Last Friday, author Perry Moore was found dead in his West Village apartment: “Perry Moore Dies at 39.” He was best known as a producer for the Chronicles of Narnia series, but he also wrote the award-winning YA superhero novel HERO, which was expected to sprout a sequel.
I loved Moore’s account of what inspired him to write the novel. In a 2007 NYT’s article, he explained that he was so affected by Marvel Comics’ decision to kill off NorthStar, the only gay character in the X-men series (or elsewhere), he undertook a one man social action, inserting post-it notes into bookstand comics with messages like: “Can a superhero be gay?” and “Ask yourself: Equal Rights?”
His novel was a more conventional endeavor to change the comic industry’s portrayal of gays. A self-described lifelong comic ‘geek,’ Moore especially wanted his book to reach young readers, struggling to come out, as he once was himself.
HERO was published in 2007, but I just caught up with it last summer. It was at first a wee difficult for me to get into—not being a fan of comic-genre zaniness—but the sweet coming out story at its center, and equally sweet romance sub-plot, won me over. I also appreciated that the superhero Thom Creed is a jock with a decidedly non-jockish power: he can heal wounds and mend broken bones by touch. Subverting the hetero, masculine archetype makes me smile.
The other news that caught my interest this week is international, mega-bookseller Borders filing for bankruptcy and announcing the closure of 30 percent of its stores.
For several years, Borders has been in steady decline, for many reasons, given balance in MSNBC.com’s “Borders’ Loss May Be Others’ Gain in Book Wars.” Michael Norris, an industry analyst, calls Borders’ string of market and management-related wounds a case of “Murder on the Orient Express.”
At first glance, it’s the story of ‘brick and mortar’ booksellers being unable to compete with on-line sales and e-products, dynamics that were factors, but there’s also the impact of the economic downturn on retailers generally to consider. And some have pointed to the company’s ineffective business model, such as this interesting perspective by former employee Giles Hash.
What does this mean for authors? Not much, and everything seem to be the popular answers.
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and independent bookstores shouldn’t have much of a problem picking up Borders’ customers. Print sales are declining, but e-books are exploding. How much the latter compensates for the former is a question I was unable to answer from my one week research stint. It’s clear that profit margins are lower for e-publishing, but many e-books are share-protected, leading (possibly?) to more individual readers making purchases.
The undisputed losers are the publishers. Some are owed as much as 40 million by Borders, and with their debtor in bankruptcy, they might be lucky to recoup two-thirds of their debt. Sucks for them, and the impact trickles down—fewer and lower advances for authors, greater risk aversion, and an increased burden on authors to promote their books. Though these trends have been in play for quite awhile.
Finally, the biggest joy of running a website is receiving fan mail, most of which, it turns out, comes with hyperlinks to male enhancement pills and creams. Here’s an unexpected treat from last week, in response to my post on Groundhog Day.
“I just installed an in-wall computer in my bathroom with a pull out keyboard tray and, with all do respect, this is the first blog I read while taking a number 2. This is getting bookmarked because it will always have a place in my heart, and bathroom. Thanks for the great read.”
Thank you, “Darline.” Glad to be of service.
If it’s working for Sebastian Bach, I figured, maybe it could work for me.
Sebastian Bach being the heavy metal blond ultra-hottie of Skid Row fame. Few people get my infatuation with him, since—among his self-destructive public antics—he once wore a t-shirt on stage with the slogan: AIDS Kills Fags Dead. Pretty outrageously offensive for sure, so why do I still dig the guy? I’m not self-loathing, and I’m not particularly forgiving of celebrity homophobia. For example, I wasn’t especially impressed by retractions from Shia Labeouf and Andre Agassi when each of them committed similarly hateful PR. Call me a hypocrite, or shallow. But to Bach’s credit, he has repeatedly apologized for having made a dumb decision—metal heads do grow up—and he’s made good by donating money to AIDS charities through his participation in Broadway Cares.
So you can now follow my hypocritical, or shallow, musings on Twitter, where it’s a race to see who can come up with the most to say. Or, more to the point, it’s a race to see who can come up with anything worthwhile to say. I make no promises about my own tweets.
I’m following about three dozen tweeters. Some are related to my literary interests or the publishing biz. Others keep me informed about my favorite not-for-profit organizations like the ACLU and Amnesty International. I try to keep my celebrity crushes in check, but I couldn’t resist following Criss Angel, Trent Reznor and Dr. Drew plus, of course, Sebastian Bach. Back next Wednesday with (hopefully) a more substantive post.
For now, I will leave you with some inspiring lyrics.
Tequila in his heartbeat,
His veins burned gasoline,
It kept his motor running,
But it never kept him clean.
They say he loved adventure,
“Ricky’s the wild one.”
He married trouble and had a courtship with a gun.
Bang Bang Shoot ’em up,
The party never ends.
You can’t think of dying when the bottle’s your best friend.
~
from “18 and Life” by David Sabo and Rachel Bolan Soundworth
Revising my novel has taken me through many days of re-reading what I wrote, aftershocks of beta reader feedback, soul-searching, re-drafting an outline, and now, gently putting new words down on the page.
I’ve realized what I also need to do is to get clearer in my head (and then the pages) my portrayal of male/male relationships in the fantasy world wherein the action takes place.
Of course, I have some liberties with fantasy. I could create a world with far-flung notions of male sexuality. But the story is also re-told myth, with an ancient world–predominantly–pre-Hellenic sensibility. Thus, there’s some squaring to be done with what we know about the ancient Greece.
