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Franny, the Queen of Provincetown: A Novel
Franny is every hero of the gay liberation movement rolled together in one big, wonderful, brightly dressed drag queen. With genuine caring and concern for "her boys," Franny looks after the gay men of Provincetown with the ultimate goal of making a place in the world for those who don't belong and making the world better for all.
102 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
189 people want to read
About the author
John Preston
51 books76 followersJohn Preston wrote and edited gay erotica, fiction, and nonfiction.
He grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts, later living in a number of major American cities before settling in Portland, Maine in 1979. A writer of fiction and nonfiction, dealing mostly with issues in gay life, he was a pioneer in the early gay rights movement in Minneapolis. He helped found one of the earliest gay community centers in the United States, edited two newsletters devoted to sexual health, and served as editor of The Advocate in 1975.
He was the author or editor of nearly fifty books, including such erotic landmarks as Mr. Benson and I Once Had a Master and Other Tales of Erotic Love. Other works include Franny, the Queen of Provincetown (first a novel, then adapted for stage), The Big Gay Book: A Man's Survival Guide for the Nineties, Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS, and Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong.
Preston's writing (which he described as pornography) was part of a movement in the 1970s and 1980s toward higher literary quality in gay erotic fiction. Preston was an outspoken advocate of the artistic and social worth of erotic writings, delivering a lecture at Harvard University entitled My Life as a Pornographer. The lecture was later published in an essay collection with the same name. The collection includes Preston's thoughts about the gay leather community, to which he belonged. His writings caused controversy when he was one of several gay and lesbian authors to have their books confiscated at the border by Canada Customs. Testimony regarding the literary merit of his novel I Once Had a Master helped a Vancouver LGBT bookstore, Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, to partially win a case against Canada Customs in the Canadian Supreme Court in 2000. Preston also brought gay erotic fiction to mainstream readers by editing the Flesh and the Word anthologies for a major press.
Preston served as a journalist and essayist throughout his life. He wrote news articles for Drummer and other gay magazines, produced a syndicated column on gay life in Maine, and penned a column for Lambda Book Report called "Preston on Publishing." His nonfiction anthologies, which collected essays by himself and others on everyday aspects of gay and lesbian life, won him the Lambda Literary Award and the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award. He was especially noted for his writings on New England.
Although primarily known as a gay fiction writer, Preston was also hired by a local newspaper, The Portland Chronicle, to write news articles and features about his adopted hometown of Portland. He wrote a long feature about the local monopoly newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, as well as many food articles movie reviews and other writing.
In addition, Preston wrote men's adventure novels under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam, and Jack Hilt (pen names that he shared with other authors). Taking what he had learned from authoring those books, he wrote the "Alex Kane" adventure novels about gay characters. These books, which included "Sweet Dreams," "Golden Years," and "Deadly Lies," combined action-story plots with an exploration of issues such as the problems facing gay youth.
Preston was among the first writers to popularize the genre of safe sex stories, editing a safe sex anthology entitled Hot Living in 1985. He helped to found the AIDS Project of Southern Maine. In the late 1980s, he discovered that he himself was HIV positive.
Some of his last essays, found in his nonfiction anthologies and in his posthumous collection Winter's Light, describe his struggle to come emotionally to terms with a disease that had already killed many of his friends and fellow writers.
He died of AIDS complications on April 28, 1994, aged 48, at his home in Portland. His papers are held in the Preston Archive at Brown University.
Librarian Note: There is more th
He grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts, later living in a number of major American cities before settling in Portland, Maine in 1979. A writer of fiction and nonfiction, dealing mostly with issues in gay life, he was a pioneer in the early gay rights movement in Minneapolis. He helped found one of the earliest gay community centers in the United States, edited two newsletters devoted to sexual health, and served as editor of The Advocate in 1975.
He was the author or editor of nearly fifty books, including such erotic landmarks as Mr. Benson and I Once Had a Master and Other Tales of Erotic Love. Other works include Franny, the Queen of Provincetown (first a novel, then adapted for stage), The Big Gay Book: A Man's Survival Guide for the Nineties, Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS, and Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong.
Preston's writing (which he described as pornography) was part of a movement in the 1970s and 1980s toward higher literary quality in gay erotic fiction. Preston was an outspoken advocate of the artistic and social worth of erotic writings, delivering a lecture at Harvard University entitled My Life as a Pornographer. The lecture was later published in an essay collection with the same name. The collection includes Preston's thoughts about the gay leather community, to which he belonged. His writings caused controversy when he was one of several gay and lesbian authors to have their books confiscated at the border by Canada Customs. Testimony regarding the literary merit of his novel I Once Had a Master helped a Vancouver LGBT bookstore, Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, to partially win a case against Canada Customs in the Canadian Supreme Court in 2000. Preston also brought gay erotic fiction to mainstream readers by editing the Flesh and the Word anthologies for a major press.
