Gay literature

[toptenor]

I'm looking for books of literary merit that feature prominently homosexual themes--something of a cross between Death in Venice and Tennessee Williams. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[JBI]

What is a predominantly gay theme? something like 30% of the major Western writers were, if not homosexual, than open minded, or bisexual. Outside of the West, the figure is perhaps higher, if we maintain a definition of homosexual as has sexual relations, or a desire to have sexual relations with the same sex.

Still, I'll be simple - try Plato.

[Scheherazade]

Are "gay literature" and "homosexual themes" one and the same? I don't know.

Couple of books that I can think of right now:

Middlesex

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Orlando

[JBI]

Are "gay literature" and "homosexual themes" one and the same? I don't know.

Couple of books that I can think of right now:

Middlesex

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Orlando

Still, having only read the last one, do we consider Orlando a homosexual novel? Do we consider Virginia Woolf a lesbian author?

[Scheherazade]

Still, having only read the last one, do we consider Orlando a homosexual novel? Do we consider Virginia Woolf a lesbian author?

"Sexuality" and "homosexuality" are among the themes explored.

PS: I consider Woolf a boring author.

[Virgil]

What is a predominantly gay theme? something like 30% of the major Western writers were, if not homosexual, than open minded, or bisexual. Outside of the West, the figure is perhaps higher, if we maintain a definition of homosexual as has sexual relations, or a desire to have sexual relations with the same sex.

Still, I'll be simple - try Plato.

Where do you get thirty percent????

What Percentage of the Population Is Gay?by Jennifer Robison, Contributing EditorIn his 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred Kinsey shocked the world by announcing that 10% of the male population is gay. A 1993 Janus Report estimated that nine percent of men and five percent of women had more than "occasional" homosexual relationships. The 2000 U.S. Census Bureau found that homosexual couples constitute less than 1% of American households. The Family Research Report says "around 2-3% of men, and 2% of women, are homosexual or bisexual." The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force estimates three to eight percent of both sexes.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/6961/What...ation-Gay.aspx

The 2000 study seems to probably capture it, but it's arguably bounded anywhere from 2% to 8%, depending whose bias one supports. Now unless other western nations are different than the US, I cannot see where you would get 30%. (Gallup by the way is a non-partesan extremely respected polling company in the US.)

[Delta40]

Jeanette Winterson - Lesbian. Read the Stone Gods

[Scheherazade]

Where do you get thirty percent????

Well, you know, they say 58.17543% of statistics are made up on the spot.

[DanielBenoit]

Where do you get thirty percent????

Well some aspects of the works of Shakespeare and Plato can be speculated as having homosexual attributes. The relationship between Achilles and Patoclus in The Illiad may be interpreted as homoerotic.

But I'm not really sure if it measures up to thrity precent. . . . .

[OrphanPip]

Where do you get thirty percent????

http://www.gallup.com/poll/6961/What...ation-Gay.aspx

The 2000 study seems to probably capture it, but it's arguably bounded anywhere from 2% to 8%, depending whose bias one supports. Now unless other western nations are different than the US, I cannot see where you would get 30%. (Gallup by the way is a non-partesan extremely respected polling company in the US.)

It depends how you want to classify it, most of the research I've seen puts self-identified homosexual males at 4-6% of the population and self-identified bisexuals at another 3-4%. However, studies looking at incidences of homosexual experience put the numbers a bit higher, so experimentation is a lot more common.

A lot of surveys face a bias problem that has been accounted for better in recent research. Kinsey developed his famous 1/10 position from his observations of upper class urban males. This is the migration bias, since homosexuals tend to congregate in areas where there are other homosexuals, like New York City. When we try to account for this bias we usually get that approximately 5% number. So, 1/20 men instead of 1/10.

As to the thread topic, homosexual themes are quite common. For clarity's sake, let's consider "gay literature" to be literature written by homosexuals about homosexual characters, experiences, viewpoints, or issues. This excludes some writers like Gore Vidal, who would be considered major figures in queer literature, but it let's us keep it simple for now. With that definition I'd go with Larry Kramer and his plays as well as his novel Faggots. Another major author is Edmund White and his semi-autobiographical series that starts with A Boy's Own Story. E.M. Forster's Maurice is no where near as good as his other work and many critics have very negative views of its portrayal of homosexual love, but it is an interesting perspective having been written in 1911.

