REVIEWS Book Marks Richard Labonte | July 04, 2005 Specimen Days, by Michael Cunningham. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 308 pages, $25 hardcover. A triptych of tales with a trio of recurring characters who morph through time: the formula for Specimen Days is a lot like that of The Hours, Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel based on the work and life of Virginia Woolf. "In the Machine" is set in late 19th-century Manhattan, where Walt Whitman – the novel's spiritual muse – strolls the streets: it features Lucas, a boy mystically given to quoting Whitman's poetry; the ghost of his brother Simon, killed in a gruesome industrial accident; and Catherine, the woman Simon was to wed. In "The Children's Crusade," a chilling post-9/11 tale, Lucas is a child suicide bomber; Cat is an African-American police psychologist drawn to the boy's wildness; and Simon is a slick Wall Street banker. In "Like Beauty" – a futuristic story where Manhattan is a theme park for thrill-seeking tourists – Simon is a half-human "simulo"; Catareen is a green lizard alien from another planet; and Luke is a boy prophet who leads them out of a post-apocalyptic wilderness. The three tales are set in a grim past, an unsettled present, and a devastated future – but Cunningham's glorious prose imbues each with transcendent hope. Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels 1950-1965, ed. by Katherine V. Forrest. Cleis Press, 436 pages, $18.95 paper. For ye intellectual sorts: Lesbian Pulp Fiction is indeed a serious historical compendium of pre-gay-liberation fiction – titillating, out-of-the-shadows prose that opened closet doors for uncounted American girls and women while subversively charting the emergence of a self-identified lesbian sensibility. For the rest of us: it's definitely a guilty pleasure – a delicious distillation of irredeemably trashy writing. (Excerpts from Brigid Brophy's The King of a Rainy Country and Shirley Verel's The Dark Side of Venus are literate exceptions.) Forrest includes the work of 19 novelists, a few of whom – Valerie Taylor, Paula Christian, Vin Packer, and most notably Ann Bannon – found readers well past their books' publication more than four decades ago, through reprints by Naiad Press, Cleis Press, and Kensington Books. But most work, until now, has been lost to the mists of time – including, for example, hot lesbian prose penned by SF/fantasy favorite Miriam Zimmer Bradley under the name Miriam Gardner – writing she later repudiated. Brava to Forrest for resurrecting this writing – and for a fine introductory essay that explains, quite personally, why lesbian pulp matters. Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star, by Rich Merritt. Kensington Books, 480 pages, $15 paper. Merritt was a marine with two secrets: the straight soldiers he commanded didn't know he was queer, and his queer friends didn't know that in his off-base moments he was performing in gay porn videos. Those worlds collided not long after Merritt posed – anonymously, he thought – for a New York Times Magazine cover feature on gays in the military; a reporter for The Advocate connected the identity dots and outed him. That double coming out is the climax of Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star, an over-long but engagingly enthusiastic memoir that starts with young Rich attempting valiantly to suppress his sexuality as a student at homophobic Bob Jones University. Ever the rebel, he also performed as a male stripper and escort before setting his sights on a military career. Like Jeffrey McGowan (Major Conflict), another careerist who in the end couldn't reconcile his gay and his military lives, Merritt clearly cherished his military service, and his memoir makes a strong case that gays ought to be able to serve honorably and openly. Straightforward: How to Mobilize Heterosexual Support for Gay Rights, by Ian Ayres and Jennifer Gerarda Brown. Princeton University Press, 304 pages, $24.95 hardcover. Gay activists of most every generation – from grizzled Stonewall veterans, to engaged PFLAG moms and dads, to determined young high school teens starting up Gay/Straight Alliances – ought to appreciate Straightforward. Why? Because it's asking nongay people to share the burden gay activists have shouldered for so long. The book's academic prose is occasionally daunting, but its pitch to gay-friendly straight people is perfectly clear: they must speak out, whenever and wherever they can, to further the cause of queers. The authors (professors of law who are husband and wife) base their strategy for mobilization of straight support on the simple principle that the privileged should use their status to help those without access to full rights – the socially, culturally, and legally underprivileged. It's not a particularly radical concept, but Ayres and Brown offer plenty of concrete examples – from speaking up in church for gay marriage, to pledging to vacation in states that support gay rights, to supporting businesses with fair employment practices for gays, to make their case that gay rights for gays are actually broad human rights for everyone. Featured Excerpt: Heterosexual people who want to engage in the struggle for gay rights must come to terms with an important endowment they bear, an endowment that is both a blessing a curse. We are referring to what is sometimes called heterosexual privilege.... Some well-meaning heterosexual people don't know how to support gay rights because they do not see how a lack of privilege disadvantages bisexuals, lesbians, and gay men. – from Straightforward, by Ian Ayres and Jennifer Gerarda Brown Footnotes: The future of the Lambda Book Report is up in the air, following an early June vote by the board of trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation (LLF) to suspend operations while considering the magazine’s viability. The decision was followed a few days later by the resignation of LLF executive director Jim Marks, who for a period edited the magazine, and was also an organizer of the foundation's Lambda Literary Awards. The pending sale of the building that houses the magazine's rent-free offices – space made available by Nick Apostol, a member of the corporation and also Marks' domestic partner – "combined with the consistently precarious financial state of the foundation throughout its history," were factors in the surprise decision by board members Katherine V. Forrest, Don Weise, Karla Jay, and Jim Duggins. A second LLF publication, The James White Review, was edited out of New York, and negotiations are underway to find funding to keep it publishing. The foundation's annual Lambda Literary Awards – honoring queer literature in 20 categories – will continue, said the statement from the board of trustees, no matter what happens to the magazines. Winners of the 17th annual Lammys were announced in New York on June 2, just days before the foundation's shaky finances were revealed. For info: www.lambdalit.org. Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about queer literature since the mid-'70s. Previous edition Book Marks [20/06/2005]