Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America Kindle Edition

This was the perfect book for me, as I was already familiar with almost all of the writers included (Capote, Williams, Vidal, Isherwood, White, Ginsberg, Baldwin, Maupin, Crowley, Kushner, Kramer, Albee, etc, etc). To me this is THE gay literature history book that fills in the background information, in fascinating ways. Christopher Bram takes us through the decades, from the 1950s through the next fifty years.

Bram is an entertaining story teller and the book tells how each of his subjects developed as a writer, their influences, and in depth the good and bad reviews of their works. This last part was interesting as we often think of the great books as just being there, perhaps decades after their creation. Bram gives the books their own history and struggles for acceptance and a marketplace.

The book also relates how difficult it was (in the 50s & 60s) to write about gay lives and still get published, and even when they did not address gay topics they often were savaged by homophobic mainstream reviewers. And the book does not leave out the gossip...delightful gossip...most of these writers knew each other, some had grudges to bear, and it includes as it should who their partners were and their influences.
For example we learn that there wasn't really a flourishing of gay writers until there was a marketplace in which to sell their books....the blossoming of gay book stores of the early 1970s, followed by gay publishers to meet that demand. After a while the writers did not need to depend on being reviewed in the New York Times, there was their own niche, not on the same scale, but steady and welcoming.

This is a fascinating book that recounts the lives and writings of American gay writers since World War II. Both fun and instructive, I was struck by the significance of these writers in the stunning reversal of American attitudes toward homosexuality. When you consider the other types of discrimination - racial, religious and ethnic - the progress in this area has been phenomenal. How did this happen? How is it that we moved from complete rejection at all levels of society to near full legal rights including gay marriage? The writers described in this book had a lot to do with it.

As an omnivorous reader, I want to find great books that I somehow missed, that may not included on great books lists because they are ancient or foreign or about an oppressed minority. Bram's book has helped guide me to those books in his area of expertise. My must-read list is now enriched.

I will also be looking into Mr. Bram's own novels. His most famous novel is Gods and Monsters and was the basis for the incredible movie starring Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser.

The first two thirds are fascinating...in part because Bram gives the history of fascinating people such as Christopher Isherwood, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin and Edward Albee. Included here are detailed portraits of the artists along with a deft analysis of their most representative works.

I found myself completely enthralled despite the fact that I am intimately familiar with much of the history and anecdotes collected here. Indeed, this is a great book for anyone who wants to increase their knowledge of these great gay writers but isn't necessarily interested in reading any of the many exhaustive biographies available. The writers covered in the first two thirds truly changed America; their works have become an indelible part of our history and culture. [I do wish Bram would have included a few ladies; certainly a chapter could have been dedicated to Gertrude Stein, Lorraine Hansberry, Patricia Highsmith, Carson McCullers, Alice Walker, Rita Mae Brown, et al.]

Armistead Maupin and "Tales of the City" are discussed at length, and Mart Crowley's play "Boys in the Band," deservedly gets a thorough going over. These works are beloved to gay men of a certain age. Novels by Peter Cameron, Stephen McCauley and Michael Cunningham are mentioned to varying degrees. The author writes compellingly about the AIDS epidemic and the poetry and prose written in response to the disease. Long passages are dedicated to the brilliant dramas "Angels in America " and "The Normal Heart," though he ignores the musicals "Falsettos" or "Rent," which also dealt with the plague.

As interesting as these topics are, there is no denying that the last third is not nearly as interesting or focused as the first two.

Bram overreaches when he tries to place contemporary writers Edmund White and Andrew Holleran in the same arena as the aforementioned giants. Though enormously gifted writers, White and Holleran have never achieved much notoriety, popularity or acceptance outside of the gay community. Neither has produced a break out "hit" on the scale of "In Cold Blood," "Myra Breckinridge," "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" or more recent works like "The Hours" or John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," nor have their works been translated (to my knowledge) to other mediums such as theatre, television or film.

The author also stumbles when talking of playwrights and drama by omitting Harvey Fierstein (his "Torch Song Trilogy" gave 1,222 performances on Broadway and was filmed in 1988), and making too little mention of Terrence McNally or Lanford Wilson, despite the fact that they produced plays and musicals with gay characters and themes that won awards, enjoyed long runs and were adapted for the screen. He talks about "drama" but again does not include such landmark musicals like "A Chorus Line," "La Cage aux Folles" or "Kiss of the Spider Woman."

It seems I have more complaints than praise. Not so. This book is so good I wanted more, and at the same time I wanted it to be more.

Eminent Outlaws is a seamless account of the history of prominent gay male writers. The author does a superb job of weaving their lives together with a historical background that heightens the reader's awareness of how everything is related, a much better approach than talking about each writer in separate chapters. The only thing I didn't like was the author using "I" when interjecting his personal evaluation of certain works - it was a bit jarring and took me away from the narrative. Otherwise, this is a must for anyone interested in the topic.