Edit: I admit a clear Western bias in my recommendations.

[Jozanny]

As to Orlando, I got halfway through it before I started to have landlord revenge fantasies, and when I do lift it up again I will probably start it over, but from where I am in the text, and from a video version I saw before I bought it, I am going to wade in and say it is not a gay agenda text the way A Passage to India is. A Passage To India is a homosexual love story concealed within itself. Straight readers were not supposed to, and probably did not get it, because Forster could have faced serious legal problems otherwise.

I see Orlando more as gender satire, but this opinion is not fully formed.

Titles I see as agenda driven are:

The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Nana, Zola--though Zola was straight and makes lesbianism vicious, probably so he could publish
The Lessons of The Master and The Wings of The Dove, Henry James
A Passage To India and Maurice, EM Forster
The Bravest Indian in the World, Alexie, though I am not big on Sherman and don't know why publishers like him, and some of Willa Cather. One of her editors shelved her career to be Cather's domestic partner in an age where the closed door policy was still in force.

There are more, but these I've read.

[OrphanPip]

As to Orlando, I got halfway through it before I started to have landlord revenge fantasies, and when I do lift it up again I will probably start it over, but from where I am in the text, and from a video version I saw before I bought it, I am going to wade in and say it is not a gay agenda text the way A Passage to India is. A Passage To India is a homosexual love story concealed within itself. Straight readers were not supposed to, and probably did not get it, because Forster could have faced serious legal problems otherwise.

A Passage To India isn't simply a veiled homosexual love story, after all Forster himself was involved in an inter-racial relationship and was very much concerned with issues of racism and the oppression of the Indian people he witnessed while living there.

[DanielBenoit]

Oscar Wilde was certainly gay, for he was arrested for "leud conduct" due to his private relationships with a number of men. Proust too was clearly gay with In Search of Lost Time clearly having homosexual themes.

[Jozanny]

A Passage To India isn't simply a veiled homosexual love story, after all Forster himself was involved in an inter-racial relationship and was very much concerned with issues of racism and the oppression of the Indian people he witnessed while living there.

I did not mean to imply that its hidden eroticism was the full force of the text. I studied Forster for nearly an entire semester and he is a very radicalized author for what the then fading British Empire was amounting to in the sum of its parts, in that era.

[JBI]

Where do you get thirty percent????

http://www.gallup.com/poll/6961/What...ation-Gay.aspx

The 2000 study seems to probably capture it, but it's arguably bounded anywhere from 2% to 8%, depending whose bias one supports. Now unless other western nations are different than the US, I cannot see where you would get 30%. (Gallup by the way is a non-partesan extremely respected polling company in the US.)

I just estimated it myself really - but when you think of it - by today's definition, essentially all the Greeks were, the majority of the Romans, tons of the Victorians, and a great deal in the Renaissance too.

The figure you provided doesn't really make much sense in the context - for some reason, homosexuality and literature, particularly poetry, have been very connected - Shakespeare, for instance, if we are to take the youth from the sonnets as a person, rather than a fiction, Plato, Tennyson perhaps, Hart Crane, Virgil certainly, Sophocles definitely, etc.

I believe D. H. Lawrence made a remark in the like of "I should like to know why nearly every man that approaches greatness tends to homosexuality, whether he admits it or not…"

Well some aspects of the works of Shakespeare and Plato can be speculated as having homosexual attributes. The relationship between Achilles and Patoclus in The Illiad may be interpreted as homoerotic.

But I'm not really sure if it measures up to thrity precent. . . . .

The relationship between Achilles and Patroklus is definitely homosexual, given the nature of the relationship, and the way Homer describes it (not figuratively, but in terms of titling and naming - a phrase which I think translates to "Great Friend" is definitely a reference to their relationship). I think to argue otherwise, as I am sure religious scholars and teachers throughout the middle ages (in a limited fashion of course) and the rennaissance did, is the same sort of cowardice as one sees with commentary on Virgil's second Eclogue - the first sentence can only mean one thing.


As for the figure, it was meant to go by author, rather than by individual text.