Cheever

It is one of my favorite American short stories, dripping with martinis & angst. Written during the era of Mad Men, John Cheever’s The Swimmer begins on a summer day in an upper class neighborhood of suburban NYC. Middle aged Ned appears in the backyard of of his friends & neighbors, who he has not seen in quite some time. Before the neighbors can welcome him, Ned jumps into their swimming pool with much vim & vitality. Ned learns that with the addition of a recent swimming pool in another neighbor's backyard, he can literally swim from swimming pool to swimming pool, to his home which is miles away. He names the route Lucinda's River, after his wife. He makes this journey despite some obstacles along the way. At each swimming pool, Ned stops & chats with his neighbors. Each stop reveals more of Ned's life so far until he reaches his final destination. The story is both realistic & surreal.

Cheever, born on this day in 1912, has been dubbed the "Checkhov of the suburbs". When traveling in the late 1970s, I carried around a paperback volume of The Stories Of John Cheever, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1979.

My Aunt Sharon gave a subscription to The New Yorker for Christmas when I was 11 years old, & improbably, I actually read it cover to cover each week. I still do. Cheever was a frequent contributor to The New Yorker & is considered the very definition of The New Yorker writer.

Cheever's world is marked by the spiritual & emotional emptiness of life. He made note of the manners & morals of the middle-class with an ironic sense of humor that helped balance his bleak view. He died in 1982.  After his death, his discovered letters & journals revealed that he was bisexual. Cheever had long marriage & produced 3 children, but he also had affairs with many men.

His attitude towards his own bisexuality is shown in his writing. His early works are marked by ambivalence & stereotypes, but his later stories give into to recognition & redemption.

There is an especially well done & unlikely 1968 film adaptation of The Swimmer starring Burt Lancaster looking yummy in period swim trunks. The film was directed by Frank Perry, with small roles filled by Kim Hunter, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Janice Rule, Marge Champion & Joan Rivers, with a score by Marvin Hamlisch. Check it out. Make note of a very young Joan Rivers in the trailer. She has to be proud of this credit, I know I would.

Born On This Day- May 13th- Post Apocalyptic Bohemian Favorite- Armistead Maupin

Armistead Maupin: “We’ve always pined for the old days, & people now do it about the 1960s & 1970s. I don’t do it. I really don’t.”

Maybe he doesn’t, but I do. His Tales of the City books are the very essence of my halcyon days of gay liberation & years before the advent of AIDS.


A summer day in 2007, I was lying naked at Collins beach on Sauvie Island, just outside of Portland. Because I am, or rather was a redhead, I need to be in part shade or dappled sunlight. I was surrounded by dozens of hot gay men, at their little setups on the beach, alone & in groups. I didn’t want to be doing it. I was embarrassed. I wanted to appear hot, yet cool. But, I had burst into tears & was whimpering like a little girl while reading Armistead Maupin’s new installment of the Tales Of The City series- Michael Tolliver Lives. I was shedding tears for the reunion with some of my favorite characters in literature, but also for my own loss of innocence & the glance at my own mortality. But mostly, I was crying for the beauty of the writing, & the pleasure of having the main character- Michael Tolliver still be alive after a presumed early death from HIV.


I read the original Tales Of The City in the serial installments from the San Francisco Chronicle, alerted to them from friends in the city. I savored each one. Maupin revived the Dickensian serial novel, which makes you laugh, makes you cry, & makes you wait for the next episode. I had a real romance with San Francisco in the 1970s, & spent as much time there as I could muster. I was living in L.A., & PSA Airlines (now long gone) had a “Midnight Flyer”, a no reservations, stand in line, $20 flight from LAX to SFO. I would take advantage of the deal. The Midnight Flyer was my introduction to the Mile High Club. Only in the 1970s, could a young man travel to the City By The Bay to get laid, & then have it happen on the flight there. I didn’t even need to touch ground!


As each new book in the series would be released, I would get myself to the Different Drummer Bookstore (in the 1970s & 1980s there were actual Gay Bookstores) on Capitol Hill-Seattle & I would purchase the latest installment of Tales Of The City. I wouldn’t read it though. I would go back to book #1 & start at the very beginning. It was 18 years between Sure Of You & Michael Tolliver Lives. It was great, if slightly emotional, to be back with my friends from Barbary Lane.