Preston served as a journalist and essayist throughout his life. He wrote news articles for Drummer and other gay magazines, produced a syndicated column on gay life in Maine, and penned a column for Lambda Book Report called "Preston on Publishing." His nonfiction anthologies, which collected essays by himself and others on everyday aspects of gay and lesbian life, won him the Lambda Literary Award and the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award. He was especially noted for his writings on New England.
Although primarily known as a gay fiction writer, Preston was also hired by a local newspaper, The Portland Chronicle, to write news articles and features about his adopted hometown of Portland. He wrote a long feature about the local monopoly newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, as well as many food articles movie reviews and other writing.
In addition, Preston wrote men's adventure novels under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam, and Jack Hilt (pen names that he shared with other authors). Taking what he had learned from authoring those books, he wrote the "Alex Kane" adventure novels about gay characters. These books, which included "Sweet Dreams," "Golden Years," and "Deadly Lies," combined action-story plots with an exploration of issues such as the problems facing gay youth.
Preston was among the first writers to popularize the genre of safe sex stories, editing a safe sex anthology entitled Hot Living in 1985. He helped to found the AIDS Project of Southern Maine. In the late 1980s, he discovered that he himself was HIV positive.
Some of his last essays, found in his nonfiction anthologies and in his posthumous collection Winter's Light, describe his struggle to come emotionally to terms with a disease that had already killed many of his friends and fellow writers.
He died of AIDS complications on April 28, 1994, aged 48, at his home in Portland. His papers are held in the Preston Archive at Brown University.
Librarian Note: There is more th
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
July 28, 2014
"Franny is the history of the development of the gay community." -John Preston
Now if I had come across this statement before I had embarked on reading this short novel, I might have been tempted to abandon ship immediately. Not that I'm inherently against such an impulse behind an author or artist's creative process, but in my experience when art is explicitly described in such terms my immediate impulse is to put my guard up, to expect didacticism and pedantry and "lessons"–and it is difficult not to start resisting immediately. Intentions are usually good, I fully admit, but it also seems to signal, well, a certain sense of limitedness that I can never quite seem to shake (I suspect this is the source of my ongoing indifference to Tony Kushner's work, for instance).
Thankfully, however, the line quoted above only appears in the "Epilogue" that concludes the Little Sister's Classics edition of Franny, the Queen of Provincetown, and by that time I had already been utterly charmed by Preston's vibrant portrait of the novella's eponymous queen and and the many ways that this so-called "funny-looking queen with a round body that looked like an oversized avocado" manages to deeply imbricate herself into the life narratives of a number of other, often younger gay men she crosses paths with. With a unique combination of deadpan wit and no-holds-barred honesty as well as a seemingly limitless capacity for empathy, Franny often nudges the men she befriends to begin accepting themselves in a hostile society that is just beginning to start to change in the wake of the Stonewall riots, and to recognize a potential in themselves that nobody else–let alone themselves–manage to see. All of these stories are conveyed in a loose, off-the-cuff style bursting with spontaneous-seeming speech intonations and endearing vernacular quirks, and if Preston indeed started with didactic intentions, the end product reads less a dutiful history lesson and more akin to thumbing through a series of snapshots that capture a particular moment and place in time with an almost documentary-like precision.
In the end, what I most liked about Franny–and was pleased to find Preston directly address this in several of the interviews that are included in the appendix to this edition–is how it celebrates the type of individuals who are the unlikely, and often unsung and/or forgotten pioneers of the modern LGBT/queer movement. Preston also notes in the Epilogue that drag queens "are usually portrayed as tragic figures in the gay world, but they were often its heroes… they are the ones who settled our first ghettos and were often the ones who brought people together." He also notes that just as there was a sudden proliferation of "evil homosexuals" as villains in mainstream culture in the 1970's and into the 80's (something persuasively documented in, say, Vitto Russo's The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies), there was also at that time "a spate of books… where it became almost mandatory for the gay male author to kill the drag queen." The character of Franny was intended to directly counter this insidious situation, and the project to reclaim the marginalized figures–particularly those that don't necessarily fit neatly into the linear and triumphant march toward full equality–that deeply resonates with me as a reader, a scholar, and perhaps most importantly, as a young queer man.
[...]
