Blog
Today was astonishing (letter to a friend)
I left the Y, where I have been going for three days now, learning to lift weights again. I left early because the personal trainer, whom I like very much, had promised me a list of exercises that would guide me around the large gym floor. Then she didn't send it (or,...
“et tu, Brute”
This is an interesting moment, and the stakes are high. Most of the main-stream media have taken it upon themselves to condemn the Public Theatre’s Julius Caesar for presenting Julius Caesar as Donald Trump. (He’s assassinated.) Two very large corporations have...
A bookstore for Boston
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...
The death of our bookstore (3)
The current crisis around LGBTQ bookstores is not a conflict between print books and digital books. Digital books are here to stay and are going to learn to coexist with print books. Consequently, a bookstore will offer a maximum number of titles of books of interest...
The death of our bookstore (2)
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...
The death of our bookstore
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....
Shaw’s view: fighting
Race Point Light is my third novel, and it is about a man finding out that, when his culture wants to destroy him, his first duty is to protect himself, and his next is to change his culture. Here is an excerpt from Race Point Light. The narrator is Fair Shaw is...
Digital progress: print on demand
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...
Marriage equality and suicide
Now we learn that when our culture demonstrates it can be inclusive, then fewer teenagers try to kill themselves. That seems clear enough, and it ought to drive the whole nation into the welcoming arms of the Democratic Party. Here are the details. The scientists are...
Derek’s view: fighting
Ceremonies is a novel based on what happened in Bangor, Maine, during the weeks after Charlie Howard was murdered on July 7, 1984. An excerpt from that novel, given below, depicts a moment after a court appearance by “the boys” who committed the murder. In the crowd...
Oppose, Obstruct, Resist
Twenty-four hours ago, on Daily Kos, Jeff Garrett considered the mode of our opposition to Trump’s presidency. He considers where we are at this moment and says, Now we must sustain the outrage, the unity, and continue the work. Then he gives ways of actually doing...
Blood and white marble
Rachel Maddow often begins a story and makes me wonder Where is she going with this? She began her lead story Friday night with a Harvard scientist working with hydrogen in its various states. She informed us that hydrogen can have a gaseous or a liquid or a solid...
So, Somerville, Boston…
I'm proud of this. See here and here. Resist!
January 20, 2017
Many people are quoting Martin Luther King’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And many people believe that means that eventually things are going to get better. But you know that’s bullshit. There is no “moral universe.” And we...
My books, money, value, the somber truth
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...
Starting off with Timothy
When you’re telling a story, before you say your first word, you have to decide how you start. Once upon a time gets you into a certain kind of story, and Call me Ishmael gets you into another. To get into a story about what happened after Bernie Mallett was murdered...
Watching over us
One of the ironies of these days is a video image that shows up every evening on the evening news. The Trump organization has not provided many opportunities for the press to photograph the president-elect as he goes about putting together an administration. The major...
The good fight, coming up
We’ve always known that nothing lasts forever, despite the fairytale, whose last words are “happily ever after.” We know that everything changes. Decay is real. Divorce is real. We have known that this time in our lives was going to end. Barack Obama’s term will end...
The political novel: 3
At the time I started writing my first gay political novel, I had only been out for 24 months, and I was steeping in the literature of gay political theory. The weekend that Charles Howard was murdered (July 7, 1984)—he was the man on whom Bernie Mallett of Ceremonies...
The political novel: 2
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...