The Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library book discussion group meets on the first Tuesday of the month at 8:00pm (except when noted). We meet at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Community Center, 208 West 13th Street (near Seventh Avenue) in NYC. Ask at the information desk for the room number.

We're a friendly group, always open to new members. If you'd like, you can just read the book and join us at the Community Center. We'd be pleased to meet you. If you have questions or want more information, you can send e-mail to Howard@HowardWill.com. (If you send an e-mail, make sure you include the words "book club" early in the subject line because if you just say "Hey" or "I've got a question" it'll just get deleted because it looks like spam.)

I've created a FaceBook group called "Book discussion group at The Center in NYC". Please join it for a little discussion before and after the group, or to contact others in the group:

Facebook CenterBooks (group)

Upcoming books:

January 3: "Selected Poems" by James Merrill (edited by J.D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser, 2008)

A virtuoso of rhyming form, a master of puns, and a subtle verse autobiographer, Merrill (1926-1995) was attacked during his lifetime as too fancy or artful. He is now generally considered one of his generation's greats. Readers prize his gemlike early lyrics; his autobiographical poems of friendship, illness, privilege (his father co-founded Merrill Lynch), travel, and same-sex love.

February 7: "Howl" epic poem by Allen Ginsberg

The epigraph for Howl is from Walt Whitman: "Unscrew the locks from the doors!/Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" Announcing his intentions with this ringing motto, Ginsberg published a volume which broke so many social taboos that copies were impounded as obscene, and the publisher, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was arrested. The court case that followed found for Ginsberg made both the poet and the book famous. Ginsberg went on to become a cultural icon of sixties radicalism.

March 6: "By Nightfall" novel by Michael Cunningham

Peter, a Soho gallery owner, arrives home to find his wife in the shower and marvels at how lithe she looks through the steam, then realizes that he's admiring her much younger brother. Peter is a junkie and moocher as sexy as he is manipulative as he falls for the young man. In this bittersweet paean to human creativity Cunningham entwines eroticism with aesthetics to orchestrate a crisis of the soul, drawing inspiration from Henry James and Thomas Mann as well as meditative painter Agnes Martin and provocateur artist Damien Hirst.

April 3: "Edward II" Elizabethan blank-verse drama by Christopher Marlowe

The play telescopes most of Edward II's reign into a single narrative, beginning with the recall of his favorite, Piers Gaveston, from exile, and ending with his son, Edward III, executing Mortimer Junior for the king's murder. Depicting with shocking openness the sexual and political violence of its central characters' fates, Edward the Second broke new dramatic ground in English theatre and is an important cultural, as well as dramatic, document of the early modern period. (See Derek Jarman's modern take on the play.)

May 1: Three plays by Noel Coward: "Blithe Spirit," "Hay Fever," and "Private Lives"

Noel Coward's talent for spinning thin plots into sharp comedy assures his reputation as his comedies remain staples of theatre. "Blithe Spirit" concerns a novelist who invites a medium to give a seance so that he can learn the tricks of the trade--but the medium actually summons up the ghost of his first wife. "Private Lives" offers the story of a divorced couple who unexpectedly meet while honeymooning with their new spouses--whom they quickly abandon to resume their passion for each other. "Hay Fever" presents the story of visitors to an eccentric family who are very nearly driven mad before they are able to escape.

June, July, and August: no meetings

September 11 (the second Tuesday of the month): "Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade" biography by Justin Spring

Life in the closet proves to be boisterous in this biography of an iconic figure of pre-Stonewall life. Steward (1909-1993) was an English professor, a novelist who wrote literary fiction and gay porn, a confidant of Gertrude Stein, and an erotic adventurer whose taste for sailors and rough trade endeared him to sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. Later he became Phil Sparrow, official tattoo artist of the Hell's Angels. Justin Spring fleshes out this colorful story by quoting from Steward's highly literate journals and sex diaries (which include trysts with everyone from Rudolph Valentino to Rock Hudson).

