gay literature

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

I think having gay literature, or African-American litearture, Or One eyed men with their left hand replaced by a hook literature, is degrading. In a way it says we give you your own field, as you cant compete with the big boys. Literature is literature, weather the protagonist is a black lesbian one eyed, left hand missing, replaced by a hook woman, or just a regular joe, they should be looked at as merely literature.


That being said, homosexuality can be a major theme of a novel.

Oh and I dont think the picture of dorian gray is gay lit, I mean just because Wilde was doesnt mean his novel is, I mean if we never knew Wilde was gay, we wouldn't be calling the novel gay lit. The author and the art must be separated. Ironically enough it was the very fact that the conservative law system of 1890's, which couldn't separate art from artist, which well to but in frankly screwed up everything fro wilde.

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The problem here is that gays are a cultural group, and to look specifically for gay lit is not always about looking for the best written literature, of its own merit, but to find something that speaks to your own experience. Gay lit is useful as a marker in so far that people want to find and read stuff written by and for gay audiences.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

The problem here is that gays are a cultural group, and to look specifically for gay lit is not always about looking for the best written literature, of its own merit, but to find something that speaks to your own experience. Gay lit is useful as a marker in so far that people want to find and read stuff written by and for gay audiences.

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Exactly. Queer as Folk may not be great television (as say, The Wire), but it certainly speaks for me being a bisexual man.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

The problem here is that gays are a cultural group, and to look specifically for gay lit is not always about looking for the best written literature, of its own merit, but to find something that speaks to your own experience. Gay lit is useful as a marker in so far that people want to find and read stuff written by and for gay audiences.

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Precisely, it is a genre for the public, it should not be a genre for academia.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

Precisely, it is a genre for the public, it should not be a genre for academia.

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Some of academia is focused on cultural studies though, and how the arts reflect ideas of culture.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

Some of academia is focused on cultural studies though, and how the arts reflect ideas of culture.

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Ah sorry for not being clearer, Literature academia.

If the author is openly gay, that helps to determine if a book is 'gay', since sexuality is a huge part of most people's lives. Or at least, it is mine.

Also, just ask - as someone else said - 'literate gay people' who have probably been to college and know what books are gay touchstones, like 'Dancer from the Dance' or 'Leaves of Grass'.

I think my favorite 'gay' book is either the aforementioned "Dancer from the Dance" or "City of Night". But I have a lot of other ones I've enjoyed - yes, some Edmund White, some Gore Vidal, but also Mary Renault! And others I have as yet to read.

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Originally Posted by Guinivere

I don't know about queer. I don't really use that word. Essentially it means the same thing but I think it can be insulting.

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Queer has been pretty successfully reclaimed, arguably more so even than "dyke" in the lesbian community... it is now its own identity, used to connote that a person has a stronger identification with the LGB community than with any particular orientation. :)

I do think literature can be gay without having explicitly homosexual content. For instance, anti-humanism, a movement Rimbaud began, was a major part of gay culture in the late 1800s/early 1900s... Gide's L'Immoraliste does not have two men engaging in sexual behavior, but it eroticizes the male body and it is implied that all the men Michel associates with in Paris are gay public officers...