COMPLETE MFA READING LIST

COMPLETE MFA READING LIST:

SELECTED WORKS FROM THE CANON OF GAY MALE FICTION

by
Val Killpack

I compiled this list of books for purposes of upcoming Independent Study courses and Final Manuscript components I will be working on at Naropa University and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where I am completing the MFA in Writing and Poetics – Prose Concentration.

PART ONE will be a semester-long course in Fall 2010.  I will be writing critical essays based on a selection of those readings, looking at these questions:

·         What is the role of class status in gay relationships and how does that affect personal identity within the community?

·         How does the coming-out process in the protagonist influence the formation and concept of family within society?

PART TWO will be a semester-long course in Spring 2011 with similar essay topics.

PART THREE will be used for the Critical Thesis component of the MFA Final Manuscript, which is due at the end of the Fall 2011 semester.  I hope to publish this essay, and I intend to use it as a writing sample if I apply to a doctoral program.

PARTS ONE, TWO, and THREE will be read in the context of the writing of a novel or novella, which will be used as the Creative Prose Manuscript component of the MFA Final Manuscript due at the end of the Fall 2011 semester.  This manuscript will also serve as a creative writing sample if I apply to a doctoral program in creative writing.

The list has been separated into socio-historical periods as relates to LGBTIQ/Queer community. I have left out lesbian and transgender texts in an attempt to narrow the focus of this study. I have attempted to select the primary works that form the gay male canon, mainly looking at prose works of fiction, some memoir, and a little poetry and drama, with applicable theoretical works to read these through. I am now about half-way through first readings of the listed texts. The list is certainly not complete; any suggestions or comments are welcomed.  Email me at val.killpack@gmail.com

PART ONE: GAY FICTION BEFORE STONEWALL

OSCAR WILDE TO STONEWALL RIOTS

NOVELS

Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891; ed. Norman Page, Broadview Press 1998)

·         Oscar Wilde Trials (UK) – 1895

Herman Melville – Billy Budd (written 1886-1891; pub. 1924)

[Oscar Wilde?] – Teleny, or, The Reverse of the Medal (1893)

André Gide – The Immoralist (1902; trans. Dorothy Bussy 1930; trans. Richard Howard 1970)

Thomas Mann – Death in Venice (1912)

E.M. Forster – Maurice (written 1913; pub. 1971)

Marcel Proust – Sodom and Gomorrah (1921, 1922; ed. Christopher Prendergast, trans. John Sturrock, Allen Lane 2002)

André Gide – The Counterfeiters (1925; trans. Dorothy Bussy 1927)

Jean Genet – Our Lady of the Flowers (written 1942, pub. 1943; trans. Bernard Frechtman 1963)

Jean Genet – Querelle (written 1947, pub. 1953; trans. Gregory Streatham 1966; trans. Anselm Hollo 1974)

·         Kinsey Report (US) – 1948

Truman Capote – Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)

Yukio Mishima – Confessions of a Mask (1948; trans. Meredith Weatherby 1958)

Gore Vidal – The City and the Pillar (1948; revised 1965)

Jean Genet – The Thief’s Journal (1949; trans. Bernard Frechtman 1964)

William S. Burroughs – Queer (written 1951; pub. 1985)

Yukio Mishima – Forbidden Colors (1953; trans. Alfred H. Marks 1968)

Christopher Isherwood – The World in the Evening (1954)

James Baldwin – Giovanni’s Room (1956)

·         Wolfenden Report (UK) – 1957

William S. Burroughs – Naked Lunch (1959)

James Baldwin – Another Country (1962)

Christopher Isherwood – Down There on a Visit (1962)

John Rechy – City of Night (1963)

Christopher Isherwood – A Single Man (1964)

Hubert Selby, Jr. – Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964)

·         Sexual Offences Act (UK) - 1967

Christopher Isherwood – A Meeting by the River (1967)

James Purdy – Eustace Chisolm and the Works (1967)

Quentin Crisp – The Naked Civil Servant (1968)

Gore Vidal – Myra Breckinridge (1968)

·         Stonewall Riots (US) – 1969

Reinaldo Arenas – Farewell to the Sea (written 1969, 1971, 1974; pub. 1982; trans. Andrew Hurley 1986)

Manuel Puig – Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976; trans. Thomas Colchie 1979)

Christopher Bram – Hold Tight (1988)

Samuel R. Delany – The Motion of Light in Water (1988)

