REVIEWS Book Marks Richard Labonte | November 11, 2004 Blue Days, Black Nights, by Ron Nyswaner. Advocate Books, 242 pages, $23.95 hardcover. What a beatifically unsettling memoir. Beatific because of its ultimate serenity. Unsettling because Nyswaner (screenwriter of Philadelphia) writes about self-loathing, self-degradation, and self-abuse with shuddering intensity. With his Hollywood career adrift and a long-term relationship at an end, the author was buying the pretense of a life with destructive street drugs, expensive online escorts, and - on the night this transcendent story starts – the sleek, hard body and intriguing, enigmatic mind of a cocky bar hustler. A doomed affair followed: Nyswaner fell in love with Johann, a man he could not have, who lied about everything, and whose sudden death was possibly a conflicted con artist's suicide. The searingly intimate details of sexual and romantic obsession in this unsparing book are often demeaning. But what shines through the painful story of an impossible relationship are the truths that, despite the lies and self-delusion, there had perhaps been love; and that, after the author bottomed out emotionally and physically, he recovered to write this heartbreakingly redemptive book. Death by Discount, by Mary Vermillion. Alyson Books, 277 pages, $13.95 paper. This may be a first: a mystery with Wal-Mart as the apparent motive for murder. In the aptly titled Death by Discount, the dead body is that of Aunt Glad, a local community radio station owner – and elderly dyke – whose fervent campaign against the shopping behemoth fosters much muttering from moneyed elements in town. Vermillion's debut novel offers up a formulaic cast – a reluctant lesbian sleuth (the aunt's niece) and her comic gay-boy sidekick; a closeted lesbian cop into whose arms the sleuth shall fall; a crew of sleazy, self-serving politicians who stand to gain if Wal-Mart arrives on the edge of town; despairing downtown shopkeepers sure to be driven out of business if the town council votes to rezone land for the superstore; and assorted eccentric neighbors, disapproving parents, and sexually conflicted minor characters, all potential suspects with murky alibis. What adds necessary zip to this otherwise blandly traditional mystery is Vermillion's rip-roaring polemic against Wal-Mart's callous treatment of its workers and its evisceration of locally owned businesses. Undoing Gender, by Judith Butler. Routledge, 300 pages, $21.95 paper. With 11 essays touching on topics like the incest taboo, the limits of psychoanalysis, and how transsexuality and intersexuality are pathologized by culture, Undoing Gender is a challenging smorgasbord of insights – pretty much the norm for Butler's ongoing exploration of gender issues. In a sign that she's keeping up with the times, one essay delves into gay marriage, deeming it a difficult philosophical proposition: how to oppose the homophobia excited by the notion of queer weddings without legitimizing "the marriage norm" as appropriate for all queer sexual lives. A dandy question – Butler answers it with a fascinating analysis of kinship patterns. And in an essay that brings Butler back to her comparative-literature roots, she muses on the continuing feminist relevance of novelist Willa Cather. This is a tough book to read, but its author's nimble mind – she draws on everything from the peppy movie But I'm a Cheerleader to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – makes it worth the effort. Max and Sven, by Tom Bouden. Green Candy Press, 92 pages, $13.95 paper. Fleeting sexual encounters with other boarding-school boys don't fulfill frisky young Max – not when he's in love with his boyhood buddy Sven. But Sven doesn't love Max back – and least not romantically – because he's straight. That they remain best friends as they mature is one of many charming twists in this witty graphic novel, whose characters first appeared in a 1990 ad campaign for a gay youth club. Belgian comic artist Bouden's story – originally published in Dutch, but the campy queerness is universal – is saucy but not explicit, while Max's concerns over coming out and qualms about contemporary gay life are sweet and often hilarious. The first 60 pages – where the story of Max and Sven is told – are followed by samples of Bouden's other syndicated work, in which the sex is more explicit but the commentary on gay life is just as wry. In "Art," for example, Max is the only man strolling through an exhibition of art featuring women's vaginas; when asked by the dyke artist, "Tell me honestly, what did you think," his response is, "I don't like abstract work." Featured Excerpt: I applied the fish scaling blade to my chest. The skin here was thicker than the skin of my forearm and required more force. Again I howled, but I found success, leaving a two-inch vertical line above my right nipple. This vertical line by itself seemed pointless, so I turned it in to a J with two more gashes and two more howls. Jots of blood dripped into my sink, and I retreated upstairs, finding a black T-shirt to wear to soak up blood while I went to work, determined... to carve his name across my chest like a kid in junior high decorating his notebook with the name of a yearned-for upperclassman. – from Blue Days, Black Nights, by Ron Nyswaner Footnotes: BOOKS TO WATCH OUT FOR: With Her Body is a chapbook of three short science-fiction stories by Lambda Award-winning novelist Nicola Griffith, author of Ammonite, Slow River, and The Blue Place; it's available from Aqueduct Press, as part of a Conversation Pieces series of feminist and lesbian work. For information: www.aqueductpress.com... LAUD HUMPHREYS: Prophet of Homosexuality and Sociology, ed. by John Galliher, David Patrick Keys, and Wayne Brekhus, is a University of Wisconsin title profiling the pioneering sociologist, Episcopal priest, and gay activist best known for his provocative study of washroom sex, Tearoom Trade... WHY I HATE Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality, by Dwight A. McBride (possibly the sharpest title of the season), is a New York University Press book scheduled for February that tackles subjects from media representation of black gays to racist ad campaigns... THE QUOTABLE QUEER, by Minnie van Pileup, due next April from Fair Winds Press, celebrates the wit and wisdom of a bevy of high-visibility gays, from Rock Hudson and Liberace to k.d. lang and Ellen DeGeneres, plus, oddly, Whitney Houston and Tom Cruise. Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about queer literature since the mid-'70s. Previous edition Book Marks [04/11/2004]