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PALE FIRE on gay top-100 novels list
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Contributing yet another end-of-the-century list, an
organization of gays in publishing has compiled the 100 greatest gay novels
of all time, with Thomas Mann's ``Death in Venice'' coming in at No. 1.
The novella about a writer's infatuation with a teen-age boy was followed by
James Baldwin's ``Giovanni's Room,'' the story of an expatriate's struggle
with his sexual identity, and ``Our Lady of the Flowers,'' Jean Genet's
fantasy about a male prostitute in the Parisian underworld.
Two classic French novels finished fourth and fifth: Marcel Proust's
``Remembrance of Things Past'' and Andre Gide's ``The Immoralist.''
The list was compiled by Publishing Triangle, which consists of more than 250
gay and lesbian writers, editors, agents and publishers.
The criteria for what constitutes a ``gay novel'' were hazy. Titles
apparently could make the list if the author was gay, if the book had gay
subject matter, or the text was simply open to gay interpretation.
The exercise was a response to the Modern Library's list last summer of the
century's best English-language novels. That list was widely criticized as a
stodgy compilation of white male literature. The Modern Library is a division
of Random House.
On the list -- under #60 -- ``Pale Fire,'' Vladimir Nabokov.