Edmund White – The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

Reinaldo Arenas – Before Night Falls (1992; trans. Dolores M. Koch 1993)

Christopher Bram – The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes (2000)

FILM VERSIONS

Albert Lewin, dir. – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Peter Ustinov, dir. – Billy Budd (1962)

Michael Sarne, dir. – Myra Breckinridge (1970)

Luchino Visconti, dir. – Death in Venice (1971)

Jack Gold, dir. – The Naked Civil Servant (1975)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, dir. – Querelle (1982)

Hector Babenco, dir. – Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)

James Ivory, dir. – Maurice (1987)

Uli Edel, dir. – Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)

David Cronenberg, dir. – Naked Lunch (1991)

David Rocksavage, dir. – Other Voices, Other Rooms (1995)

Julian Schnabel, dir. – Before Night Falls (2000)

Tom Ford, dir. – A Single Man (2009)

Steve Buscemi, dir. – Queer (2011)

DOCUMENTARY FILM

Greta Schiller, dir. – Before Stonewall (1984)

THEORY

Michel Foucault – The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction (1976; trans. Robert Hurley 1978)

Michel Foucault – The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984; trans. Robert Hurley 1985)

Michel Foucault – The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984; trans. Robert Hurley 1986)

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985; revised 1993)

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – Epistemology of the Closet (1990)

Judith Butler – Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

Judith Butler – Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993)

PART TWO: GAY FICTION AFTER STONEWALL

GOLDEN AGE

NOVELS

Daniel Curzon – Something You Do in the Dark (1971)

Samuel R. Delany – The Tides of Lust (1973)

Terry Andrews – The Story of Harold (1974)

Patricia Nell Warren – The Front Runner (1974)

Christopher Isherwood – Christopher and His Kind (1976)

Andrew Holleran – Dancer from the Dance (1978)

Larry Kramer – Faggots (1978)

Armistead Maupin – Tales of the City (1978)

James Purdy – Narrow Rooms (1978)

Edmund White – Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978)

Samuel R. Delany – Heavenly Breakfast (1979)

John Rechy – Rushes (1979)

Armistead Maupin – More Tales of the City (1980)

Armistead Maupin – Further Tales of the City (1982)

Melvin Dixon – Vanishing Rooms (1991)

Edmund White – City Boy (2009)

FILM VERSIONS

Alastair Reid, dir. – Tales of the City (1993)

Pierre Gang, dir. – More Tales of the City (1998)

Pierre Gang, dir. – Further Tales of the City (2001)

DOCUMENTARY FILM

Nancy Adair, Andrew Brown, Rob Epstein, dirs. – Word Is Out (1977)

Joseph F. Lovett, dir. – Gay Sex in the 70s (2005)

THEORY

Christopher Bram – Mapping the Territory (2009)

AIDS CRISIS

NOVELS

James Purdy – Mourners Below (1981)

Robert Chesley – Night Sweat [play] (1984, in Hard Plays, Stiff Parts 1990)

Armistead Maupin – Babycakes (1984)

Paul Reed – Facing It (1984)

Samuel R. Delany – Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

William M. Hoffman – As Is [play] (1985)

Larry Kramer – The Normal Heart [play] (1985)

Barbara Peabody – The Screaming Room [biography] (1986)

Emmanuel Dreuilhe – Mortal Embrace [memoir] (1987, trans. Linda Coverdale 1988)

Armistead Maupin – Significant Others (1987)

Randy Shilts – And the Band Played On [nonfiction] (1987)

*Christopher Davis – Valley of the Shadow (1988)

*Robert Ferro – Second Son (1988)

Andrew Holleran – Ground Zero [essays] (1988)

Adam Mars-Jones & Edmund White – The Darker Proof [stories] (1988)

*Paul Monette – Borrowed Time [memoir] (1988)

Paul Monette – Love Alone [poems] (1988)

George Whitmore – Someone Was Here [biography] (1988)

David B. Feinberg – Eighty-Sixed (1989)

Michael Klein, ed. – Poets for Life [poems] (1989)

Larry Kramer – Reports from the Holocaust [nonfiction] (1989)

Armistead Maupin – Sure of You (1989)

*Pier Vittorio Tondelli – Separate Rooms (1989, trans. Simon Pleasance 1992)

John Weir – The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket (1989)

Allen Barnett – The Body and Its Dangers [stories] (1990)

*Michael Cunningham – A Home at the End of the World (1990)

William Finn & James Lapine – Falsettoland [musical play] (1990)