There are common misunderstandings about the attitudes and practices surrounding male sexuality in ancient Greece. On the surface, the society tends to be associated with rampant homosexuality, portrayed in parody and snarky comments–“Oh, you know what the Greeks were like…”
Earlier in my career, I facilitated anti-homophobia workshops. One of my most memorable experiences was when I presented in front of a group of teachers, during the segment of the workshop on cultural relativism, cross-cultural and cross-historical attitudes toward homosexuality. A young teacher, watching me intently and nodding his head along for quite some time, raised his hand and asked, with full sincerity, “Didn’t the ancient Greeks support gay marriage?”
The answer, of course, was no, certainly not as we understand “gay marriage” today.
From a modern viewpoint, many of the artistic relics–naked men on vase paintings, the kouros (idols of male beauty), and depictions of the phallus–make it seem like a society obsessed with the male form, hence, obviously very gay. This leads to a misinterpretation of male sexuality and gender roles of the time. In actuality, ancient Greek society was highly patriarchal, with segregated roles for men and women. Men ruled the public realm. Women were the keepers of the home. The idealized man was strong, fearless and dominant. Effeminacy was ridiculed such that a man’s reputation could be ruined if he was called out as “acting like a woman.”
Thus the abundant visual depictions of men are better understood as a reflection of male-centrism politically and culturally. The naked male image was not meant to arouse, generally.
Still, there were nuances. Whereas many patriarchal societies enforce a heterosexual imperative, at least in public life, in ancient Greece, exclusive heterosexuality was not a requirement of male privilege. Many of the most powerful, respected, celebrated men of the time engaged in sex with other men, particularly during the pre-Hellenic era when same-sex pairings were a widespread tradition, at least among the upper class. The context of male/male relationships was what mattered.
Most of what we know about homosexuality at the time comes from artwork and literature depicting the specific practice of ‘paiderastia,’ which involved discrete roles for the older, more experienced partner, the ‘erastes,’ and his younger, typically adolescent lover, the ‘eromenos.’ Such relationships had social, educational and/or political components, vis-a-vis a tutor and his pupil or a noble man and a youth from lesser aristocratic family. In some cases, these sort of couplings began with rituals similar to a marriage—the presentation of gifts (dowry) to the eromenos, animal sacrifices and feasts. The eromenos could choose whether or not to accept the offer of his erastes, unlike girls who rarely had say in who they married.
I’d love to know more about peer-to-peer homosexual relationships of the time, which certainly happened, but are hard to turn up in the literature. Likely, they were less socially sanctioned since they conferred none of the advantages that were prized at the time: child-bearing or status advancement.
A Fat Groundhog
A post on the groundhog, in honor of our most under-celebrated holiday.
(I didn’t get the day off from work.)
This curious little holiday inspired a search for trivia. Such as, did you know that Groundhog Day derives from the celebration of Imbolc, the traditional Gaelic Irish nameday for the first day of Spring? I didn’t even know that a groundhog is the same thing as a woodchuck, and I certainly didn’t know that woodchuck comes from the Algonquin name for the animal ‘wuchak,’ and not from the fact that it likes to gnaw on wood. (It doesn’t. That’s a beaver.)
I could go on, and I will go on.
Famous Groundhogs
We all know about Punxsutawney Phil, who was immortalized in the Bill Murray film “Groundhog Day.” But there’s also Wiarton Willie, an albino groundhog that lived to age 22 (d. 1999), and was immortalized as a beloved statue in his hometown: Wiarton, Ontario. There’s General Beauregard Lee, a southern gentleman groundhog, who has received honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Georgia AND Georgia State University.
There’s also a famous groundhog from Staten Island with the (lame) name Staten Island Chuck. He just predicted an early spring while New York City is reeling from a record-breaking winter snowfall. Uh-huh.
Groundhog Poetry
Groundhogs have been inspiring poets for centuries. Here’s a strangely gory, but moving, and, somehow, epic ode by American poet Richard Ghormley Eberhardt.
THE GROUNDHOG
~
In June, amid the golden fields,
I saw a groundhog lying dead.
Dead lay he; my senses shook,
And mind outshot our naked frailty.
~
There lowly in the vigorous summer
His form began its senseless change,
And made my senses waver dim
Seeing nature ferocious in him.
~
Inspecting close maggots’ might
And seething cauldron of his being,
Half with loathing, half with a strange love,
I poked him with an angry stick.
~
The fever arose, became a flame
And Vigour circumscribed the skies,
Immense energy in the sun,
And through my frame a sunless trembling.
~
My stick had done nor good nor harm.
Then stood I silent in the day
Watching the object, as before;
And kept my reverence for knowledge
~
Trying for control, to be still,
To quell the passion of the blood;
Until I had bent down on my knees
Praying for joy in the sight of decay.
~
And so I left; and I returned
In Autumn strict of eye, to see
The sap gone out of the groundhog,
But the bony sodden hulk remained
~
But the year had lost its meaning,
And in intellectual chains
I lost both love and loathing,
Mured up in the wall of wisdom.
~
Another summer took the fields again
Massive and burning, full of life,
But when I chanced upon the spot
There was only a little hair left,
~
And bones bleaching in the sunlight
Beautiful as architecture;
I watched them like a geometer,
And cut a walking stick from a birch.
~
It has been three years, now.
There is no sign of the groundhog.
I stood there in the whirling summer,
My hand capped a withered heart,
~
And thought of China and of Greece,
Of Alexander in his tent;
Of Montaigne in his tower,
Of Saint Theresa in her wild lament.
Groundhog websites
Yes, there’s a site called Groundhog Day Literature, that says its sponsored by the “International Rodent Society.” There’s some middling lyrics—noted, instructionally: “to be recited or sung with gusto!”—-and a Groundhog Day haiku.