Armistead Maupin is a Southern Gentleman born to a conservative, Christian family in Washington, D.C., & raised in North Carolina.He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Maupin worked at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, a station then managed by future U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. Helms nominated Maupin for a patriotic award, which he won. Maupin says he was a typical conservative & even a segregationist at this time & he admired Helms, a family friend. He later condemned Helms at a gay pride parade on the steps of the North Carolina State Capitol. Maupin is a veteran of the United States Navy; he served several tours of duty including one in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Maupin claims he was gay since childhood but didn't have sex until he was 26 & only decided to come out in 1974.


Maupin's former partner of 12 years, Terry Anderson, was journalist & gay rights activist. Ian McKellen is a friend & former lover, & Christopher Isherwood was a mentor, friend, & influence as a writer. He was once a fuck buddy of Rock Hudson: 'I'm the age now that Rock was when he picked me up, so I can understand how he felt ,how his fame limited his freedom. You get kinder as you go along.”


I was born across the bay in Oakland, & I have spent a lot of time in San Francisco, including the entire summer of 1972. When I mention this to gay men of a certain age & a dreamy faraway look will come over their faces & they will tell about how much Maupin’s Tales meant to them. I once knew someone that had asked to be buried with his copies of his books.


Maupin has an uncanny ability to gently point out how alike we all are, gay or straight, liberal or conservative: we all need love, we all ask for a little kindness, & we're all in it for the long haul. Last year I savored Mary Ann in Autumn, the latest in the series. It had me so engaged, I had to force myself to read just a short chapter a day, just to draw out the experience of being back with my beloved characters once more. Maupin continues to take me by surprise, amuse, & touch me. This novel made smile, laugh out loud, & gave me a crazy cathartic cry at the end.

Maupin is married to Christopher Turner, a website producer & photographer whom he saw on a dating website & then "chased him down Castro Street, saying, 'Didn’t I see you on Daddyhunt.com?'"  The Maupin/Turners were married in Vancouver, BC in 2007, though Maupin says that they had called each other "husband" for years prior. They live in San Francisco with their labradoodle.

The American Conservatory Theater is San Francisco will be offering a stage musical of the first Tales featuring a book by Oregon’s own Tony Award winner Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q) with songs by Jake Shears & John Garden of Scissor Sisters. It will open on June 1. I would like to be there.

Born On This Day- April 28th... American Writer Nell Harper Lee

Seemingly impossible, I did not read To Kill A Mockingbird as a young person, & I didn’t see the film until 2005, at the Husband’s insistence. I certainly would have been better briefed for adulthood if I had encountered this masterpiece of an American novel in my early teens rather than early 50s. The book is in a tie for my favorite tome of all time.

Harper Lee is a noiseless nonconformist. Her cold shoulder towards celebrity is challenging to conceive of in today's culture, especially for a popular writer. Lee hoped her book would meet a "quick & merciful death”. It achieved immortality, the most popular American novel of the 20th century. The film version, has a perfect screenplay by Horton Foote that is so spot on that they have merged in peoples’ heads.

Lee has wry sense of humor. She was the editor of the humor magazine at the University of Alabama. When told that her book had great appeal for children, Lee stated: "But I hate children. I can't stand them."

In 1950, a young frumpy girl, fresh from the University Of Alabama, minus her law degree, moved to NYC from her hometown of Monroeville. She didn't think she was up to much, just renewing her friendship with her childhood buddy- Truman Capote. She said she was writing a book & that was that. She published that book in 1960.

To Kill A Mockingbird is a barely disguised version of her Alabama family & her town’s Southern racial consciousness inspired, but it is also about Lee & Capote, childhood chums who become personally & artistically linked legends. They were precocious children with little in common with their peers, Lee was too rough for girls, & Capote was too soft for boys. They each had emotionally remote mothers: Capote's was a self- centered social climber; Lee's was deeply depressed. Capote's father attempted to seduce Lee in her teens, & she punched him in the nose; Capote hated Lee's gossipy mother, & later used her in a story called Mrs. Busybody.

