From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 12:26:23 -0400

*****************************************************************
NEWS YOU DIDN'T SEE ON TV

A commentary by Patricia Nell Warren                      
7/11/96

****************************************************************

LIBRARY BOOKS  AT RISK
By Patricia Nell Warren

The library in my home town (Deer Lodge, MT, pop. 6000) was not unusual
for a small-town library of its time.  A Victorian neoclassic pile set amid 
aging cottonwood trees, the William Kohrs Memorial Library had been built by
my own greatgrandparents in memory of their son, who died as a
university student.  Inside, the building had that fragrant smell of old
books, and a  feeling that spirits of men in muttonchop whiskers and ladies 
in bustles still hovered in the air. In winter, its cranky old steam
radiators barely 
kept me warm as I searched the stacks lined with  venerable volumes -- 
"classic" meaning anything good published before World War II.   Even in 
summer, the woman librarian wore a heavy sweater, for frost can surprise 
the Rockies in August.

Yet here, as a high-school student in the late 40s,  I found
books that gave me that first secret thrill of same-sex recognition.  Like
the 
whitetail deer browsing in the valley's willow brakes, I found bites of wild
food 
here and there, in certain places.

The first book I stumbled on was T.E. Lawrence's <Seven Pillars of
Wisdom>. History homework on World War I led me to it. At 13 I was as
intellectually precocious as I was emotionally naive.  So T.E.'s  frank
comments on the sexuality of men in combat, and his moving subplot on
the two young Arab lovers, Daud and Farraj, were my first clue that others 
in the universe had strangely powerful feelings about  their own gender.
<Death in Venice> was easily found  in a collected Thomas Mann -- my Teutonic
pioneer ancestry led me to nibble this German author. Ancient Greek
literature was a bountiful browsing-ground -- I had no trouble translating
Hector's tears over  Patroclus, or Sappho's companionships with women. 
Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde were suspiciously fond of the beauty of men.

Yes, the small-town libraries of my childhood didn't offer  <Heather Has Two 
Mommies>.  But they had their own rich pickings -- all under the safe label 
of "best loved classics."

While classics were unassailable, it was the flood of new postwar books 
that our town's librarians scrutinized frowningly.   Even as a kid, I noticed
that 
libraries all stocked <The Three Musketeers> with its adulterous/extramarital
bedroom romps.  But <Forever Amber>, that shocking new bestseller with
bedroom romps,  was not allowed. While <Gulliver's Travels>'s  fondness for
scat was okay,  Hemingway's new  <Old Man and the Sea>  was not okay  -- our
high-school 
librarian was revolted by one line where the old fisherman pees over the side
of
the boat.

Last week, speaking  at the American Library Assn.'s  Gay and Lesbian
Book Awards, these adolescent browsings came back powerfully as I faced a 
roomful of gay librarians.  Some in the audience were known to me through 
online chats with the "gay-libn list."  Many had shared their own similar
experience
 with "that first book."  Like me, the older librarians  had often
jump-started their gay awareness with classics.

While critical acclaim, book awards, a flash of bestsellerdom, are important
today, they are no guarantee that any book -- gay or straight -- will be on
the 
country's library shelves a century from now.  Posterity seems more lenient
with "classics."  Maybe it's because it takes half a century to distinguish a
rich 
and solid reading experience from the rhetoric and vogue of an era in which
a book first sees print. Whereas new books get a harsher scrutiny by
community censors.  Indeed, the strait-laced Christian bookreader is
amazingly forgiving about  
the violence, slavery, adulteries, incest and other hair-raising stuff  in
that
"religious classic" called the Bible.  If the Bible were a brand-new
front-list
release  today, the Family Friendly Libraries people would be up in arms,
demanding its removal for fear their children would read it.

The  local librarian -- gay or straight -- is the last line of defense for
books 
that have a track record of  long-time redeeming value.  And the gay
librarian,
however closeted, has often been there to quietly vibe  the needs of a
questing kid standing shyly at the desk.  As I think about where our country
is heading, the growing conservatism worries me. Yet  I have a strong feeling

that classic books whose pages are mirrors (however subtle) of gay 
sensibility will still be quietly found on library shelves a century from now
--
even in some small towns, far from the urban centers where gay influence 
is more heavily felt. Indeed, such books will be quietly protected by the
most 
sensible librarians and library boards of tomorrow.

I have no idea if that lady librarian in her heavy sweater was a sister -- I
was too 
nervous  to ask her any questions.   Besides, this  wild yearling knew
exactly 
what tastes she was looking for.  But I  take hope from the fact that my
literary 
"food" could be found in her stacks, in a far more rigid  time than today.

******************************************************************************

Patricia Nell Warren is author of "The Front Runner" and other bestselling 
books about gay life.  Her publisher is Wildcat Press. 
 For information on her books, her web page can be found at
http://www.gaywired.com/wildcat/wildcat.htm

*****************************************************************************
Copyright (c) 1996 by Patricia Nell Warren. All Rights Reserved. 
This column may be crossposted on the Internet free, without change and in
its entirety for non-commercial purposes without prior permission from the
author  -- email us  to let us know where it reappears.   For express
permission
 to reprint in print or other media,  please call 213/966-2466, or fax 
213/966-2467, or email [email-masked].   Whether you crosspost  or
reprint, you must include the author's byline and copyright information.
Please help fight copyright infringement on the Internet by
respecting authors' rights.

Wildcat Press, 8306 Wilshire Blvd. Box 8306, 
Beverly Hills, CA 90211. 

******************************************************************************