Gay American Novels, 1870-1970: A Reader's Guide

by Drewey Wayne Gunn

Examining the development of gay American fiction and providing an essential reading list, this literary survey covers 257 works--novels, novellas, a graphic story cycle and a narrative poem--in which gay and bisexual male characters play a major role. Iconic works, such as James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, are included, along with titles not given attention by earlier surveys, such as Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring, Dashiel Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, Julian Green's Each in His Darkness, Ursula Zilinsky's Middle Ground and David Plante's The Ghost of Henry James. Chronological entries discuss each work's plot, significance for gay identity, and publication history, along with a brief biography of the author.

201 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 4, 2016

Reviews

[Emilie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had heard of more of these authors than those listed in Gay Novels of Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, 1881-1981: A Reader's Guide, and read a few of the books. Others certainly seem worth searching out. I think I'll skip the ones where a sympathetic gay character is killed off at the end, and the ones where the gay character is the villain, but that's just me. There were a number of books that didn't go that way. There were more typos than I expected from an academic book, but they didn't interfere with my understanding of the text. Recommended to my friends on the Gay Book Forum and others interested in the topic.