Lee became a friend to Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch. She remains close to the actor's family. Peck's grandson, Harper Peck Voll, is named after her. In 2205, she was portrayed on film by Catherine Keener & Sandra Bullock. Lee continues to live a quiet, private life in NYC & Monroeville. She remains active in her church & community. She avoids anything to do with her still popular novel (selling a million copies a year & having never been out of print). Lee hasn't published a book since the Pulitzer Prize winning To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. Lee turns 85 today.

Born On This Day- February 22nd... Writer Christopher Bram

Christopher Bram was born on this day in 1952. He grew up in Virginia. After graduating from the College of William & Mary in 1974 , & then moved to NYC, where he met his lifelong partner, documentary filmmaker Draper Shreeve.

Bram's novel Father of Frankenstein, a fictional account of the last days of film director James Whale, was made into one of my Top 10 films of all time- Gods & Monsters starring Ian McKellen & Brendan Fraser. Openly gay- Bill Condon adapted the screenplay & directed. Condon won an Oscar for his adaptation.

In 2010, his book of essays- Mapping the Territory was one of my favorites of the year. Most of the essays deal with gay issues: gay books that changed his life, how his novel Father of Frankenstein became the movie Gods & Monsters, & whether or not Henry James was gay. One essay is provocatively titled, “Can Straight Men Still Write?”

The pieces are wise, warm, witty, & well-written. Bram is a terrifically clear writer, which is why I like him so much. The book is a fascinating snapshot of issues large & small that have affected our gay lives over the past 4 decades. His ramblings about his own life were my favorites, of course & but I was drawn into his takes on Henry James, adolescent problems of sexuality, the effect of AIDS on literature, & gossip novels. They are all rich in anecdotes, amusements, & attitude.

Much of the Mapping The Territory is memoir: Slow Learners, the longest piece, charts Bram's high school, college, & grad school days & how they shaped his preference for friends & lovers. It is a tender tale, with priceless, playful parts as the author is figuring out life as a young man. Bram also offers a rich essay on the books that influenced his own writing, & he shares his views of life in Greenwich Village, revisits Larry Kramer's notorious novel Faggots, & takes on Oscar Wilde with clever, concrete criticism.


Woven throughout this endlessly entertaining book is Bram's elegant use of language, & he still seems like someone I would like to have a cocktail with!

Born On This Day- January 14th... Actor/Writer Tom Tryon

I recollect my fascination with the photo on the back cover of the hardback edition of The Other. The movie star handsome author of the tome was staring back at me from the book jacket & I was all a tingle, with my teenage hormones in overdrive. I was 17 years old & doing summer stock in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. All 4 shows were up & running by the beginning of August, leaving me with days free to swim, sun, smoke joints & read. I bought the book because of the author’s photo, but The Other turned out to be a very well written thrill ride of a horror story, & I now had quite a crush on the writer Thomas Tryon as well.

Tom Tryon was an American film & TV actor, as well as author of several science fiction, horror, and mystery novels. He was born Thomas Tryon in Hartford, Connecticut. He used his birth name as an author & the shortened version for the acting career.

Tryon was on Broadway in Wish You Were Here, a long running 1952 musical starring Florence Henderson & Jack Cassidy. He moved on to Hollywood and was cast in several films, including Moon Pilot, The Longest Day & In Harm’s Way. He appeared often on television series & made for TV movies.

His rugged good looks & masculine demeanor typecast him as a matinee idol & Tryon was unhappy at the lack of good acting roles. His best known work was as the star of The Cardinal, a role which brought him a Golden Globe. But he fought often with the director Otto Preminger, who seemed to take sadistic delight in humiliating Tryon on the set. Preminger actually fired Tryon in front of his parents when they visited the set, then rehired him after being satisfied that Tryon had been sufficiently humiliated.

The experience with the abusive Preminger & lack of interesting roles moved Tryon to put the brakes on an acting career & he moved to writing novels. His first book- The Other (1971), a spooky thriller about a pair of evil twins, was a blockbuster bestseller & became a film by Richard Mulligan starring my good close personal friend- Uta Hagen in a rare film appearance. Next was the equally as scary-Harvest Home, a terrifying tale that was made into a rather campy TV mini-series starring Bette Davis. His collection of novellas on the theme of moviemaking- Crowned Heads featured- Fedora, a thinly disguised tale of Greta Garbo, & was made into a 1978 film by Billy Wilder with William Holden. I think the movie is terrific & true to the book. I loved all his books but I have a soft spot for Night of the Moonbow (1989), about a young kid at camp who snaps after being harassed by his fellow cabin mates. Tryon’s best work revolved around boys, & the mischief they get into.

