Best of
Gay

1981

The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies


Vito Russo - 1981
    Praised by the Chicago Tribune as "an impressive study" and written with incisive wit and searing perception--the definitive, highly acclaimed landmark work on the portrayal of homosexuality in film.

The Kenneth Williams Diaries


Kenneth Williams - 1981
    Here at last, in one spellbinding volume, are four million words of it. For more than forty years, from his sixteenth birthday until the eve of his unexpected death in 1988, the beloved actor and outrageous 'Carry On' star Kenneth Williams kept a candid diary. Devastatingly honest about himself, he is equally unsparing in his verdicts on his fellow man. In his descriptions of Tony Hancock, Maggie Smith, Joe Orton and countless others, his waspish sense of humour, love of anecdote and ear for dialogue are given full rein. Malicious, hilarious and harrowing, 'The Kenneth Williams Diaries' are a unique portrait of one of Britain's most popular - and most misunderstood - performers.

A Fresh Young Voice From the Plains


Eileen Myles - 1981
    

The Movie Lover


Richard Friedel - 1981
    Burton Raider is a poor little rich kid whose problems are only beginning when he falls in love with his friend Roman.

Man to Man: Gay Couples in America


Charles Silverstein - 1981
    

What Happened to Mr. Forster?


Gary W. Bargar - 1981
    When new teacher Jack Forster, takes an interest in Louis, he gives Louis one-on-one softball coaching and helps him develop his writing talent. However, parents in the community, are suspicious of the teacher who lives with another man. Eventually, some of the children’s parents start a witch-hunt against Forster.

Certificate of Absence


Sylvia Molloy - 1981
    Innovative in its treatment of women's relationships and in its assertion of woman's right to author her own text, the novel has won wide approval in Latin America and the United States. The novel centers around a woman writing in a small room. As she writes, remembering a past relationship and anticipating a future one, the room becomes a repository for nostalgia, violence, and desire, a space in which writing and remembering become life-sustaining ceremonies. The narrator reflects on the power of love to both shelter and destroy. She meditates on the act of writing, specifically on writing as a woman, in a voice that goes against the grain of established, canonical voices.Latin American male writers are prone to self-portrayal in their texts. Certifcate of Absence is one of the few novels by Latin American women that successfully use this technique to open new windows on women's experiences.

An Asian Minor: The True Story of Ganymede


Felice Picano - 1981
    The story of a thirteen-year-old boy who discovers that he is "the most beautiful mortal ever born," it examines that dubious honor in a retelling of the classical Greek myth that has attracted artists for centuries.

Secret Places


Janice Elliott - 1981
    The story of the adolescent friendship of English schoolgirl Patience Mackensie and German refugee schoolgirl Laura Meiser, set at a British boarding school during World War II.

Calamus: Male Homosexuality In Twentieth Century Literature: An International Anthology


David D. Galloway - 1981
    

How to Become a Virgin


Quentin Crisp - 1981
    How to Become a Virgin:

Hindsight: An Autobiography


Charlotte Wolff - 1981
    Love for women had been her inclination since she could remember and she writes that no one in her family questioned it. In Hindsight, she describes her girlfriends from Danzig of 1910 with the same candor as adult lovers she meets in Germany, France and England. She gives a vivid account of the years she spent as a physician and party girl in Weimar Berlin, her friendship with Walter and Dora Benjamin, and her interest in chirology (the study of hands) and sexology. Wolff writes movingly about Jewish identity and history, medicine, psychotherapy, and her life as a 20th century lesbian. She is particularly insightful about how statelessness affects the psyche. She probes her attraction to glamorous friends such as the fashion journalist Helen Hessel (Kathe of Jules and Jim) and Baladine Klossowska (mother of the painter Balthus) in Paris. She describes the wartime refugee colony of Sanary, France and the Quakers, Surrealists, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, and Maria and Aldous Huxley whom she met there. When she moves to London in 1936, her medical degree is not recognized and she reads hands for a living, including the hands of Virginia Woolf, Sybille Bedford, and the Duchess of Windsor, before becoming a researcher at University College London. Though reluctant to become what she called a “professional lesbian,” Wolff began to join same-sex political groups in the 1960s, after researching her book Love Between Women, published in 1971.

The Boy Who Picked The Bullets Up


Charles Nelson - 1981
    He was Kurt Strom, a big, good-looking southern boy who left the Detroit Tigers farm team to serve as a medic. In the blood-and-guts insanity of jungle warfare, he tended their wounds. In the comaraderie of of combat, he seduced them.