October 2: "Blue Boy" coming-out story by Rakesh Satyal

Lambda Literary 2009 winner for debut gay fiction. Satyal's lovely first novel charts an Indian-American boy's transformation from mere mortal to Krishnaji, the blue-skinned Hindu deity. Twelve-year-old Kiran is a bit of an outcast: he likes ballet and playing with his mother's makeup. He also reveres his Indian heritage and convinces himself that he's actually the 10th reincarnation of Krishnaji and plans to come out to the world at the 1992 Martin Van Buren Elementary School talent show. Satyal writes with a graceful ease, finding new humor in common awkward pre-teen moments and giving readers a delightful and lively young protagonist.

November 6 (Election day): "In a Strange Room" novel by South African author Damon Galgut

Shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. Galgut describes a young loner's travels across eastern Africa, Europe, and India. Unsure what he's after and reluctant to return home, he follows the paths of travelers he meets along the way. Treated as a lover, a follower, a guardian, each new encounter (with an enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers, and a woman on the verge) leads him closer to confronting his own identity. This is a brilliant, stylish novel of anger and compassion, longing and thwarted desire, and a hauntingly beautiful evocation of life on the road.

December 4: "Giovanni's Room" important gay novel by James Baldwin

Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, Baldwin's now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion. The narrator is passionately in love with a young Italian man, Giovanni, yet he is also engaged to Hella, an American woman with whom he can live a "socially acceptable" life. On a deeper level, the novel is a study of the loneliness that comes with an absence of self-acceptance.

January 8, 2013 (the second Tuesday of the month): "Dark Reflections" novel by Samuel Delaney

Delany's novel is a biography, in reverse, of a poet we see at three stages in life. In the first part, a decrepit writer is dining with his young editor; in the second, a middle-aged groom searches for sex in a public restroom on his wedding night; in the third, a college boy falls in love. All three characters are Arnold Hawley, who lives in the vividly described East Village. Arnold's triple minority status as gay, black, and a poet inspires Delany's finely nuanced meditation on the challenges and the changing roles faced by society's outsiders in his most masterfully written novel.

Here is the list of books we're considering reading.

The complete list of our discussion group appears below. The upcoming books also appear at the end of the list.

1994
"The Culture of Desire," Frank Browning
"The Well of Loneliness," Radcliff Hall
"Conduct Unbecoming," Randy Shilts
"A Place at the Table," Bruce Bawer
"Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold," E. Kennedy & M. Davis
"Dancing on Tisha B'av," Lev Raphael and "The Bar Stories," Nisa Donnelly
"A Smile in His Lifetime," Joseph Hansen
"Stone Butch Blues," Leslie Feinberg
"My Father and Myself," J. R. Ackerley
"Giovanni's Room," James Baldwin
"Cherry Grove, Fire Island," Esther Newton

1995
"The Motion of Light in Water," Samuel Delany
"Dancer From the Dance," Andrew Holleran
"Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," Gertrude Stein
"Swimming Pool Library," Alan Hollingshurst
"Jeb and Dash: A Diary of Gay Life, 1918-1945," Ina Russell," ed.
"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," John Berendt
"Before Night Falls," Renaldo Arenas
"Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter," M. Nava and R. Dawidoff
"A Different Life," James Merrill
"Becoming a Man," Paul Monette
"Chamber Music," Doris Grumbach

1996
"Weekend," Peter Cameron
"New York Gay History: 1890-1940," George Chauncey
"Empathy," Sarah Schulman
"Maurice," E. M. Forester
"Martin and John," Dale Peck
"Closet Case," Robert Rodi
"Virtually Normal," Andrew Sullivan
"Flesh and Blood," Michael Cunningham
"The Folding Star," Alan Hollinghurst
"Virtual Equality," Urvashi Vaid
"Skinned Alive," Edmund White