I sensed that Tryon was gay. He struggled with his sexuality throughout his career, but basically came out when he became the lover of Calvin Culver, known in the porn world as the superstar Casey Donovan. At the same time, Tryon also was lovers with Clive Clark, a member of the original cast of A Chorus Line, & an interior designer who decorated Tryon's Central Park West apartment, which was featured in Architectural Digest. Culver helped Tryon finish Crowned Heads on an extremely tight deadline by typing up the revisions & offering suggestions. Their relationship ended because the attention & publicity his lover received made the closeted Tryon fearful of being outed, which he felt could destroy his career as a writer.

But, Tryon never wrote explicitly about homosexuality. He was never part of the gay scene. His feelings on the matter are hidden in between the lines of his strange, moody works. He died in 1991 from stomach cancer. I can still picture that handsome man on the back of the book jacket.

Born On This Day- January 13th... Writer Edmund White

"As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together."

His novel- A Boy’s Own Story (I still have my original copy, purchased in 1982, at The Different Drummer Bookstore on Capital Hill in Seattle) was the firstst important coming out story that I read, & the first to treat the story of a gay boy where the subject was not portrayed as sick or a "problem". As a young man in my 20s, I thought the novel was brazen & intimate. I was very moved.

White is one of the most prominent & highly acclaimed figures of contemporary gay literature, Edmund White works in many genres of fiction & nonfiction.

A Boy's Story is about the search for identity against the expectations of family & friends, White expertly couples the cosmic & the commonplace. The narrator & his friend Kevin explore the boundaries of their common masculinity: “When he turned his face my way it was dark, indistinguishable; his back & shoulders were carving up strips of light, carving them this way & that as he twisted & bobbed. The water was dark, opaque, but it caught the sun's gold light, the wavy dragon scales writhing under a sainted knight's halo. At last Kevin swam up beside me; his submerged body looked small, boneless. He said we should go down to the store & buy some Vaseline."

I’ve always admired White’s refusal to get all PC, & he takes on gay hypocrisy & prudish gays that condemn promiscuity in the hope that this will make them more normal & palatable for straight people. White is a veteran of the early 1970s: NYC bathhouses, back room bars & along the piers. Edmund White is an old style gay guy, proud to be gay, obsessed with coming out, & attacking those that refuse to do so.

White keeps on putting out fiction, biographies & essays. His States of Desire was written pre-HIV, &contains some of the most graphic & moving depictions of gay male America. White feels that "gay" is a very male concept, having almost nothing to do with lesbians or transsexuals (GLBT !). I have read him, followed him, & I appreciate his place in American gay culture as pioneer & story teller.

White shares a cozy, book-lined Chelsea apartment with his life partner, 45-year-old writer Michael Carroll, but White says: "I'm a sex junkie; I believe in promiscuity. Am I a sex addict? I guess. But I'm also a prickly moralist & a weak-willed pleasure lover”. White turns 72 today.

His work so far:

Fiction
• Forgetting Elena (1973)
• Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978)
• A Boy's Own Story (1982)
• Caracole (1985)
• The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)
• Skinned Alive: Stories (1995)
• The Farewell Symphony (1997)
• The Married Man (2000)
• Fanny: A Fiction (2003)
• Chaos: A Novella & Stories (2007)
• Hotel de Dream (2007)

Plays
• Terre Haute (2006)

Nonfiction
• The Joy of Gay Sex, with Charles Silverstein (1977)
• States of Desire (1980)
• The Burning Library: Writings on Art, Politics and Sexuality 1969-1993 (1994)
• The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris (2000)
• Arts and Letters (2004)

Biography
• Genet: A Biography (1993)
• Marcel Proust (1998)
• Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel (2008)

Memoir
• Our Paris: Sketches from Memory (1995)
• My Lives (2005)
• City Boy (2010)

Born On Christmas Eve... Bob Smith

"The world is a king, and, like a king, desires flattery for a favor; but true art is selfish & perverse, it will not submit to the mold of flattery.”
Beethoven

I celebrate what I claim has to be the very worst day for a birthday, January 3rd. The tree is dead in the corner, the credit cards are maxed out, everyone has made a resolution to diet, stop drinking & go the gym, not a single person is interested in partying. Other Capricorns complain about holiday birthdays, but I think it would be swell to have been born on Christmas Eve. The house is beautiful, everyone is dressed up, spirits are high, children are delighted, & if you have been a good boy, & there may be something special for your birthday & for Christmas, just for you, under the tree.

