Dusty jackets

So I have this pile of books next to my bed I’m either not reading or not finishing. I wonder what this says about me. For example, there’s a glossy coffee table book on the “Art and Architecture of Venice”. Well it would have to be a really tiny coffee table because the book is barely the size of a generous slab of apple pie or even four chocolate brownies, if I’m to be really accurate. It’s written by Marion Kaminski and I’ll give her this, she’s very precise and detailed in her cataloguing of the antiquities and treasures of Venice. But somehow the mystery and drama is not there. I bought it because I’m off to Venice next year to celebrate, if that’s the right word, a milestone birthday of a sibling. Never mind that we’ll be going in chilly March, celebrate we will!

But not with this book which I found at a sale – and of course now I know why it was on sale. It’s dull and predictable and a good reason not to buy books based on their price and weight. Good enough to eat, maybe, to read, no.

Then there’s “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. If I’m not mistaken it’s won some awards. However, having read about a quarter, I’m afraid it’s not winning a place on my short list (even my long list). I’m bogged down and may never get to know what happened to the various oppressed domestic workers in some southern US state. I may not even find out how the earnest young white woman, I can tell already she will be a champion of the oppressed, turns out. Do I really care? No that’s not fair. So far it’s a fine and well meaning piece of writing – after all Marian Keyes said it was “VERY courageous”. Yes the VERY is in upper case on the cover so Marian must have really meant it. Either that or the publisher has taken liberties and that would be a bit cheeky don’t you think? Marian even said she “admired” this novel. Faint praise perhaps?

A recent birthday gift was “Clicko: The Wild Dancing Bushman” by Neil Parsons. It was given to me by a very old friend (well he’s not very old, I think, but we have known each other for over half our lives). Clicko, an aboriginal dweller of Botswana was a “star performer of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in the 1920’s and 30’s”. When he died in 1940 a New York Times obituary called him “the only African bushman ever exhibited in this country”. I honestly don’t know what to make of this book – does it collude with that colonial and patronising obituary or is it a piercing analysis of objectification and race? I fear I will never find out because it’s going to remain unopened. It looks VERY dry (I took a peek at some of the text) – and see even I can use the Marian Keyes technique of UPPER CASE emphasis. No, this book will gather dust.

And finally (for now, because the list of unread books will surely grow longer) there’s “Get Happy” by Gerald Clarke. Now that’s an instruction I’ll ignore, because clearly this is a curmudgeonly blog. So what gay man’s book collection would be complete without a “fagiography” (it’s a word I just made up) – an homage to a tragic, preferably dead at a young age, star of stage or screen: revered, reviled, worshipped and parodied in tacky drag show dives?

Of course I’m not for one minute suggesting Gerald Clarke is gay – though he did write a biography of Truman Capote. Hmm. The Glasgow Herald had this to say about “Get Happy”: “This is a sympathetic biography in that it seeks explanations, although Clarke properly makes no attempt to gloss over the Garland excesses”. Now I’ve always been a bit prone to excessive garlands (think Hawaiian theme parties) but doesn’t this just scream “gay identified” to you? Don’t we queers want to explain who we are while sipping on a cocktail and dressed in a Carmen Miranda outfit?

And what is it about the fascination (some would say fetish) gay men have for a tragic drama queen. Oh I know many gay lives are perfectly banal and ordinary (normal in other words) but many of us do seem to identify with a life drenched (like an expensive but cheap smelling fragrance) in despair, failed love, gut wrenching separations, missed opportunities, entitlement, glamour and false eyelashes? Come on we do – I have one word – opera.

So maybe we all forget our ordinariness when we get immersed in the world of a novel, a biography, a travel story and maybe we live out a vicarious fantasy. A dull or badly written book at our bedsides can take us far away, even if we never read it!