Lesbian Reading

REVIEWED BY CINDY RIZZO

Whether your summer plans include long hours of lying on the beach at Provincetown or riding the subway to work in Brooklyn. you'll be sure to want something suitable to read. While others may revel in Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon or other summer schlock, lesbians can look to a growing library of fiction that serves to validate our lives and struggles. Some may be classified as "literature"; others are pure "best-seller" fiction but most of these books are great fun.

During the past few years a lot of lesbian pulp fiction from the late fifties and early sixties has been re-released. Recently completed was the six volume Paula Christian series of lesbian pulp. Out of the six novels that span the years between 1959-1965, there are two that are outstanding, Another King of Love and Love Is Where You Find It (it's remarkable how she got all the titles to sound the same). Both books, along with the other four, were reprinted by Timely. Books in Connecticut. Another Kind of Love is a fun coming-out story with a lovable "gay divorcee." And uncharacteristic of books fro mthat period, it has a happy ending. Love Is Where You Find It is Christian's only attempt to take a realistic look at lesbian life as it existed in the early sixties. She succeeds with strong, interesting characters and a believable plot.

For the creme de la creme of lesbian pulp, the Ann Bannon series is a must. The four main volumes center around the lives of Laura and Beth, who, in Odd Girl Out, meet in college, become lovers and then part. Laura, true to her new-found identity, goes to Greenwich Village to seek her lesbian fortune, while Beth succumbs to society pressure and marries Charles. The middle volumes chronicle Laura's coming of age as a lesbian and her tempestuous two-year love affair with the butchy Beebe Brinker. The suffering of lesbian life for Laura continues until she marries Jack, a sympathetic and sensitive gay male friend. Domestic bliss prevails. Then, in Journey to a Woman, Beth, now ten years older, leaves her marriage in search of the long lost Laura. This final story, particularly as it descries the confrontation between exlovers Laura and Beth, is Bannon's best work in the series. The four books have been reprinted by the Arno Press in conjunction with its series on homosexuality.

For some reason, they were published in hardback and cost $12.50. Borrow a

friend's copy.

The Bannon storyline is somehwat dusted off and updated in Nancy Toder's Choices, which appeared last fall. Again, college. roommates become lovers. One marries, the other comes out. They meet later in life and confront their past in the context of more

Sandy and Jenny here are not as powerful as Laura's and Beth's in the Bannon series, but are valuable because of the contemporary setting and the lesbian-feminist awareness with which Toder writes.

Choices was published by Persephone Press, which is a lesbian-feminist publisher in greater Boston. Just about all of the books on Persephone's growing list of achievements qualify as good summer reading. Most noteworthy, in addition to Choices, are The Coming Out Stories edited by Julia Penelope Stanley and Susan J Wolfe, Lesbian Poetry: an Anthology edited by Elly Bulkin and Joan Larkin, and the newly released, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color. Set for future publication by Persephone is a novel by writer Jan Clausen, whose book of short stories Mother, Sister, Daughter, Lover (Crossing Press) is the best example to date of good contemporary lesbian fiction. Clausen's stories focus on the family of woman how we arrange our lives as and with each of the roles listed in the book's title.

Another example of good short story reading is Jane Rule's most recently published work, Outlander (Naiad Press). The stories and essays contained in the book have been published before in lesbian and gay periodicals in the U.S. and Canada. The stories reflect the lesbian lifestyle in a broad and inclusive manner, and the essays, on such topics as inter-generational sexuality, are clearly written and wellargued. Jane Rule is one of the best and certainly one of the most prolific of the contemporary lesbian authors. Each of her five novels has lesbian plots of sub-plots. The two that best present a lesbian story line are Desert of the Heart, first published in 1964, and Against the Season.

For one afternoon of fun reading pick up The Marquise and the Novice by Victoria Ramstetter (Naiad Press). It is a hundred

page gothic lesbian novel, which uses the plot formula and characterization of the gothic genre and meshes it with a feminist perspective and an all-lesbian cast.

Many lesbian novels which will make good summer reading deal with the subject of youth. Valerie Taylor's Love Image (Naiad Press) tells the story of a child star who discovers her lesbian identity as a teenager and plans to escape the exploitative clutches of her Hollywood movie producer. The book is enjoyable and has a happy ending. Naiad has also published four novels by Sarah Aldridge. These books can be laeled as latter day pulps. The most noteworthy is All True Lovers, a long novel set in Depression-era Washington, DC. The book is appealing, but not because it is particularly well-written or because it is good historical fiction. It shines mainly because of Aldridge's excellent abaility to show us through two well drawn characters the joys and traumas of lesbian teenage romance. Another writer with the same ability is Sandra Scoppettone, whose novel Happy Endings Are All Alike (Dell Publishing) is set in small-town suburbia in the 1970s. While the main characters are presented as two toogood-to-be-true middle class A students (one goes to Smith, the other to Radcliffe), the positive presentation of two young female lovers is a first for a book that is aimed at teenage readers. Finally, on the subject of youth, is a re-released novel, by, of all people, Radcliffe Hall, entitled The Unlit Lamp (Dial Press). This book, written before The Well of Loneliness, did not deal as directly with the subject of lesbianism as the later book did. It, however, is much better written and developed. The plot follows the life of Joan Ogden, an intelligent child and. adolescent, who is caught between the competing desires of her mother, whose suffocating adoration beckons Joan to sacrifice her life and play nursemaid, and Elizabeth, Joan's tutor and mentor, who promises Joan a life of learning, accomplishment and loving "friendship." There are many other works of fiction that deal with our lives as lesbians, Hopefully, once you have exhausted this list for the summer you will get out and visit your local feminist or gay bookstore and start your reading for the fall, the winter and the spr

Reprinted by Permission from: Gay Community News, 22 Broomfield St., Boston, MA 02108) C

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