Lucky Bob Smith, with a birthday on December 24th, plus he is pretty. Witty & gay!


Smith is the first openly gay comedian on The Tonight Show. I own & very much enjoyed his Memoirs; Openly Bob & Way To Go, Smith. But nothing had prepared me for how much I would love his first novel Selfish & Perverse, one of my favorite books of 2010.

In Selfish & Perverse (the title comes from a quote from Beethoven about artists), a down & out L.A. TV comedy writer Nelson Kunkel, seems to get himself into more than his share of awkward situations before finally resolving to visit Alaska for the summer, hoping for a romance story with handsome, butch fisherman/anthropologist Roy. Their mutual interest in anthropology lead to a tour of the La Brea tar pits, & to Nelson becoming a national TV news laughing stock, which makes escaping to Alaska more palatable, particularly after he not only gets caught necking in an elevator with Roy, but also getting stoned in star Dylan's trailer before the show's taping, & subsequently fired, then the flirtatious star hints about visiting Roy in Anchorage.


Dylan, fresh out of prison after being arrested for drug offenses while caught naked on TV tripped out of his head, decides to make his post-rehab debut as the guest star on the late night comedy show, where Nelson struggles as the "script-coordinator" feeding funny lines to ego crazed actors. Then Dylan, the ferocious flirt, insinuates himself into both Nelson & Roy’s lives. Intrigue, a lot of sex, & bon mots follows in a hilarious blend, & in the process encapsulating the absurdities of modern gay life. Will Nelson be able to choose between L.A. & Alaska & between Roy & Dylan?

 A new novel- Remembrance of Things I Forgot will be released sometime in early 2011 & I can’t wait.

Born On This Day- November 8th: Talented Out Actor/Writer Craig Chester

I am a fan of actor Craig Chester, best known for starring in a string of independent films with single word titles: Swoon, Grief & Frisk. He also played Fred Hughes in I Shot Handy Warhol & best friend Terry in Kiss Me, Guido. Hollywood doesn't care all that much for openly gay, art film actors, even one who was nominated for a prestigious Spirit Award, so Chester takes time from acting to write screenplays & books.


I thought very highly of his delightfully witty & moving 2003 memoir: Why the Long Face?: The Advenures of a Truly Independent Actor. The title refers to Chester's experience with "Long Face Syndrome", a disfiguring jaw malady. Chester: “As a teen, I was looked like a Picasso sock puppet with pimples. A series of surgeries I was left swollen to massive, inhumane proportions, while on a liquid diet,I was made to sit at the dinner table, almost nightly, & watch in contempt as my father, mother, & sister gorged themselves on pot roast, chicken & dumplings, & sloppy joes." Happily, Chester survived this ordeal to have handsome, unconventional good looks.

On The Moth ( a group dedicated to strytelling) Podcast released on April 26, 2010, Chester recounts his encounter Montgomery Clift, who has been dead for 45+ years. Chester goes on to explain the story of how 2 separate psychics (one a professional psychic, the other a long-time psychic who does not provide readings for money) approached him to tell him about a spirit that insists on reaching him. They both explain on separate occasions, (Chester verified they did not know each other or are in any way connected) that Montgomery Clift wants Chester to write a screenplay about his life. The spirit of Montgomery Clift goes on to explain that he wants Chester to do this because he has the chance to live the life he was never able to; Chester is openly gay & Clift spirit explains he lived "in the closet" as a gay man during his life.


The spirit of Clift reaches out to Chester on another occasion, & explains (through one of the psychics) that he must go to his former home (which has been preserved since Clift's death) & spend the night there. This is where Chester finally made the connection to himself & Clift while soaking in the same bathtub that Clift died in.


