the instability of the iPhone generation that communicates without communicating. But maybe he’s achieved even more. Is Maine Hudson the new Holden Caulfield? Is Exit Through the Wound a 21st century Catcher in the Rye? Time will tell.

 

I can’t believe that Same Again Please (MBJ, £9.99), a piece of fluff by Michael B. Jones, is headed anywhere but the discount bookshop. But it’s been nominated for a Polari First Book Prize. So it could be egg on face time for me. Whatever.

As far as I’m concerned, this vanity effort reads like an episode of Friends as written by Wilma Prezzi. But without the laughs. Clare is a high-flying businesswoman, Jack is her gay best friend, and Brian is his straight best friend.

Jack falls in love with Jessica, daughter of old queen Donald, and Jack falls in love with skinhead Mark who moonlights as drag dominatrix Marleen. There’s an incredible blackmail plot and equally incredible coincidences.

At one point someone says, “What are the chances…?” and describes one of them. To which the truthful answer should have been, “Nil.” More worryingly, there’s a really unpleasant streak of xenophobia throughout. No more, please.

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