From the ‘Ya-Better-Read-Dis-One’ file, Chicago’s Mayor Daley and his library commissioner, Mary Dempsey, announced that the newest selection for the city-wide book club, One Book, One Chicago, is James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, according to the Chicago Tribune (March 14). The book explores racism, religion and parent-child relationships, but the openly gay Baldwin later wrote books such as Giovanni’s Room, which dealt with homosexuality.
The bisexual daughter of bisexual author Alice Walker has a book of her own, Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence. Rebecca Walker, who is famously estranged from her mother, seems to be planning to be controversial: One of the main ideas in the new book is her thesis that adoptive parents simply cannot love their children as much as full biological parents can love theirs. (Is this some sort of subtle dig about gay adoption? One hopes not.) The younger Ms. Walker has renounced her Jewishness, her whiteness (being biracial) and declined to give her male partner’s full name in her book, as reported in the New York Times (March 18).
From the ‘Taken-Out-And-Put-Back-In’ file, the New York Times (March 17) reviews a revival of the 1953 play Tea and Sympathy. Robert Anderson, the playwright, centered the action around a sensitive teenage boy who is considered gay because he likes the company of women instead of the rough, tough guys on the sports teams. (??!) The plot reveals that he is not gay and, importantly, the play was not anti-gay. Made into a movie, all the subtle sexual background was removed, leaving a royal mess. The revival plays as originally written.
Vanity Fair (April ’07) touts one of its own: The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman, as edited by Stephen Pascal. Lerman, a longtime editor of both Vogue and Vanity Fair, was the gay party host whose soirees even divas and superstars panted to be invited to. Thirteen years after Lerman’s death, his secretary, Pascal, has translated his boss’ spiky purple handwriting and given a view to a man who was himself a cultural landmark whose fabulous get-togethers were attended by the likes of Auden, Capote, Dietrich, Nureyev and Callas. (Notice the gay/straight ratio there.) Lerman ‘saw and heard everything,’ was perceptive (saying, ‘Tennessee [Williams] was all the women he ever wrote’), kind and loving (with the journals portraying his great love, artist Gray Foy).
As predicted in this column several weeks ago, Episcopalians are thinking twice about handing out money to homophobic African Anglicans who are threatening to toss the pro-gay American church out of the Anglican communion. (New York Times, March 20). Canon James M. Rosenthal, former Chicagoan and spokesman for the Anglicans, said from London that no one yet has indicated that he will cut off funds but officials believe the contribution rate will not be the same in the future.