Chester: "I understood him in a way that maybe nobody else would. And when we want that person to tell our story be somebody who understands who we are... I could be Monty's happy ending."


After the moment at Clift's house,Chester does not pursue the screenplay or Clift's memory. But soon after, Chester hears from a relative who does not regularly speak with him. She tells him that she had a dream about a man who looked like Chester, & he explained who he was & that she was to call Chester to tell him to find Elizabeth Taylor. Someone close to Chester, who had never been told this story before, & who did not regularly speak with Chester, called him to Cntinue his mission on Clift's behalf. Chester: "Elizabeth Taylor, if you're there, it's me, Montgomery Clift."

 Chester's Filmography:
Adam & Steve (2005)Quintessence (2003)
The Look (2003)
Bumping Heads (2002)
Circuit (2001)
The Anniversary Party (2001)
The Experience Box (2001)
Charlie! (1999)
The Misadventures of Margaret (1998)
Shucking the Curve (1998)
Kiss Me, Guido (1997)
David Searching (1997)
I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
Frisk (1995)
Grief (1993)
Swoon (1992)

Born On This Day- October 6th...Favorite Writer Michael Cunningham

"This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw materials at hand."
Michael Cunningham

He is responsible for some of the best reading I have ever been given over to the pleasure of being lost in a great book. The Hours transported me in a way that it’s jumping off point- Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway never did. The deeply moving-The Hours won the Pulitzer Prize & was made into a brilliant film, but it isn’t even my favorite Michael Cunningham novel, that would be the amazing 3 generation family saga- Flesh & Blood. I own & have read all of his work, starting with the New Yorker short story that would eventually become A Home At The End Of The World (made into a good film with Colin Farrell, Sissy Spacek & Robin Wright). I even enjoyed the problematic Specimen Days which ends with a section with an alian & a reptile having sex. Cunningham's new novel- By Nightfall, just released in October, is sitting by my side of the bed & I look forward to being taken on a new emotional journey by one of my most favorite writers.  I think he is an important, brilliant, elegant & very accessible author & a really great looking,sexy man. He is on the faculty at Columbia University & lives, with his partner of 22 years- psychoanalyst/artist-Ken Corbett, in NYC & Provincetown.

Here he is, sexy at 58, chatting about writing with my current crush- James Franco. They are almost too hot to watch:



"We'd hoped vaguely to fall in love but hadn't worried much about it, because we'd thought we had all the
time in the world. Love had seemed so final & so dull -- love was what ruined our parents. Love had delivered them to a life of mortgage payments & household repairs; to unglamorous jobs & the flourescent aisles of a supermarket at 2 in the afternoon. We'd hoped for love of a different kind, love that knew & forgave our human frailty but did not miniaturize our grander ideas of ourselves. It sounded possible. If we didn't rush or grab, if we didn't panic, a love both challenging & nurturing might appear. If the person was imaginable, then the person could exist."

Reflections On Dominick Dunne On His Birthday

I posted about him on the day of his death in the summer of 2009. It was ironic that he died on the very day as his enemy- Edward Kennedy. I was such a big fan of his column in Vanity Fair. I would just eat it up each month.


 As I am thinking about Dominick Dunne on the day of his birth, I am reflecting on the similarities between Dominick Dunne & Truman Capote, one of my life long favorite writers. Both wrote about low acts in high society & they both craved celebrity. Capote labeled his later work- the Nonfiction Novel, & Dunne just called his books novels. Capote spent his last years doing very little writing, addicted to drugs & alcohol, appearing incoherent in public & on talk shows. Dunne was on the same track, but later in life he was sober, clear, & productive, but he was in the closet. Dunne probably wanted the literary attention that Capote received in his career, yet he outsold his writer family: brother John Gregory Dunne & sister-in-law Joan Didion. He must have been disappointed that he never entered the pantheon of literature. At the same time, he didn’t seem bitter. He was inside the fish bowl & yet always remained an outsider.


Capote’s society women rejected him after he published the roman e clef- Answered Prayers. Dunne continued to move in the world he wrote about despite an occasional snub. He did have enemies: the Kennedys, the Safras, & most famously- Congressman Condit. Dunne could get careless with facts, as Capote did, but most readers knew he was telling a larger truth; When you get to the top of society, there isn’t all that much there. This is the deeper secret Capote didn’t see.