Since Franny, the Queen of Provincetown is constituted of a series of first-person fragments of text arranged almost like dramatic monologues or even as a script for a theatrical play, I will close this "review" with some thoughts I jotted down in my own journal after Pride weekend last month, which I wrote just shortly before I had picked up Preston's text. Now looking back over it, it also captures something that reminds me of Franny and seems to trace a subtle yet tangible line between what is being rather erroneously characterized as now-past but which in many ways still proliferates within the present.
Now perhaps this response lacks the type of expansive generosity that tends to characterize Franny, but one of the climactic moments in the narrative constitutes Franny's ingenious reclamation of a queer space for the benefit of the queer people who are suddenly finding themselves marginalized within it. The contexts, admittedly, might be substantially different, and yet something fundamental remains the same.
Long live Franny, and all her sisters still out there fighting the good fight even when nobody seems to be watching.
[Spending SF Pride 2014 at Aunt Charlie's, San Francisco, June 29, 2014]
[NOTE: In an effort to maintain control over my writing in light of some dubious policy implementations, I am no longer posting full reviews on Goodreads on topics connected to my scholarly interests. If you're interested in reading the full review, you can find it here on my blog, Queer Modernisms. My apologies for the annoying inconvenience.]
Now if I had come across this statement before I had embarked on reading this short novel, I might have been tempted to abandon ship immediately. Not that I'm inherently against such an impulse behind an author or artist's creative process, but in my experience when art is explicitly described in such terms my immediate impulse is to put my guard up, to expect didacticism and pedantry and "lessons"–and it is difficult not to start resisting immediately. Intentions are usually good, I fully admit, but it also seems to signal, well, a certain sense of limitedness that I can never quite seem to shake (I suspect this is the source of my ongoing indifference to Tony Kushner's work, for instance).
Thankfully, however, the line quoted above only appears in the "Epilogue" that concludes the Little Sister's Classics edition of Franny, the Queen of Provincetown, and by that time I had already been utterly charmed by Preston's vibrant portrait of the novella's eponymous queen and and the many ways that this so-called "funny-looking queen with a round body that looked like an oversized avocado" manages to deeply imbricate herself into the life narratives of a number of other, often younger gay men she crosses paths with. With a unique combination of deadpan wit and no-holds-barred honesty as well as a seemingly limitless capacity for empathy, Franny often nudges the men she befriends to begin accepting themselves in a hostile society that is just beginning to start to change in the wake of the Stonewall riots, and to recognize a potential in themselves that nobody else–let alone themselves–manage to see. All of these stories are conveyed in a loose, off-the-cuff style bursting with spontaneous-seeming speech intonations and endearing vernacular quirks, and if Preston indeed started with didactic intentions, the end product reads less a dutiful history lesson and more akin to thumbing through a series of snapshots that capture a particular moment and place in time with an almost documentary-like precision.
In the end, what I most liked about Franny–and was pleased to find Preston directly address this in several of the interviews that are included in the appendix to this edition–is how it celebrates the type of individuals who are the unlikely, and often unsung and/or forgotten pioneers of the modern LGBT/queer movement. Preston also notes in the Epilogue that drag queens "are usually portrayed as tragic figures in the gay world, but they were often its heroes… they are the ones who settled our first ghettos and were often the ones who brought people together." He also notes that just as there was a sudden proliferation of "evil homosexuals" as villains in mainstream culture in the 1970's and into the 80's (something persuasively documented in, say, Vitto Russo's The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies), there was also at that time "a spate of books… where it became almost mandatory for the gay male author to kill the drag queen." The character of Franny was intended to directly counter this insidious situation, and the project to reclaim the marginalized figures–particularly those that don't necessarily fit neatly into the linear and triumphant march toward full equality–that deeply resonates with me as a reader, a scholar, and perhaps most importantly, as a young queer man.
[...]
Since Franny, the Queen of Provincetown is constituted of a series of first-person fragments of text arranged almost like dramatic monologues or even as a script for a theatrical play, I will close this "review" with some thoughts I jotted down in my own journal after Pride weekend last month, which I wrote just shortly before I had picked up Preston's text. Now looking back over it, it also captures something that reminds me of Franny and seems to trace a subtle yet tangible line between what is being rather erroneously characterized as now-past but which in many ways still proliferates within the present.
Saturday night: Aunt Charlie's with H, J, S, and D.
Bar empty/emptier than usual at the beginning of the show; but just before the show starts a rowdy bachelorette party wearing too-tight dresses and too-high heels stumbles in and sits down directly across from us. Insistent on making the evening (of all evenings!) about them–incessant refrains of "I'm getting married, woooooooo!!!" –the queens can hardly get in a word edgewise. The first queen weakly acknowledges them ("yes, yes, congratulations"), but the next queen responds to the screeching "I'm getting maaarriiieeed!!!" with a dramatic side-eye and tart "I'm very sorry." Instant silence. The group gets up and leaves within several minutes.