1997
"Torsos," John Peyton Cooke
"Angels in America," Tony Kushner
"The Boys on the Rock," John Fox
"Stranger Among Friends," David Mixner
"User," Bruce Benderson and "City of Night," John Rechy
"Midlife Queer," Martin Duberman
"While England Sleeps," David Leavitt
"Eighty-sixed," David Feinberg
"Wonderbread and Ecstasy," Charles Isherwood and "Love Junky," Robert Plunket
"Rise and Fall of Gay Culture," Daniel Harris
"Gay Spirit," Mark Thompson," ed.
"Sea of Tranquility," Paul Russell

1998
"Stuck Rubber Baby," Howard Cruise
"Celluloid Closet," Vito Russo
"Movie Lover," Richard Friedel
"Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall," Neil Bartlett
"Life is Not a Dress Rehearsal," David Brodney
"American Studies," Mark Merlis
"Mysterious Skin," Scott Heim
"Easy Way Out," Stephen McCauley
"Sexual Ecology," Gabriel Rotello
"Funny Boy," Shyam Selvaduri
"Gossip," Christopher Bram
"Billy Budd," Herman Melville and "Frisk," Dennis Cooper

1999
"Palimpsest," Gore Vidal
"How Proust Can Change Your Life," Alain de Botton
"Querelle," Jean Genet
"Dreyfus Affair," Peter Lefcourt
"Berlin Stories," Christopher Isherwood
"Life Outside," Michaelangelo Signorelle
"To the Lighthouse," Virginia Woolf
"Don't Get Me Started," Kate Clinton
"The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up," Andrew Tobias
"Kiss of the Spider Woman," Manuel Puig
"The Other Side of Silence," John Loughery
"Confessions of a Mask," Yukio Mishima

2000
"The Hours," Michael Cunningham
"My Life with Noel Coward," Graham Payn
"Was," Geoff Ryman
"Sacred Lips of the Bronx," Douglas Sadownick
"Young Man from the Provinces," Alan Helms
"Farewell Symphony," Edmund White
"Cities of the Plain," Marcel Proust
"Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams," Lyle Leverich
"The Lost Language of Cranes," David Leavitt
"Brideshead Revisited," Evelyn Waugh

2001
"The Coming Storm," Paul Russell
"The Turn of the Screw," Henry James
"Allan Stein," Matthew Stadler
"The Spell," Alan Hollinghurst
"The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of ID," Daniel Mendelsohn
"Original Story by: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood," Arthur Laurents
"An Arrow's Flight," Mark Merlis
"The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles
"Endangered Species," Louis Bayard
"The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes," Christopher Bram
"Love Speaks Its Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems," J.D. McClatchy (ed.)

2002
"Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris," Edmund White
"Intimate Companions: George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, and Lincoln Kirstein," David Leddick
"The Night Listener," Armistead Maupin
"Autobiography of Red," Anne Carson
"The Golden Age," Gore Vidal
"The World of Normal Boys," K. M. Soehnlein
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," Michael Chabon
"Lies: A Diary (1986-1999)," Ned Rorem
"Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement," Clendinen and Nagourney
"Ravelstein," Saul Bellow
"Death in Venice," Thomas Mann

2003
"Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969," William Mann
"The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression," Andrew Solomon
"True Enough," Stephen McCauley
"Other Voices, Other Rooms," Truman Capote
"Edinburgh," Alexander Chee
"Price of Salt," Patricia Highsmith
"Fingersmith," Sarah Waters
"Running with Scissors," Augusten Burroughs
"The City of Your Final Destination," Peter Cameron
"The Long Firm," Jake Arnott

2004
"The Soul beneath the Skin: The Unseen Hearts and Habits of Gay Men," David Nimmons
"The Picture of Dorian Gray," Oscar Wilde
"The Danish Girl," David Ebershoff
"Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi," Salam Pax
"Leaves of Grass," Walt Whitman
"City of Night," John Rechy
"Middlesex," Jeffrey Eugenides
"Women in Love", D. H. Lawrence
"The Married Man," Edmund White
"The Book of Salt," Monique Truong

