Subject: Pioneer Gay Author Interviewed
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 1995 08:56:05 -0500

A Submission From

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Submitted by this message is a  somewhat whimsical interview with Daniel
Curzon by John W. Gettys.  As better explicated in the interview, Curzon is a
pioneer Gay author.  The author would appreciate your customary payment (if
any) for such works.

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THE OBNOXIOUS CHARM OF DANIEL CURZON

	by John W. Gettys

     Daniel Curzon has been a pioneer in the modern gay literary movement 
since his first novel (SOMETHING YOU DO IN THE DARK) was published by 
G.P. Putnam in 1971, at a time when a gay book was a rare (and dangerous) 
thing. As it says in CONTEMPORARY GAY AMERICAN NOVELISTS (Greenwood 
Press), "Curzon is one of the principal gay writers to walk the 
minefields of literary and social criticism to make it easier for those 
who have followed." He is one of two hundred writers selected from around 
the world to be included in GAY & LESBIAN LITERATURE (St.James Press/Gale 
Research Co.) He lives and teaches in San Francisco. We recently caught 
up with him and asked him some questions.

Q. Where have you been for the past seven or eight years? There hasn't 
been much about you in the gay press. At one time you seemed to be 
everywhere.

CURZON. I became Pope for a short while. Didn't you read about that? But 
it didn't work out. I wanted to make some doctrinal changes--and so did 
my boyfriend--but the College of Cardinals wasn't buying it. I was forced 
out of the Vatican in a coup.

Q. Did you stop writing while you were Pope?

CURZON. No, I wrote SUPERFAG, my new novel, among other things. But the 
grants I had to write for Mother Teresa were especially grueling and 
time-consuming. But now my book is polished and ready to go. Knights 
Press was supposed to publish it a while back, but that publisher bit the 
dust, taking me and several others writers with it.

Q. SUPERFAG--is that title supposed to be a joke, or just bad taste?

CURZON. Well, the word *queer* has come back with a new twist. The least 
I can do is save *fag* too. Actually I called TIM McPICK, one of my early 
novels, QUEER COMEDY, but my agent at the time--in 1972--said that was 
not a good title. But now it is! I like to believe I'm on the cutting 
edge. My idea of fun is to write about a semi-divine young man sent from 
heaven by God to ride the Earth of homophobia, taking on any and all comers.
It's a comic look at the gay rights movement of the past quarter century.

Q. Do you see any letup in homophobia, compared to when you first 
published, in 1971?

CURZON. There's a big difference. You couldn't be known to be a gay 
writer then or you would lose your job and your family and your friends. 
Today it's not as universally oppressive. But, believe me, there's plenty 
of homophobia out there--from the usual suspects of the religious right 
to the Chinese Communists to some so-called minorities, who are supposed 
to be universally holy and above criticism. I'm fed up with the way 
political correctness has tried to prevent us from calling things 
what they are. I've tried to take on some of these new sacred cows in a 
comic way in this book.

Q. You sound a bit disgruntled.

CURZON. I've always been disgruntled. I wouldn't know how to be 
"gruntled." One reason I've pulled back from participating in the gay 
movement is that I don't like the way some of it has gone. Besides, I'm 
an idea man, and so I like to sprinkle the world with provocative 
thoughts and then move on to something else. There's been such a delay, 
though, in getting SUPERFAG out that perhaps this time my provocations 
will be more in tune with what other folks are feeling. Of course I live 
in San Francisco, the heartland of the Thought Police, and that's why I 
feel the need to write as I do.

Q. I thought San Francisco was Gay Paradise on earth.

CURZON. Well, maybe it used to be. But AIDS has taken the charm off, to 
say the least. The city is also dirtier and more threatening now. And I'm 
older--can't discount that. And it's full of political people of the Left 
of a particularly mind-numbing variety. I'm sorry to say that they can be 
as rigid and self-righteous as the Right. I myself can give no allegiance 
to either side. I call 'em as I see 'em. I believe any serious writer 
worth his salt has to, or else he's just a hack for other people's 
self-serving agendas.

Q. Specifically what areas are you disgruntled about?

CURZON. Oh, everything has turned into race, gender, and ethnicity--with 
very explicit, almost Biblical "interpretations" demanded, whether your 
own experience indicates something else may be true. A lot of it is 
white-bashing, "European"-bashing, as though all people of European 
backgrounds are identical. As though Irish Catholics and Russian Jews and 
Greek Orthodox--all just "white people"--haven't struggled to make it in 
American society, have been handed everything. Give me a break!

Q. Have you turned conservative?

CURZON. That's exactly my point! You don't have to be "conservative" to 
see the silliness of the Left. It's easy to see the silliness of a Jesse 
Helms or the current Pope (who replaced me after the coup), but it's more 
challenging, certainly in a gay context, to point out what is equally 
true but harder to say because there's this tremendous pressure not to 
say certain things. Of course that's exactly *when* I want to write. Back 
in the old days I burned to show homosexuals as people with genuine pain 
in SOMETHING YOU DO IN THE DARK (now out of print, by the way). These 
days I burn to say some new things. And so I've said them. I've never 
been a comfortable writer, like Armistead Maupin, let's say. And, come 
on, these days colleges have Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender-Gay Centers, 
for god's sake. That's P.C. at its hilarious, pompous "inclusive" best. 
And have you noticed how "gay" is usually last now?

Q. Do you think readers think of you as a comic writer?

CURZON. Probably not. If they think of me as a writer at all. People have 
a short attention span, or so I've heard. Tons of my contemporaries have 
died of AIDS and taken their memories of me and my writing with them. I 
see my books sometimes in their estate sales. "To Tom--wonderful meeting 
you! Best, Dan Curzon." I see it written on the flyleaf, and I wonder who 
I wrote that to and when. And now they're dead! It's all numbing, if you 
think about it.

Q. So does all this mean that you haven't mellowed in middle age?

CURZON. Don't I sound mellow? I'm finally tenured. Once you're tenured 
you're supposed to turn into a mushmelon, right? Well, I haven't. But I 
don't think people should confuse my persona as a writer with my private 
demeanor. I'm a pussycat--really. Of course when things piss them off 
even pussycats have claws. What pisses me off now? Oh, for one, the fact 
that I can never retire from teaching English. I don't have enough years 
in, because I was a part-time slave for twelve years--despite getting a 
Ph.D. and publishing my butt off. Historical forces beyond my control 
crippled my career. For another, the fact that some younger gay people 
have never heard of my work. But then as a teacher I know lots of people 
have never heard of Gore Vidal or even Tennessee Williams either! 
Amazing! But don't get me started on who reads and who doesn't. I may get 
depressed and give up the world of literature once and for all and become 
Mother Teresa's press agent.

Q. Do you have something against Mother Teresa is particular?

CURZON. Just that I'm an ex-Catholic. We can never forget--or forgive--the 
Church. Besides, a guy who thinks Mother Teresa and the Pope are funny 
can't be all bad, can he?