by itabix | Sep 25, 2018 | AIDS, Anger, Earthrise, eBooks, Gay literature, Gay Pride, Where meaning comes from, Winter Rain, Writing
Winter Rain 1 I set out to write a gay novel about alcoholism, and when I completed it and then couldn’t get it published, I put it in a box on the floor at the back of my closet. It eventually was moved to my first computer, and then moved from computer to computer....
by itabix | Aug 28, 2018 | Adam in the Morning, Anger, Earthrise, gay community, Gay literature, Stonewall Riots, Straight marriage, Uncategorized
Adam in the Morning At one in the morning, 28 June 1969, the New York policemen from the 6th Precinct, led by Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, on Christopher Street in the West Village in New York. This was normal. The cops had...
by itabix | Jul 28, 2018 | AIDS, Alcoholism, Ceremonies, Earthrise, Fighting Back, Gay literature, inclusive gay community, Stonewall Riots, Straight marriage, Where meaning comes from
Race Point Light This novel begins in Provincetown, out on the end of Cape Cod, and ends in Provincetown sixty years later. It has one narrator, who sticks with the task all the way through the novel, and it has one subject—the narrator’s life—and one focus, the...
by itabix | Jul 7, 2018 | Ceremonies, Earthrise, Gay literature, LGBTQ suicide, Middlebrow Queer, Teenage Suicides, Writing
Ceremonies When my friend Charles Howard was murdered on July 7, 1984, in Bangor, Maine, I had already quit my job teaching and was planning to leave Bangor at the end of the summer, in about two months. After Charlie’s murder, and thinking that someone was going to...
by itabix | Jun 13, 2018 | bookstores, Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Daniel D'Addario, Earthrise, eBooks, Gay literature, In Search of Lost Time, Sodom and Gomorrah, Where meaning comes from
During most of my life, there has been only one way to get a manuscript into format in which everybody can read it, and that is through the publishing industry, owned and operated by large corporations whose expertise is in making money, not literature. They do it by...
by itabix | May 30, 2018 | Alcoholism, Coming to terms with the past, Earthrise, Gay literature, inclusive gay community, language, Memory, the South
This, said to us by the man who says of himself, “Call me Ishmael:” It [the spermiceti] had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several others, I sat down before a large Constantine’s bath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here...
by itabix | May 11, 2018 | Coming to terms with the past, Earthrise, Freeing yourself of it, Gay literature, Save the raw material, Where meaning comes from
Two weeks ago, on April 26, 2018, the Legacy Museum and Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama, funded by the Equal Justice Institute. This is the only museum and memorial in this nation dedicated to the victims of the crime of lynching. The...
by itabix | May 8, 2017 | books, Bookstores, bookstores, eBooks, Gay literature, print on demand, Publishing
Some of us have been thinking about an LGBTQ bookstore for Boston, along the lines of what I have described in “The death of our bookstore (3).” See here and here and here. If you are interested in a non-profit LGBTQ bookstore for Boston which would sell new and used...
by itabix | Apr 28, 2017 | Bookstores, bookstores, Daniel D'Addario, eBooks, Gay literature
Most of us are complicit in the failure of bookstores. The bookstores themselves didn’t modernize. We wanted our coffee, and they didn’t serve coffee. They weren’t in the right location. The books themselves became less interesting. Shorter, less deep, less...
by itabix | Apr 22, 2017 | books, Bookstores, bookstores, Daniel D'Addario, eBooks, Gay literature
I used to say that there were three places in Boston which were at the center of gay life for me. There was, obviously, the Ramrod, the gay leather bar on outer Boylston, where numerous overlapping communities met to socialize, perhaps meet for sex, and to feel gay....
by itabix | Mar 9, 2017 | books, bookstores, Daniel D'Addario, eBooks, Freedom, Gay literature, print on demand, Publishing, Writing
Well, today is a new day, and I am here to tell you about a discovery that is going to make a difference to gay people. I was looking for a book (Henry James, Art of the Novel). I went back to Barnes & Noble and found a print-on-demand version of the book I...
by itabix | Jan 10, 2017 | Adam in the Morning, Alcoholism, Barack Obama, Being gay, Bookstores, bookstores, Ceremonies, Coming to terms with the past, eBooks, Gay literature, Publishing, Race Point Light, The effects of bigotry, Uncategorized, Walking wounded, Winter Rain, Writing
I read an article on Slate today on writing and money, and it compels me to respond. The point of the article is the fact that so few writers actually make any money at their writing. Just about all writers are supported by doing something else, like teaching, and yet...
by itabix | Nov 6, 2016 | A single man, APA, Charles Howard, Coming to terms with the past, Gay literature, Generational Divide, Middlebrow Queer, Publishing, Sexuality, The Gay Revolution, Writing
Even though I didn’t have many extended, free-wheeling conversations with friends about the military’s rules against my serving (I served anyway), still the fact that what I was doing sexually was a crime occupied me deeply. A novel about me during the sixties in...
by itabix | Oct 1, 2016 | Anger, Coming to terms with the past, Gay kid, Gay literature, Generational Divide, Middlebrow Queer, Sexuality
In 1957, when we were students at a school in Tennessee (I was eighteen), students understood that it was against the law to engage in same-sex sex. You could be arrested, tried, and convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for a felony. What I think we were more...
by itabix | Aug 24, 2016 | AIDS, Anger, Gay literature, Winter Rain, Writing
Winter Rain is a story of kindness, of grief, of a person’s not being able to tell for certain what he or she is or what has happened, and yet it’s a story of a person’s need to go on. This is a book about people who live tough lives. Respect has to be paid. It is a...