*Hervé Guibert – To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life (1990, trans. Linda Cloverdale 1991)

Terrence McNally – André’s Mother [teleplay] (1990)

David B. Feinberg – Spontaneous Combustion (1991)

Paul Gervais – Extraordinary People (1991)

*Rachel Hadas, ed. – Unending Dialogue [poems] (1991)

Essex Hemphill, ed. – Brother to Brother [essays, poems, stories] (1991)

Oscar Moore – A Matter of Life and Sex (1991)

David Wojnarowics – Close to the Knives [essays] (1991)

William Finn & James Lapine – Falsettos [musical play] (1992)

Thomas Gunn – The Man with Night Sweats (1992)

Larry Kramer – The Destiny of Me [play] (1992)

Adam Mars-Jones – Monopolies of Loss [stories] (1992)

*Jeff Ryman – Was (1992)

James Robert Baker – Tim and Pete (1993)

Christopher Coe – Such Times (1993)

*Jameson Currier – Dancing on the Moon [stories] (1993)

B. Michael Hunter, ed. – Sojourner [essays, poems, stories] (1993)

*Derek Jarman – Blue [film as literature] (1993), Derek Jarman – Blue: Text of a Film [script] (1994)

Fenton Johnson – Scissors, Paper, Rock (1993)

*Tony Kushner – Angels in America [play] (1993)

*Dale Peck – Martin and John (1993)

Paul Rudnick – Jeffrey [play] (1993)

*David Schneider – Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey [biography] (1993)

Samuel R. Delany – The Mad Man (1994)

Paul Monette – Last Watch of the Night [essays] (1994)

*Clifford Chase – The Hurry-Up Song [memoir] (1995)

*Mark Doty – Heaven’s Coast [memoir] (1996)

Fenton Johnson – Geography of the Heart [memoir] (1996)

Rafael Campo – The Poetry of Healing [memoir] (1997)

Amy Hoffman – Hospital Time [memoir] (1997)

*Edmund White – The Farewell Symphony (1997)

Jim Grimsley – Comfort and Joy (1999)

Kate Scannell – Death of the Good Doctor [memoir] (1999)

*Colm Tóibín – The Blackwater Lightship (1999)

Edmund White – The Married Man (2000)

FILM VERSIONS

Mike Nichols, dir. – Angels in America (2003)

Michael Mayer, dir. – A Home at the End of the World (2004)

DOCUMENTARY FILM

Jeffrey Dupre, dir. – Out of the Past (1998)

John Scagliotti, dir. – After Stonewall (1999)

THEORY

Susan Sontag – Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989)

Edmund White – Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS (2001)

PART THREE: GAY FICTION NEAR THE MILLENNIUM

MILLENNIUM APPROACHES

NOVELS

David Rees – In the Tent (1979)

Charles Nelson – The Boy Who Picked the Bullets Up (1981)

Robert Glück – Jack the Modernist (1985)

David Leavitt – The Lost Language of Cranes (1986)

David Plante – The Catholic (1986)

Patrick Gale – Kansas in August (1988)

Alan Hollinghurst – The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

Melvin Dixon – Trouble the Waters (1989)

Randall Kenan – A Visitation of Spirits (1989)

Neil Bartlett – Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall (1990)

Tom Spanbauer – The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (1991)

Jaime Manrique – Latin Moon in Manhattan (1992)

Bernard Cooper – A Year of Rhymes (1993)

Stephen Macauley – The Easy Way Out (1993)

Louis Begley – As Max Saw It (1994)

Alan Hollinghurst – The Folding Star (1994)

Adam Mars-Jones – The Waters of Thirst (1994)

Jim Grimsley – Dream Boy (1995)

Scott Heim – Mysterious Skin (1995)

Dennis Cooper – Guide (1997)

Alan Hollinghurst – The Spell (1998)

Paul Lisicky – Lawnboy (1998)

Michael Lowenthal – The Same Embrace (1998)

Jaime Manrique – Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me [memoir] (1999)

FILM VERSIONS

Nigel Finch, dir. – The Lost Language of Cranes (1992)

Gregg Araki, dir. – Mysterious Skin (2004)

DOCUMENTARY FILM

THEORY

Leo Bersani – Homos (1995)

David M. Halperin – Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (1995)

Jonathan Ned Katz – The Invention of Heterosexuality (1995)

Samuel R. Delany – Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

Michael Warner – The Trouble with Normal (1999)

