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Inside stories >> Something Inside is a collective portrait of gay fiction writers
by JULIET WATERS
Harvard professor Philip Gambone, who put together Something Inside and who conducted all the interviews, has a subtle sense of humour. Even the person who brought my attention to this book didn't catch the double entendre in the title. It's taken from a song, "Something Inside So Strong," adapted by the gay a cappella group The Flirtations, which Gambone used as an intro to a radio series he did in the early '90s. Because of the multiple nuances--spiritual, intellectual and sexual--it's a better title than Different! Perhaps Gambone put Hansen's interview first because he's such a charming, if curmudgeonly foil to this project. Even the first answer he gives undermines the interviewer. To the question, "Has anyone else ever interviewed you?" Hansen replies, "That's a stunning question... what am I, a potted plant? I have been interviewed more times than I can count in the past 17 years." But probably Hansen is first because he's the oldest. The collection closes with the youngest, Michael Lowenthal. Hansen's first mystery novel Fadeout was published in 1970, a year after Lowenthal was born. Between these two interviews, 19 male writers are interviewed over a period of 11 years from 1987 to 1998. The end product is a rich collective portrait of some of the most important and interesting gay writers of the last three decades. It includes such seminal influences as Edmund White and Andrew Holleran; mainstream literary stars like David Leavitt and Randall Kenan; and writers of genre and erotica, from mystery writer Michael Nava to self-described pornographer John Preston. In some ways, this collection proves Hansen right. There's obviously no set formula, style or agenda in literature by gay men that could be used as a criterion for what defines "gay fiction." For instance, some writers still find the "coming out" story a keystone in the evolution of homosexual writing. Others resist it as cliché. Some writers are subtle, others hardcore. Some believe it's the responsibility of writers to create positive models of gay characters, others find this dangerously dehumanizing. Some writers, particularly towards the early '90s, believe that AIDS is an unavoidable subject. Others see the risk of wearing it out. But by the end, one would probably end up disagreeing with Hansen. The way in which certain issues resonate throughout these interviews does create a sense of there being such an entity as gay fiction. At least there is a sense of an ongoing debate about values, lifestyles and politics. And a sense of a constant grappling with major issues: discrimination, AIDS, family, sexuality, freedom of expression; and issues that are less prominent, but as important in many ways: sterility, aging, relationships with the opposite sex. After reading interviews with all these writers from the last decade of the millennium, it seems appropriate to end with the paradoxical advice for young writers given by 30-year-old Michael Lowenthal: "I guess I'd advise them to embrace their gayness as completely and honestly as possible, and at the same time to forget about it entirely."
Something Inside: Conversations with Gay Fiction Writers, ed. Philip Gambone, University of Wisconsin Press, pb, 341pp, $37.50
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In the first interview in Something Inside: Conversations with Gay Fiction Writers, 76-year-old mystery novelist Joseph Hansen says: "Once, due to a misapprehension on my part, I ended up with a story in a gay anthology. I won't do that again. I don't believe in gay anthologies; I don't believe there is such a thing as gay literature. And I simply won't have anything to do with that... There is too much that contributes to a feeling of 'us' and 'them'--we're here and they're there, and we're different from them, and they're different from us. One of the things that made me most angry about that anthology that I contributed to was that when it came out the title was Different! Different is what we don't need. All the same is what we need."