Probably the only moment of the entire weekend that genuinely evoked queer pride.
Now perhaps this response lacks the type of expansive generosity that tends to characterize Franny, but one of the climactic moments in the narrative constitutes Franny's ingenious reclamation of a queer space for the benefit of the queer people who are suddenly finding themselves marginalized within it. The contexts, admittedly, might be substantially different, and yet something fundamental remains the same.
Long live Franny, and all her sisters still out there fighting the good fight even when nobody seems to be watching.
[Spending SF Pride 2014 at Aunt Charlie's, San Francisco, June 29, 2014]
[NOTE: In an effort to maintain control over my writing in light of some dubious policy implementations, I am no longer posting full reviews on Goodreads on topics connected to my scholarly interests. If you're interested in reading the full review, you can find it here on my blog, Queer Modernisms. My apologies for the annoying inconvenience.]
May 11, 2010
I loved this book and I agree with Zoe when she said "It's simple, beautifully written, and I really want Franny to be the queen of my town, so I can hang out with him". I sat on the Boston subway and in restaurants this weekend, reading this book, laughing at moments and crying in others...heartwrenching stories that make you want to reach out "to ensure that there is a place in the world for everyone who feels they do not belong".
"Franny is tribute to those who have helped so many in the current generation of gay men and women escape the prison of individual isolation"
"Franny is tribute to those who have helped so many in the current generation of gay men and women escape the prison of individual isolation"
August 10, 2020
still one of my favorite all time books. that there'd be frannys everywhere would make the world so much better.
May 29, 2011
Fantastic stuff. I could have read quite a bit more if it had been there. Loved the characters and especially the style in which the content was provided. I also thought Michael Lowenthal's introduction was helpful.
January 11, 2019
Without question, this is necessary read. Particularly the brief sequel that ends the book that brings-up-to-date Franny and her story into the age of AIDs. Powerful, trenchant, and prescient; it is incredible how contemporary the book feels. I would recommend that literally anyone read this book.
April 12, 2022
“I DO NOT CRY IN THIS HOUSE”
I frequently find fabulous treasures of queer literature in the used book section of Philly AIDS Thrift @ Giovanni’s Room. Several years ago, I discovered a copy of the 1995 St. Martin’s Press reissue of John Preston’s Franny, the Queen of Provincetown, which was originally published by Alyson in 1983. I bought it, took it home, and immediately devoured it. This 1995 edition includes a new epilogue by Preston and his working draft of a sequel titled “Franny, Isadora, & the Angels.” Soon after this, I found out that in 2005 Arsenal Pulp Press had republished this 1995 edition of Franny in their Little Sister’s Classics series. I also obtained this edition because it includes informative supplementary material.
Franny is one of those larger-than-life fictional characters who, once you have made their acquaintance, you never forget. John Preston has said that he wrote Franny in honor of the drag queens that looked out for him when he was an inexperienced young gay boy. I suspect that Preston put much of himself into the character of Franny. After Franny’s boyfriend, Jay, kills himself, Franny says: “I became hard after I lost Jay. I sure as hell was gonna do what I could to make sure there weren’t no more Jays in this world.” In 1966, Franny leaves Boston and moves into a house on Commercial Street in Provincetown.
Franny takes no prisoners in his efforts to ensure that the gay boys he takes under his wing have a fair chance in life. Franny’s boys are many. We know them, as we know Franny, only by their first names: Joel, Ted, Terry, Stevie, Mike, Alan, to name just a few. They speak to the reader, as does Franny, in monologues. Ted gives us the only physical description of Franny in the novel: “So there I am sitting with this funny-looking queen with a round body that looked like an oversized avocado.” Every character in the novel comes to know that Franny is so much more than his physical appearance.
Franny’s words of wisdom will stay with me for a long time. For instance, “Hate has to be shoved away. . . . the only way to handle it is to scream and yell and fight dirty. ‘Cause if you don’t then the hate’s goin’ to go inside you like a cancer and spread in your own soul an’ take away whatever it is that makes you wanta live.” After reading about Stonewall in the newspaper, Franny observes: “There are times when you just know that the rules’s been changed.” He has the last line of the original novel. He tells Stevie: “Don’t you ever look back. Don’t you ever.”
