Some random responses to Binay's mail on queer literature. The mail he sent had some forwards, as follows: 

The best information on this is in Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai's excellent book "Same Sex Love in India". Ruth recently posted a mail saying its come out in paperback, reducing the cost considerably. 

There are also the Penguin India anthologies Yaarana and Facing The Mirror on Indian gay and lesbian writing. There was Rakesh Rati's pioneering anthology A Lotus of Another Colour. Occasional sightings have come up on lists like this or the khush list (which might be of particular use for this) of gay, lesbian, bi themes in Indian writing. All in all this has been a bit of a growth area. 

- Vikram

Very loaded questions all. Does one have to be gay? Well, I'm reminded of Ben Stiller's remark in Rani's most recent forward to the effect that youn don't have to be gay to act as a gay man, but somehow one is usually able to tell that you're not. 

It would be interesting to see how much gay or lesbian fiction there is by non-gay or lesbian writers (oh horrors, do I see the concept for yet another anthology...) I think Patricia whatever, who wrote The Front Runner wasn't lesbian. Mary Renault wrote some of the most compelling and erotic gay (meaning specifically male homosexual) fiction in books like The Persian Boy, but she was lesbian herself. I'm sure there must be more example of non-gay gay writing. 

And one could argue, why not? If writers can imagine themselves three hundred years back or in the future, in other countries, in other worlds, as fictional characters of any kind, why should they have to be gay to write about gay experiences. Perhaps its because sexuality is so fundamental that it needs a really personal understanding of it. I don't know, though personally I'd like to go with the you don't have to be gay to write about it argument. 

Is gay writing mostly read by gays? Probably. And that's for the simple reason that no one else would want to read most of it. A very large chunk of what goes as gay writing ranges from the pedestrian to the truly dire. I don't think, of course, that this has anything to do with the subject matter, beyond the fact that once you introduce any criteria other than just 'good' writing to justify the publication of something, then quality will always decline. The same could be said for writing by women, people of colour, etc, etc, whatever minority grouping you like. 

Does that mean that this sort of writing has no value? No, I think it does. By documenting the gay experience in some way it serves as a historical record of a community often starved of written history. One also has to keep in mind that it has the power to reach out to a particular kind of reader. 

For people in the closet, coming across a work of queer writing, in a library, a bookshop, on the pavement, can be a life changing experience. You may never have come in contact with other gay people, but through print you can come to know that they exist, that _you_ exist too. 

That's why I'm so grateful for queer writing which helped me discover myself when I was in the closet, even though the same writing would send me to sleep these days. Personally I look at these queer-but-not-so-good works as some kind of functional writing, a bit like journalism or technical writing. It doesn't have to have literary qualities, but it does have a purpose which it can accomplish quite well. 

That does mean though that, in response to this question, the bulk of queer writing is best read only by queer people or those interested in understanding them (also an important function). This may sound belittling, but its not. I'm a journalist and know all too well that what I write doesn't have literary merit. But it certainly has value - or I wouldn't be getting my salary! Most queer writing is like that. 

In this context its also interesting to look at it the other way round. If, as I'm saying, most gay writing isn't likely to be good in terms of literary merit, can one get works that _are_ good in such terms, and which can also count as gay? 

Lets leave aside the dreary tendency of some people (probably including me, I admit, in some of my comments on poems on this list) to claim all sorts of pieces of literature as gay, and look at works where the writers and their characters are openly gay. Or if from an earlier era when the writers were more likely to be in the closet, then at least their homosexuality is well known today, and it seems reasonable to assume that if they were writing today the relationships they show as straight would be gay. 

I think - and here I'm really just hypothesising out on a limb and at 9.00 pm at night, so don't hold me accountable for any of this - that in most of such cases, what would count is the literary value, and not the homosexual theme. Gay themes increasingly have less power to shock, and are more likely to treated much like straight ones. Which means that the works are increasingly likely to be subjected to the same judging standards and that's all to the best. 

So, for example, from recent fiction, the Irish writer Colm Toibin's The Story of The Night, an elegiac story of love and loss in Argentina, achingly beautifully written, has mostly been considered as mainstream literature, despite the fact that the main characters are gay and AIDS plays a major role. Toibin, interestingly, rarely seems to feature in gay anthologies (perhaps he's canny enough not to allow his work to be used), even though he's openly gay and much of his work has gay themes. 

Similarly, with other really good writers, there does seem to be an understanding, where their work is examined on terms of merit alone, whether or not the subject matter is gay. So the strong homoerotic element in most of Shakespeare's sonnets or Whitman's verse doesn't mean they get labelled as gay alone. 

Only perhaps when the poems are weak as poems, does their gay element come in for more comment. Which seems to reinforce what I've been saying that good literary writing and good gay writing are usually best regarded as separate categories, each with their own value. 

- Vikram

Kanga is a playwright? That's news to me. He's best known as a novelist (and even that's a bit questionable since his one novel, Trying To Grow, seems so strongly autobiographical that it really should count in some category like 'fictionalised autobiography'), and perhaps as a screenplay writer since I think he did the screenplay for 'Seventh Heaven', the film version of the book. I think this writer is confusing Kanga with Mahesh Dattani who _is_ a playwright. 

'Trying To Grow' is a WONDERFUL book, BTW, an absolute must read. Its funny, easy to read, lots of good characters and good dialogue, very evocative of Bombay and Bombay Parsis, and above all deals with the gay issue very naturally. Well, it does until the narrator decides that he's not gay, at which point all life goes out of the book. Amy, the woman he falls in love with, is the one entirely lifeless character in the book. But this flaw notwithstanding, the book has to be read. 

-Vikram

I agree with Vikram that you don't have to be "gay" to write "gay" fiction or characters. Same for black or Indian or whatever. To argue otherwise would suggest that queer authors can't write "straight"fiction, or straight characters. Or women can't write "men", and vice versa.

The issue of "authenticity" though is relevant. How "real" does a particular characters voice or behaviour sound to the reader? It is true that each author is writing from within "communities of interpretation", and each reader is also reading from within "communities of interpretation".

Straight authors with almost no sense of queer reality are going to find it difficult to write with any sense of authority which will survive the reading of a queer audience. Same as white authors with no experience of being African American and so on. This has been shown up very strongly in relation to women character written by men who have little sense of women. I think that where it shows up most is when the author is trying to portray "interior life", rather than just the externals of dialogues or events. The way people feel, and why they feel, is actually the hardest to do if there is only a very limited sense already there within the author.

However, this is not to argue that only authenticity can come from within particular communities of meaning. If that were the case only lesbian novelists could write about lesbians, and their novels would only be peopled by lesbians, in fact only by lesbians of a similar range of experience as that of the author.

But I think writing and communication are both about tricks of the trade and cumulative knowledge. The more the queer world is "known", the more "real" portrayal by non-queer authors becomes, subject to the skill and politics of the author (here I don't mean politics with a big "P").

Given that there has been a lot of highly acclaimed "straight" literature written by queer authors of all genders, with straight characters who within the limits of "authenticity" sound real to readers, then it should follow that the reverse is true.

-Quentin

-- Compiled by Vikram
Uploaded on 08-Feb-2002