I recently watched- After the Party in the Sundance Channel, which chronicles Dunne’s life. Listening to him talk, he seemed obviously gay. Earlier in his career, he was a television & film producer, & was the executive producer of the film version of Boys in the Band. Maybe those bitter queens spoke a truth to him that also drove him deeper into the closet. The documentary & his nonfiction writings make it clear that he cared deeply about his children & his former wife. It seems easy to dismiss a man torn like that, it seemed to be the way most people in Hollywood in the 1950s & 1960s handled such matters- “Oh, he just got married to cover up”, But, in a clever move, Dunne used his last novel to come out when his main character/alter ego reveals that he is gay.


His readers can only know a little bit about Dunne & his sexuality. In his interview with George Stephanopolous, Dominick’s son- Griffin Dunne, uses the terms gay & bisexual to describe his father. A few months before his death, Dominick told the London Times: “I am a celibate closeted bisexual.” It seems tragic when somebody has to deceive & experience shame for most of their life. To live in constant deception & shame distorts your life. Yet Capote, who was out of the closet most of his life, was full of self-loathing & in his last years, he led a miserable existence. Dunne, who speaks about his father mistreating him as a child for being a sissy, stayed in the closet his entire adult life. After success in Hollywood, he also became addicted to drugs & alcohol, but then found sobriety in rural Oregon of all places. He lived a life that he was drawn to & repelled by. For both authors, the shame of sexuality, open or not, propelled the men into a furious chase for recognition, celebrity & acceptance.


If society had been accepting of homosexuality, would both writers have never become successful writers? Was being an outsider what that made them?


It is a fitting irony for Dunne, since so much of his literary career was a reflection of a response to, the life of Truman Capote. The similarities are striking: Dunne's most famous novel The Two Mrs. Grenvilles was based on the notorious Woodward murder scandal that Capote had referred to in his novel Answered Prayers. It was the gossip & innuendo in an excerpt from it in Esquire- La Cote Basque, that got Capote shunned by his celibrity friends & started his decline.


Capote was dropped by his adored society women friends, having allegedly stabbed them in the back by exposing their deepest secrets. Capote career was killed. He never finished the novel. But Dominick Dunne, in a way, did. He wrote the The Two Mrs.Grenvilles novel that picked up where Capote left off. Dunne did it with panache, with a story of high society intrigue, sexual obsession, greed & murder. In The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, which was made a rather good TV movie starring Claudette Colbert & Ann Margret, Dunne paid homage to Capote by creating a narrator named Basil Plant who was more than just a little the author of In Cold Blood. Dunne was also similar to that character. He was the man on the outside looking in, absorbing, documenting, & chronicling. He was the secret sharer. The man everyone trusted.


Dunne's parallels to Capote were not just on the literary scene. Dominick Dunne craved the spotlight just as much as Capote, and surrounded himself throughout his wildly checkered life with just as many socialites & celebrities. Dunne even threw his own "Black & White Ball" in Hollywood that rivaled Capote's legendary fête at the Plaza. Dunne always claimed he had the idea first. He celebrated its memory in his coffee table book of photographs- The Way We Lived Then (Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper). That was part of Dunne's charm. He never tried to exaggerate his importance,


He did noy shy away from controversy. In the TV movie of A Season in Purgatory with Patrick Dempsey in the lead, there is a rather shocking gay sex scene between the narrator & the Dempsey character who killed the young girl at the start of the story. The book is based on the Martha Moxley case which Dunne had helped to reopen & wrote about at length in Vanity Fair.


Even at the end of his life, when the party was winding down, & Dunne knew he was deathly ill, he never lost his sense of humor or his gratitude for his good fortune. He wrote about his mortality in Vanity Fair. He wrote about the depths to which he had fallen, unlike Capote who fought similar demons but who was ultimately undone by them. Life was an endless party to both men. But Dominick Dunne never overstayed his welcome. Today, on what would have been Dunne's 84th birthday, Hollywood friends & reporter pals gathered at the Chateau Marmont to celebrate Dominick Dunne's life.