2005
"Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books," Azar Nafisi
"The Invention of Love," Tom Stoppard and "A Shropshire Lad," A. E. Housman
"Dorian: An Imitation," Will Self
"War Against the Animals," Paul Russell
"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "A Streetcar Named Desire," Tennessee Williams
"Lives of the Circus Animals," Christopher Bram
"The Master," Colm Toibin
"The Immoralist" and "Corydon," Andre Gide
"Three Junes," Julia Glass
"A Single Man" and "Prater Violet," Christopher Isherwood

2006
"The Line of Beauty," Alan Hollinghurst
"Less Than Zero," Bret Easton Ellis
"The Bostonians," Henry James
"Myra Breckinridge " by Gore Vidal
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain and the essay "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!" by Leslie Fiedler
"Eustace Chisholm and the Works" by James Purdy
"Our Lady of the Flowers" by Jean Genet
"The Beauty of Men" by Andrew Holleran
"The Blackwater Lightship " by Colm Toibin
"Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" by Allison Bechdel

2007
"Speciman Days" by Michael Cunningham
"Pilgrim Hawk" and "A Visit to Priapus" by Glenway Wescott
"Acqua Calda" by Keith McDermott
"The Confusions of Young Torless" (or "Young Torless") by Robert Musil
"The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln" by C. A. Tripp
"Late and Soon" by Robert J. Hughes
"Moby Dick" by Herman Melville
"My Lives: A Memoir" by Edmund White
Poetry by C. P Cavafy
"The Member of the Wedding" and "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" by Carson McCullers

2008
"Christopher and His Kind" by Christopher Isherwood
"Stretching My Mind: Collected Essays of Edward Albee" by Edward Albee
"Nightwood" by Djuna Barnes
"Falconer" by John Cheever
"The Exquisite Corpse" by Alfred Chester
"Night Watch" by Sarah Waters
"Grief" by Andrew Holleran
"Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches" by Audre Lorde
"Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice" by Janet Malcolm

2009
"Hotel de Dream" by Edmund White
"Fellow Travelers" by Thomas Mallon
"Selected Poems" by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson
"In the City of Shy Hunters" by Tom Spanbauer
"Call Me By Your Name" by Andre Aciman
"The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein" by Martin Duberman
"Exiles in America" by Christopher Bram
"The Indian Clerk" by David Leavitt
"Mothers and Sons" by Colm Toibin

2010
"The Carnivorous Lamb" by Agustin Gomez-Arcos
"Not Without Laughter" by Langston Hughes
"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guin
"Cakes and Ale" by W. Somerset Maugham
"Selected Poems" by Frank O'Hara
"A Perfect Waiter" by Alain Claude Sulzer
"Sexing the Cherry" by Jeanette Winterson
"Lake Overturn" by Vestal MacIntyre
"The Skin of Our Teeth" by Thornton Wilder

2011
"Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson" by Nigel Nicolson
"The Conversion" by Joseph Olshan
The poetry of Fredrico Garcia Lorca
"Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Truman Capote
"Great Speeches on Gay Rights" edited by James Daley
"The Counerfeiters" by Andre Gide
"Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel" by Edmund White
"Funeral Rites" by Jean Genet
"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

2012
January 3: "Selected Poems" by James Merrill (edited by McClatchy and Yenser)
February 7: "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg
March 6: "By Nightfall" by Michael Cunningham
April 3: "Edward II" by Christopher Marlowe
May 1: "Blithe Spirit," "Hay Fever," and "Private Lives" by Noel Coward
June, July, and August: no meetings
September 11 (the second Tuesday of the month): "Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward" by Justin Spring
October 2: "Blue Boy" by Rakesh Satyal
November 6 (Election day): "In a Strange Room" by Damon Galgut
December 4: "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin

2012
January 8, 2013 (the second Tuesday of the month): "Dark Reflections" by Samuel Delaney