“Franny, Isadora, & the Angels,” the sequel, takes the story into the AIDS epidemic. Franny, with the help of Isadora, a retired black drag queen, takes in boy after boy who is dying of AIDS. Franny is brave. His hardness is resolute but it is grounded in infinite compassion. He says: “I do not cry in this house,” He also says: “When a boy comes to my house, I make him a promise. I promise him he will die in a clean bed.”
I come away from Franny, the Queen of Provincetown with some indelible images planted in my mind. One is of Franny sitting on the front porch of his house watching the young gay boys go by. Another is of Franny driving his electric golf cart through the streets of Provincetown foraging for supplies for his house full of dying boys. And I’ll never forget the devastating last scene of “Franny, Isadora, & the Angels.” No spoilers!
Why hasn’t someone made a movie of Franny, the Queen of Provincetown? It would make a magnificent period piece, but it would also be timely as hell in relation to what is going on in the United States today. Some of the powerful monologues could be spoken directly into the camera. And, of course, that wrenching final scene!
John Preston was a prolific writer and editor. His contributions to queer literature and culture are for the ages. Preston was lost to AIDS on April 28, 1995 at the age of 48.
I frequently find fabulous treasures of queer literature in the used book section of Philly AIDS Thrift @ Giovanni’s Room. Several years ago, I discovered a copy of the 1995 St. Martin’s Press reissue of John Preston’s Franny, the Queen of Provincetown, which was originally published by Alyson in 1983. I bought it, took it home, and immediately devoured it. This 1995 edition includes a new epilogue by Preston and his working draft of a sequel titled “Franny, Isadora, & the Angels.” Soon after this, I found out that in 2005 Arsenal Pulp Press had republished this 1995 edition of Franny in their Little Sister’s Classics series. I also obtained this edition because it includes informative supplementary material.
Franny is one of those larger-than-life fictional characters who, once you have made their acquaintance, you never forget. John Preston has said that he wrote Franny in honor of the drag queens that looked out for him when he was an inexperienced young gay boy. I suspect that Preston put much of himself into the character of Franny. After Franny’s boyfriend, Jay, kills himself, Franny says: “I became hard after I lost Jay. I sure as hell was gonna do what I could to make sure there weren’t no more Jays in this world.” In 1966, Franny leaves Boston and moves into a house on Commercial Street in Provincetown.
Franny takes no prisoners in his efforts to ensure that the gay boys he takes under his wing have a fair chance in life. Franny’s boys are many. We know them, as we know Franny, only by their first names: Joel, Ted, Terry, Stevie, Mike, Alan, to name just a few. They speak to the reader, as does Franny, in monologues. Ted gives us the only physical description of Franny in the novel: “So there I am sitting with this funny-looking queen with a round body that looked like an oversized avocado.” Every character in the novel comes to know that Franny is so much more than his physical appearance.
Franny’s words of wisdom will stay with me for a long time. For instance, “Hate has to be shoved away. . . . the only way to handle it is to scream and yell and fight dirty. ‘Cause if you don’t then the hate’s goin’ to go inside you like a cancer and spread in your own soul an’ take away whatever it is that makes you wanta live.” After reading about Stonewall in the newspaper, Franny observes: “There are times when you just know that the rules’s been changed.” He has the last line of the original novel. He tells Stevie: “Don’t you ever look back. Don’t you ever.”
“Franny, Isadora, & the Angels,” the sequel, takes the story into the AIDS epidemic. Franny, with the help of Isadora, a retired black drag queen, takes in boy after boy who is dying of AIDS. Franny is brave. His hardness is resolute but it is grounded in infinite compassion. He says: “I do not cry in this house,” He also says: “When a boy comes to my house, I make him a promise. I promise him he will die in a clean bed.”
I come away from Franny, the Queen of Provincetown with some indelible images planted in my mind. One is of Franny sitting on the front porch of his house watching the young gay boys go by. Another is of Franny driving his electric golf cart through the streets of Provincetown foraging for supplies for his house full of dying boys. And I’ll never forget the devastating last scene of “Franny, Isadora, & the Angels.” No spoilers!
Why hasn’t someone made a movie of Franny, the Queen of Provincetown? It would make a magnificent period piece, but it would also be timely as hell in relation to what is going on in the United States today. Some of the powerful monologues could be spoken directly into the camera. And, of course, that wrenching final scene!
John Preston was a prolific writer and editor. His contributions to queer literature and culture are for the ages. Preston was lost to AIDS on April 28, 1995 at the age of 48.
August 16, 2019
“When I walked to the head of the block and saw all those police cars, I suddenly felt as though the whole world made sense. For the first time in years there was some reason, some force, some thing standing there that made me understand. I had something to fight against for the first time.
