REVIEWS Book Marks Richard Labonte | December 06, 2004 "Best" is so very subjective. David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs are undeniable best-selling authors, but their prose doesn't click with me; I quite enjoy most of the mysteries and romances from Bella Books, to pass a quick hour or two, but they're Cheez Whiz snacks, not fine dining. And if there's one thing that 20 years of selling queer books taught me, it's to celebrate the original and to value the quirky. The lists offered here - 10 fiction titles, 10 nonfiction titles - are snapshots of a quality year in queer literature; I reviewed 100 books in this column in 2004, read more than another 100, and never saw a couple of hundred more. An initial list, of books I really liked, topped 40. These, then, are the best of the very good. Top 10 Fiction Titles, 2004: Clay's Way, by Blair Mastbaum (Alyson Books, $12.95 paper). Skater boy falls hard for surfer boy in this Hawaii-set first novel brimming with jittery ennui, evocative angst, sexy grace, and the frustrations of young love. Mastbaum is an uncommonly gifted new voice. Denny Smith: Stories, by Robert Gluck (Clear Cut Press, $12.95 paper) Book as object: elegant, with a built-in bookmark and a playful dust jacket adding tactile pleasure. Book as subject: vivid and comic, subtle and sexy, a dozen stories bleeding fluidly from fact into fiction and back - articulate, entertaining intellectualism. Fresh Men, by Donald Weise and selected by Edmund White (Carroll & Graf, $14.95 paper). The rules: submissions only from writers without a book of their own; the result: the most exciting anthology of queer short stories since the early days of Men on Men, accomplished fiction from 20 stirring, fresh voices. The Haunted Hillbilly, by Derek McCormack (Soft Skull Press, $11.95 paper). Tailor, vampire, perversely queer Svengali: that's Nudie, the weird and wondrous central character of this poetically twisted novel about the sordid behind-the-scenes world of gay country-and-western music, and of a man named Hank at the Grand Ole Opry. Life Mask, by Emma Donoghue (Harcourt Brace, $26 hardcover). Part sensuous potboiler, part literary history lesson, this novel of 18th-century lesbian dalliances, cultural decadence, and haughty manners is a fictional account of a real-life scandal that rocked Britain's Beau Monde world of theatrical dandies. The Line of Beauty, by Allan Hollinghurst (Bloomsbury USA, $24.95 hardcover). If any single novel is the best of the year, this is it: disdainfully dismissive of political conservatism, passionately compassionate about AIDS, both deep and breezy, very queer and yet impeccably mainstream, it's as close to dazzling as a book can be. The Realm of Possibility, by David Levithan (Knopf, $15.95 hardcover). Written as a series of poems, Levithan's remarkable novel-in-verse - his second young adult novel, after the equally dazzling Boy Meets Boy – is a magical mosaic of gay, bi, and straight teens, the assured work of an emotional chameleon. A Seahorse Year, by Stacey D'Erasmo (Houghton Mifflin, $24 hardcover). The strength of this story – of two lesbian moms, one gay dad, and one schizophrenic straight son – is how D'Erasmo shapes a dysfunctional family's domestic dramas with elegance, intelligence, and humanity. The Smallest People Alive,by Keith Banner (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, $16.95 paper). The stories in this searing collection feature queers way out of the homo mainstream – rural, poor, obese, struggling at dead-end jobs, yet invested by Banner with a delicate dignity. In the most memorable tale, caretakers arrange a secret wedding for two developmentally disabled gay men. Venus of Chalk, by Susan Stinson (Firebrand Books, $14.95 paper). Road-trip novels are adventures of discovery. This elegant novel is an almost sacramental voyage into a brave, fat, proud dyke's spirit, embracing both the surreal and the so real with sublime charm. Top 10 Nonfiction Titles, 2004: Beyond Shame, by Patrick Moore (Beacon Press, $25 hardcover). Moore's bold theory is that queer promiscuity in the pre-AIDS '70s was a wellspring of art, culture, and ideas; his unapologetic call is for today's gay men to reclaim their sexual, political, and artistic past. Blue Days, Black Nights, by Ron Nyswaner (Advocate Books, $23.95 hardcover). There are no excuses offered by Hollywood