MATTHEW SHEPARD

NOVELS

Scott Gibson, ed. – Blood & Tears [poems] (1999)

Beth Loffreda – Losing Matthew Shepard [memoir] (2000)

Moisés Kaufman – The Laramie Project [play] (2001)

Romaine Patterson & Patrick Hinds – The Whole World Was Watching [memoir] (2005)

Judy Shepard – The Meaning of Matthew [memoir] (2009)

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

NOVELS

K.M. Soehnlein – The World of Normal Boys (2000)

Jamie O’Neill – At Swim, Two Boys (2001)

Kirk Read – How I Learned to Snap (2001)

Robert Glück – Denny Smith [stories] (2004)

Alan Hollinghurst – The Line of Beauty (2006)

Christopher Bram – Exiles in America (2006)

Patrick Ryan – Send Me (2006)

Edmund White – My Lives [memoir] (2006)

Abdellah Taïa – Salvation Army (2006; trans. Frank Stock 2009)

André Aciman – Call Me by Your Name (2007)

Samuel R. Delany – Dark Reflections (2007)

Brian Malloy – Brendan Wolf (2007)

Shawn Stewart Ruff – Finlater (2008)

Daniel Allen Cox – Shuck (2009)

G. Winston James – Shaming the Devil [stories] (2009)

Vestal McIntyre – Lake Overturn (2009)

David Plante – The Pure Lover [memoir] (2009)

Rakesh Satyal – Blue Boy (2009)

John Stahle – I Was Like [stories, essays, poems] (2009)

Sebastian Stuart – The Hour Between (2009)

Lee Houck – Yield (2010)

FILM VERSIONS

Saul Dibb, dir. – The Line of Beauty (2006)

DOCUMENTARY FILM

Paule Zadjermann, dir. – Judith Butler: Philosophical Encounters of the Third Kind (2006)

THEORY

Anne Fausto-Sterling – Sexing the Body (2000)

David M. Halperin – How to Do the History of Homosexuality (2002)

Lee Edelman – No Future (2004)

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, ed. – That’s Revolting! (2004, revised 2008)

David M. Halperin – Gay Shame (2009)

FILM-MAKER MEMOIR

John Waters – Shock Value (1981)

John Waters – Crackpot (1986)

John Waters – Role Models (2010)

Derek Jarman – Dancing Ledge (1984)

Derek Jarman – The Last of England [AKA Kicking the Pricks] (1987)

Derek Jarman – Modern Nature (1991)

Derek Jarman – At Your Own Risk (1992)

Derek Jarman – Chroma (1994)

Derek Jarman – Smiling in Slow Motion (2000)

Bruce LaBruce – The Reluctant Pornographer (1997)

Bruce LaBruce – Ride, Queer, Ride! (1997)

REFERENCES FOR THE MAKING OF THIS LIST

BOOKS

Stephen D. Adams – The Homosexual as Hero in Contemporary Fiction (1980)

Stuart Kellogg – Literary Visions of Homosexuality (1983) [AKA Essays on Gay Literature (1985)]

David Bergman – Gaiety Transformed: Gay Self-Representation in American Literature (1991)

Mark Lilly – Gay Men's Literature in the Twentieth Century (1993)

Edmund White – The Burning Library: Essays (1995)

Robert Drake – The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read (1998)

Reed Woodhouse – Unlimited Embrace: A Canon of Gay Fiction, 1945-1995 (1998)

Colm Tóibín – Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature (2002)

Anthony Slide – Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works of Fiction from the First Half of the Twentieth Century (2003)

David Bergman – The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture (2004)

Edmund White – Arts and Letters (2004)

Richard Canning, ed. – 50 Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read (2009)

Tom Cardamone, ed. – The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered (2010)

WEBSITES

GLBT Literature:

http://jclarkmedia.com/gaybooks/index.html

glbtq: an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, & queer culture:

http://www.glbtq.com/

The Publishing Triangle’s 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels:

http://www.publishingtriangle.org/100best.asp

The Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Nonfiction Books;

http://publishingtriangle.org/100nonficbest.asp

The Publishing Triangle Awards:

http://publishingtriangle.org/awards.asp

http://publishingtriangle.org/2010award-winners.asp

The Lambda Literary Awards:

http://www.lambdaliterary.org/category/winners-finalists/

http://www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/awards-finalists/

The Stonewall Book Awards:

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/glbtrt/stonewall/honored/index.cfm

http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2010/january2010/stonewall_pio.cfm