The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered by Christopher Bram, Tom Cardamone, Michael Graves, Jameson Currier, Larry Duplechan, Sean Meriwether, Wayne Courtois, Andy Quan, Michael Bronski, Philip Gambone
Authors: Christopher Bram, Tom Cardamone, Michael Graves, Jameson Currier, Larry Duplechan, Sean Meriwether, Wayne Courtois, Andy Quan, Michael Bronski, Philip Gambone
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crone-princesses and epicene wizards, in a cloud-cuckoo gaiety where no one is ever sick or hurt, where work is heresay, and all are witty (gallows-humor without the penalty is Ferro’s forte), but his real achievement is to detail the contents of happiness.
“The contents of happiness.” Isn’t that a felicitous phrase? It applies not only to Robert’s approach to literature but to his understanding of life and the exacting way he pursued life’s nicest possibilities. The blurb was printed on the rear cover of the novel’s original hardback edition, which depicts an azure sea at dusk, as seen from a terrace, through an elegant stone archway. On the front over, through another archway, is more sea and a stylish white yacht, along with title and author. If I am not mistaken, Robert worked closely with the artist on that jacket illustration. He might also have sweet-talked Richard Howard for the blurb and worked closely with Dutton, the book’s publisher, to polish the jacket copy. Some might have thought Robert a control freak, but he was really a perfectionist, attentive to the smallest detail, like the placement of an amethyst-glass vase on a windowsill in the beach house in Sea Girt, New Jersey, that Robert and Michael often shared with friends on weekends. That house — another story, I’m afraid — had been his mother’s, and its maintenance as an idyllic escape for himself and loved ones was one of Robert’s greatest pleasures and perhaps one of his greatest achievements. The walls of the downstairs powder room were specially muraled with stone arches and a tranquil blue sea, just like the book cover.
That house helped make The Blue Star possible, in a big way. He often went there to work, and completed large portions of all his later novels there. Moreover, Robert had a talent for living well, which deeply informed the voluptuous living in his novels — the kind of good living that is sacramental, not consumerist. Robert and Michael traveled with their own bed sheets, for instance, just in case, because one has certain standards . Lots of people have written about the legendary tea salons the boys hosted at their West 95 th Street apartment — again, another story, except to mention that the teas seem, in retrospect, to have taken place in a kind of temple: the long living room of the boys’ graciously-proportioned, pre-War apartment, made even more palatial by a pair of towering faux marbre columns that Robert had installed at great expense.
Those salons were always packed with cultural luminaries, gay and otherwise, and it was at one of them that Robert first told me of the new book he was writing.
“It’s going to be beautiful, Muzzy, if I can just pull it off,” he said in a whisper. “But let’s not speak of it here, among these people.”
He might have been fetching a plate of crab puffs from the kitchen at that moment, and might well have been confiding the same thing to everyone else, but Robert did take care to make me feel special. He called me Muzzy, after the Carol Channing character in Thoroughly Modern Milly , a nickname I felt was an immense honor. Then he accorded me a more important honor, early one morning, down at the shore. I came downstairs and found Robert outside, on the terrace, with the manuscript of a story I’d given him. He had read the thing that morning, instead of working on The Blue Star . It was the first real fiction I’d ever written, a story entitled “Good With Words,” and I was delighted that he’d agreed to look it over, even if apprehensive.
“ You ,” he said, pointing his finger decisively, when he spotted me at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone else in the house was still asleep. “Come over here.” I was too terrified to pass through the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee, from the steaming batch Robert had already prepared for his guests.
For an hour we sat on the terrace and talked of writing, as the waves crashed away
“The contents of happiness.” Isn’t that a felicitous phrase? It applies not only to Robert’s approach to literature but to his understanding of life and the exacting way he pursued life’s nicest possibilities. The blurb was printed on the rear cover of the novel’s original hardback edition, which depicts an azure sea at dusk, as seen from a terrace, through an elegant stone archway. On the front over, through another archway, is more sea and a stylish white yacht, along with title and author. If I am not mistaken, Robert worked closely with the artist on that jacket illustration. He might also have sweet-talked Richard Howard for the blurb and worked closely with Dutton, the book’s publisher, to polish the jacket copy. Some might have thought Robert a control freak, but he was really a perfectionist, attentive to the smallest detail, like the placement of an amethyst-glass vase on a windowsill in the beach house in Sea Girt, New Jersey, that Robert and Michael often shared with friends on weekends. That house — another story, I’m afraid — had been his mother’s, and its maintenance as an idyllic escape for himself and loved ones was one of Robert’s greatest pleasures and perhaps one of his greatest achievements. The walls of the downstairs powder room were specially muraled with stone arches and a tranquil blue sea, just like the book cover.
That house helped make The Blue Star possible, in a big way. He often went there to work, and completed large portions of all his later novels there. Moreover, Robert had a talent for living well, which deeply informed the voluptuous living in his novels — the kind of good living that is sacramental, not consumerist. Robert and Michael traveled with their own bed sheets, for instance, just in case, because one has certain standards . Lots of people have written about the legendary tea salons the boys hosted at their West 95 th Street apartment — again, another story, except to mention that the teas seem, in retrospect, to have taken place in a kind of temple: the long living room of the boys’ graciously-proportioned, pre-War apartment, made even more palatial by a pair of towering faux marbre columns that Robert had installed at great expense.
Those salons were always packed with cultural luminaries, gay and otherwise, and it was at one of them that Robert first told me of the new book he was writing.
“It’s going to be beautiful, Muzzy, if I can just pull it off,” he said in a whisper. “But let’s not speak of it here, among these people.”
He might have been fetching a plate of crab puffs from the kitchen at that moment, and might well have been confiding the same thing to everyone else, but Robert did take care to make me feel special. He called me Muzzy, after the Carol Channing character in Thoroughly Modern Milly , a nickname I felt was an immense honor. Then he accorded me a more important honor, early one morning, down at the shore. I came downstairs and found Robert outside, on the terrace, with the manuscript of a story I’d given him. He had read the thing that morning, instead of working on The Blue Star . It was the first real fiction I’d ever written, a story entitled “Good With Words,” and I was delighted that he’d agreed to look it over, even if apprehensive.
“ You ,” he said, pointing his finger decisively, when he spotted me at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone else in the house was still asleep. “Come over here.” I was too terrified to pass through the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee, from the steaming batch Robert had already prepared for his guests.
For an hour we sat on the terrace and talked of writing, as the waves crashed away
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