screenwriter Nyswaner (Philadelphia) in this intense memoir of self-loathing, self-degradation, and sexual obsession; his beatific honesty is unsettling, heartbreaking, and ultimately redemptive. Both: A Portrait in Two Parts, by Douglas Crase (Pantheon, $25 hardcover). This affectionate biography unearths, and honors, the lifelong love of two men, botanist Dwight Ripley and artist Rupert Barneby, who met in their teens and wove their lives together through five decades of art and science. I Do/I Don't_,ed. by Greg Wharton and Ian Philips (Suspect Thoughts Press, $16.95 paper). Some contributors are dizzy with joy, and already married. Others despise the notion of wedded bless. The rest are ambivalent – and that's the glory of this raucous but never rancorous anthology of LGBT voices. Laud Humphreys: Prophet of Homosexuality and Sociology, by John Galliher, Wayne Brekhus, and David Keys (University of Wisconsin, $18.95 paper). Humphreys was the first prominent American sociologist to come out – in 1974, upon publication of Tearoom Trade, which he researched through personal fieldwork in the public washrooms of St. Louis. He died in 1988; this generous biography honors his groundbreaking civil rights, antiwar, and gay rights activism. The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts and The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance, and Musical Theater , ed. by Claude J. Summers (Cleis Press, $29.95 each, paper). Two books, sure, but it's all one project, and kudos to Cleis and Claude for giving us reliable and readable reference books for everyone queer from dancer Alvin Ailey to singer Rufus Wainwright, photographer Laurie Toby Edison to architect Philip Johnson. Saint Morrissey, by Mark Simpson (SAF Publishing, $25 paper). Simpson, the British bad-boy anti-queer-theorist who coined the label "metrosexual," caresses musician Morrissey's masculine effeminacy with a fan's adoration, a critic's perception, and, occasionally, a curmudgeon's sneer. Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution, by David Carter (St. Martin's, $24.95 hardcover). This definitive account of a historic queer rebellion against the straight status quo was long overdue but well worth the wait. Carter's tapestry of first-person accounts brings alive those days of anger, and buries a few myths as well. The Tomcat Chronicles, by Jack Nichols (Harrington Park Press, $19.95 paper). On the one hand (truly: one to turn the pages, one occupied elsewhere) this is an erotic memoir of youthful lust; on the other, it's the graceful account of how a lifelong activist navigated – with commitment and glee – the intermingled worlds of sexual and gay liberation in the '60s. Warrior Poet, by Alexis De Veaux (W.W. Norton, $29.95 hardcover). With bracing honesty, this semi-authorized biography digs fearlessly into the resilient, often angry, and brilliantly iconoclastic life of Audre Lorde, celebrating fierce poetry without shying away from sexual, emotional, and physical turbulence. Footnotes: Joseph Hansen was a writer to the end. Just five days before the author of the acclaimed Dave Brandstetter mystery series died of heart failure on Nov. 24, at age 81, he e-mailed friends to alert them to his latest blog entry - a fulmination against ABC affiliate stations for refusing to air Saving Private Ryan (fearful that the FCC would disapprove of the film's use of the word "fuck."). Hansen's queer writing career started in the 1950s, when his "James Colton" short stories appeared in the gay magazines ONE and Tangents; but even earlier, in 1952, The New Yorker started to accept his poetry. The first Brandstetter book, Fadeout, was published in 1970. Michael Nava, author of the Henry Rios mystery series, was both a colleague and a friend: "Not that he was just a good gay writer, but he is right up there with Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald in terms of being one of the great California mystery writers,'' Nava said. Hansen self-published his last book, The Cutbank Path, in 2002; it was the third in an autobiographical novel series that included Jack of Hearts (1992), and Living Upstairs (1993). His blog entries can be read at http://josephhansen.blogspot.com. Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about queer literature since the mid-'70s. Previous edition Book Marks Alan Hollinghurst wins Booker prize [27/10/2004]