There were police cars. There were policemen. Finally someone had the guts to tell me to go to hell instead of playing all the games and making me more confused with silence. They were real demons, not the imaginary ones. They were daring me to do something with a directness that challenged me, instead of all those whispers and sly looks that people always used to use. Franny was right when he told me I was shaking. I was shaking with this determination that I had never even known existed within me. It was as though I was a locomotive building up steam...getting ready for the big push. Here it was. This was my chance to say no to somebody. You won’t do it to me anymore.”
*
“But I hadn’t moved to Provincetown to stay in the closet. I had left a good job — a very good job — and my family and friends in Minnesota and made the trek to Cape Cod because I wanted to change my life. It boils down to one simple thing. I wanted to be gay. Not just trick on weekends and not just hang around bars. I wanted to be able to forget that there was anything special about loving men. I wanted to live someplace where it could be taken for granted. Strange, when it’s put that way. I say I wanted to be gay, but then I say what I really wanted was to forget about it.”
*
“MIKE:
It won’t make any difference if I do a thing. They aren’t going to believe me.
FRANNY:
Not unless you speak. Not unless you act. Not unless you demand they pay attention.
MIKE:
It’s not my issue. I’m young. I’m healthy.
FRANNY:
You are harmed. Your life is made less whole. There is love that you will not experience, bodies you will not touch, hope you will not know. There are lessons you won’t learn because the teachers are gone. There is wisdom that you will not receive. They have done this to you, not to someone else, but to you. You don’t have the disease you say? But there are people who think you are infected. There are people who are willing to diminish your life because of it. We all have a disease because of this plague, a disease of irresponsibility, a pestilence of avoidance.
You must not let this happen quietly. You must not allow it to happen softly. You must do something, something, anything. To be silent is to be dead. I know that. It’s the knowledge of every queen in America. We know that.”
There were police cars. There were policemen. Finally someone had the guts to tell me to go to hell instead of playing all the games and making me more confused with silence. They were real demons, not the imaginary ones. They were daring me to do something with a directness that challenged me, instead of all those whispers and sly looks that people always used to use. Franny was right when he told me I was shaking. I was shaking with this determination that I had never even known existed within me. It was as though I was a locomotive building up steam...getting ready for the big push. Here it was. This was my chance to say no to somebody. You won’t do it to me anymore.”
*
“But I hadn’t moved to Provincetown to stay in the closet. I had left a good job — a very good job — and my family and friends in Minnesota and made the trek to Cape Cod because I wanted to change my life. It boils down to one simple thing. I wanted to be gay. Not just trick on weekends and not just hang around bars. I wanted to be able to forget that there was anything special about loving men. I wanted to live someplace where it could be taken for granted. Strange, when it’s put that way. I say I wanted to be gay, but then I say what I really wanted was to forget about it.”
*
“MIKE:
It won’t make any difference if I do a thing. They aren’t going to believe me.
FRANNY:
Not unless you speak. Not unless you act. Not unless you demand they pay attention.
MIKE:
It’s not my issue. I’m young. I’m healthy.
FRANNY:
You are harmed. Your life is made less whole. There is love that you will not experience, bodies you will not touch, hope you will not know. There are lessons you won’t learn because the teachers are gone. There is wisdom that you will not receive. They have done this to you, not to someone else, but to you. You don’t have the disease you say? But there are people who think you are infected. There are people who are willing to diminish your life because of it. We all have a disease because of this plague, a disease of irresponsibility, a pestilence of avoidance.
You must not let this happen quietly. You must not allow it to happen softly. You must do something, something, anything. To be silent is to be dead. I know that. It’s the knowledge of every queen in America. We know that.”
November 4, 2024
I was fortunate to read a later 1995 edition of this book. John Preston had just died and the book was reedited to add a few more chapters on the effect of AIDS on Franny and the P- town community. This brought this wonderful book full cycle with Franny's heroics. I only know the author from his erotica like "Mr. Benson" which I read years ago but this was a wonderful surprise. Franny, who didn't take any abuse from anyone is a true heroine, pre and post AIDS. I would highly recommend reading this book in the later additions.
January 13, 2024
Franny is to know what love is, to truly care for someone or a community unconditionally.
Franny is the heart and soul image of the queer community, who lifted its people up and helped through its darkest moments, to shine light on its beauty, and care for its memebers so that they may thrive and be courageous for the next.
I feel so fortunate to find this gem of a book. It is one whose words and stories will stay with me forever.
Franny is the heart and soul image of the queer community, who lifted its people up and helped through its darkest moments, to shine light on its beauty, and care for its memebers so that they may thrive and be courageous for the next.
