the future of fiction? (Wanda Tinasky Weighs In)

[Daniel Harper]

I have been inadvertently taken off the P-list. I'm responding to this by 
cut+pasting the text from the WASTE archive. I'm too lazy to stick in the 
requisite nesting. Sorry.

At my store, we don't even have a "Gay Lit" section -- to assuage the 
sensibilities of those of us in the Heart of Dixie, gay/lesbian stuff ends up 
in the "Lifestyles" subcategory of social science. Yeah. Although that's 
really just for out-and-out "gay" stuff, as in material that actually has the 
word "gay" or "lesbian" or whatever on the front or back cover. It's a bunch 
of romance novels, basically.

"Serious" (hah!) gay literature just goes in fiction. 

Strangely, Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_ has ended up in our African American 
section -- it's actually even on the subcat list, so it wasn't just someone 
stupid at my store. Seems to have ignorant racist undertones to me, like 
someone at home office wasn't aware of the book's content and just assumed 
anything that took place in a jungle was African-American?

_The Jungle Book_ is in regular fiction, but then again that one was also a 
Disney movie.... 

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            Daniel Harper:
          On a related note, did you ever look 
            through the African American fiction 
            section of your local bookstore? It's 
            all gangstas and thugs and pimps 
            and hos -- I'm not a member of the 
            mentioned ethnic group, but if I was 
            I'd be insulted just walking past.

            That these are pretty much all written 
            by African-American authors only makes 
            it worse.

Used to shelve it all the time. It also has James Baldwin (why isn't he in Gay 
Lit, for heavens sake?), and Ishmael Reed (why isn't he shelved next to 
Pynchon and Philip K. Dick, for heavens sake?) And if there's a Gay Lit 
section, why isn't Armistead Maupin---"Michael Tolliver Lives" comes out 
[pardon] June 2007, I have an ARC, am I excited, or what?---and why did 
they move Sarah Waters from Dyke Lit. [providentially located near Law, 
Myth and Women's Studies] to "Lit-Tu-Ra-Ture"? It's that Booker Prize Shit, 
isn't it? And now that Rita Mae Brown is flogging crap. . . .

And What Is Gertrude Stein Doing In Literature Anyway???

. . . .and while we're at it, why isn't "Dykes to Look Out For" [probably the 
finest political serial comic strip---ever!!!] shelved with Doonsbury? Why 
does it always come down to me handing a copy to some stray pierced and 
tatted straight who somehow wandered into the lavender section of our store?

http://www.amazon.com/Dykes-Watch-Out-Alison-Bechdel/dp/0932379176

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-- 
No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
--Daniel Harper
countermonkey.blogspot.com