I feel so fortunate to find this gem of a book. It is one whose words and stories will stay with me forever.
August 18, 2025
I'm extremely interested in the lore/relations between queer writers during the AIDs epidemic. The introduction to this book was honestly my favorite part because it shed light on this topic, the tension John Preston brought with his gaudy sex forward writing amidst the polished Violet Quill crowd. The differnce, John Preston was writing with a GOOD and pure purpose! Now, was the writing good... debatable... but the HEART is there.
June 18, 2024
The story behind Franny and John Preston is as special as the novel in itself. The lack of physical description of Franny reinforcers how important and significant of a presents, an aura the Queen of Provincetown is. I would recommend this to everyone. The story is strong, Franny is strong. Following the impact she had on everyone she encountered.
March 10, 2019
Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a Franny in every town and every village and every city...added to my short list of my all-time favorite books. Franny is an unapologetic queen with a heart of gold.
December 14, 2017
I loved this book. Summed up the slogan, "We're here, we're queer. Get over it.", very nicely. I enjoyed reading the history in this edition.
April 30, 2024
Actually so lovely and special and delightful. I love being gay and I love Massachusetts
December 16, 2016
4.0 of 5 stars – A Sweet Little Gem About the Recent (Gay) Past.
I love gay historicals, and this was a light and enlightening visit to the recent past, scattered throughout with gems of wisdom and care. And making this all the more poignant, as I was reading this, Lady Chablis passed away, a symbol of those times.
This was self-described by John Preston as "one of the first gay male novels [1983] to present itself as such." And I'd add: especially concerning its topic - having a drag queen as a gay heroine and pioneer, rather than a tragic figure, during the 60s and 70s, with a later segment added later spanning the early AIDs era.
Preston made the title character sound so real, as if there actually had been a queen of P-town; but actually it was a composite of, and in a way an homage to, all those wonderful ladies, and not just those in P-town. It was grand that Preston showed this world in such brilliance.
Preston told his story in the form of vignettes spoken in the first person (which made it feel all the more personal) from alternating POVs (which gave it a layered perspective). These were generally phrased nicely in their own styles of speaking, particularly capturing that of drag queens. But at times, it was hard to hear the distinctive voices across the different storytellers. Still, each vignette was like a cozy conversation, usually with Franny and a friend, as if you've just sat down with them, each sharing and telling their part of the story.
Some of the most endearing parts were Franny's insights and bits of wisdom throughout - about gay life and death, love and loss, abuse, survival, coming out, and ultimately, self-acceptance.
- in the 60's, about being uncloseted: "Strange, I wanted to be gay, but what I really wanted was to be able to forget about it" (as if there was nothing special or different about it).
- "Everyone should know that his picture is over someone's mantel."
As an interesting backstory, this was Preston's first and last book - the latter adding a second part that was only a working draft when he died of AIDS in 1994, but complete enough for the editors to fulfill his wishes and include in the 1995 edition that I read, and which really did add substantive quality to the read. (btw, I understand the 2005 edition also includes some interesting supplementary material).
For me, this had the feel of a cult classic for gays in Provincetown at that time. It made me wonder how many of these little gems are out there, but haven't yet been unearthed. In fact, I found this at a book exchange at the Center on Addison, a GLBTQ Senior Center in Chicago; and I'm glad I discovered this diamond in the rough.
I love gay historicals, and this was a light and enlightening visit to the recent past, scattered throughout with gems of wisdom and care. And making this all the more poignant, as I was reading this, Lady Chablis passed away, a symbol of those times.
This was self-described by John Preston as "one of the first gay male novels [1983] to present itself as such." And I'd add: especially concerning its topic - having a drag queen as a gay heroine and pioneer, rather than a tragic figure, during the 60s and 70s, with a later segment added later spanning the early AIDs era.
Preston made the title character sound so real, as if there actually had been a queen of P-town; but actually it was a composite of, and in a way an homage to, all those wonderful ladies, and not just those in P-town. It was grand that Preston showed this world in such brilliance.
Preston told his story in the form of vignettes spoken in the first person (which made it feel all the more personal) from alternating POVs (which gave it a layered perspective). These were generally phrased nicely in their own styles of speaking, particularly capturing that of drag queens. But at times, it was hard to hear the distinctive voices across the different storytellers. Still, each vignette was like a cozy conversation, usually with Franny and a friend, as if you've just sat down with them, each sharing and telling their part of the story.
Some of the most endearing parts were Franny's insights and bits of wisdom throughout - about gay life and death, love and loss, abuse, survival, coming out, and ultimately, self-acceptance.
- in the 60's, about being uncloseted: "Strange, I wanted to be gay, but what I really wanted was to be able to forget about it" (as if there was nothing special or different about it).
- "Everyone should know that his picture is over someone's mantel."
As an interesting backstory, this was Preston's first and last book - the latter adding a second part that was only a working draft when he died of AIDS in 1994, but complete enough for the editors to fulfill his wishes and include in the 1995 edition that I read, and which really did add substantive quality to the read. (btw, I understand the 2005 edition also includes some interesting supplementary material).
For me, this had the feel of a cult classic for gays in Provincetown at that time. It made me wonder how many of these little gems are out there, but haven't yet been unearthed. In fact, I found this at a book exchange at the Center on Addison, a GLBTQ Senior Center in Chicago; and I'm glad I discovered this diamond in the rough.
December 16, 2016
As thin as she may be, Franny has some meat on her bones!
Franny is far from the vapid gay romance I was expecting. It is poignant, funny and gives us a snapshot of history that America would have us believe never happened. It exposes the dark underbelly of America's treatment of gays.
Before there were pride parades galore and the "Will and Grace acceptance of gays," there was the AIDS epidemic and "gay erasure" from mainstream culture. Franny is a reminder to queer-identifying people (GLBTQIA) to stay vigilant against the cultural assault of our gay existence. That erasure has always been lurking beneath the surface, and won't go away anytime soon!
This edition could stand even further editing, and the frequent character switches are sometimes hard to follow at the start; but the novel itself is so brief that those trespasses can be forgiven. The novel reads more like a script than anything else most times, being more theatrical in presentation, the way the characters take turns delivering inner monologues.
I can't stress enough how much I appreciated the empowerment themes, which didn't feel contrived to me. Franny is important for the moments in history it captures, that might otherwise be glossed over by future generations, and forgotten. This novella is a searing reminder of the adversity queer people faced just a couple of decades ago. The privilege of something as simple as dancing close to each other in a nightclub is taken for granted by younger generations of GLBTQIA identifying people. Just dancing with the person you love would get you hauled off to jail a couple of generations ago.
For some reason that concept stuck with me after reading Franny. You could be arrested for dancing with another man in a place as progressive as Boston, in a state as liberal as Massachusetts, which was the first state to allow gay marriage. For that especially, I give this 4 1/4 stars.
Franny is far from the vapid gay romance I was expecting. It is poignant, funny and gives us a snapshot of history that America would have us believe never happened. It exposes the dark underbelly of America's treatment of gays.
Before there were pride parades galore and the "Will and Grace acceptance of gays," there was the AIDS epidemic and "gay erasure" from mainstream culture. Franny is a reminder to queer-identifying people (GLBTQIA) to stay vigilant against the cultural assault of our gay existence. That erasure has always been lurking beneath the surface, and won't go away anytime soon!
This edition could stand even further editing, and the frequent character switches are sometimes hard to follow at the start; but the novel itself is so brief that those trespasses can be forgiven. The novel reads more like a script than anything else most times, being more theatrical in presentation, the way the characters take turns delivering inner monologues.
I can't stress enough how much I appreciated the empowerment themes, which didn't feel contrived to me. Franny is important for the moments in history it captures, that might otherwise be glossed over by future generations, and forgotten. This novella is a searing reminder of the adversity queer people faced just a couple of decades ago. The privilege of something as simple as dancing close to each other in a nightclub is taken for granted by younger generations of GLBTQIA identifying people. Just dancing with the person you love would get you hauled off to jail a couple of generations ago.
For some reason that concept stuck with me after reading Franny. You could be arrested for dancing with another man in a place as progressive as Boston, in a state as liberal as Massachusetts, which was the first state to allow gay marriage. For that especially, I give this 4 1/4 stars.
July 21, 2015
Good book, the ending of the original book gave me chills, really enjoyed it. The second book is good too, but in a different way. The first book brings it all to a sense of self and internal happiness that I think is really the key to human existence. The second book misses a bit shy of that mark as Preston was too involved in living the experience to be able to look that far out of it. A little something was missing, the element that Larry Kramer brought so well in The Normal Heart, the tying the whole thing back to ourselves. But I understand it's hard to achieve Nirvana in the trenches.
Read
November 20, 2010I like this book at first, but then it became too much of a fable.
July 9, 2012
Loved this book. Will highly recommend it.
August 25, 2012
Touching story of being human.
April 10, 2017
John Preston has created in Franny a character we all can identify with. We all know a Franny and we all are thankful for her.
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