The Greatest Queer Books Ever Written

“Like Nietzsche, Genet believed in the ‘transvaluation of all values,’ by which bad is good and the ugly is beautiful. Whereas most writers treated homosexuality as a disease, Genet took the stronger position in linking it with evil and sin. He invented the drag queen for literature with the novel’s character Divine.”

“Renault was one of the great historical novelists, able to do justice to the strangeness of the past, even while bringing it to life for modern readers. The Persian Boy, I think, was her masterpiece.”

“In my opinion James Purdy is the most underrated writer in American literature, probably because he was gay. His books are heart-wrenching, brutal, and sometimes flat-out mean-spirited, but they are also incredibly beautiful and endlessly poetic. I’m not all that fond of books that make me cry, but in Purdy’s case, I don’t mind.”

“It’s a crime that the Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel, who died in January 2015, isn’t more widely read outside the Spanish-language world. His only book available in English, My Tender Matador, is one of the greatest novels I know. It’s a kind of love story between an aging gay man in Santiago, the Queen of the Corner, and a young revolutionary plotting the assassination of Pinochet. Lemebel writes both from and for the neighborhoods where he lived, weaving an intensely beautiful, often hilarious prose out of the slang of drag queens and drug addicts. He’s an absolute genius. Read him.”

“If you’ve only ever read In Cold Blood or Other Voices, Other Rooms or Breakfast at Tiffany’s, you’ve missed Capote at his best: He was a master of shorter forms of fiction. Here are all of his stories, including the early ones published in 1940s women’s magazines, creepy wonders like ‘Miriam’ and ‘The Headless Hawk.’ And here too are the delicious, leisurely childhood stories ‘A Christmas Memory’ and ‘The Thanksgiving Visitor,’ which any child and the child within any of us should love. Add in the unique long story ‘House of Flowers,’ with its lilting language and Caribbean setting and fairy-tale plot, which was once turned into a Broadway musical starring Pearl Bailey. But then top it all off with ‘Mojave,’ Capote’s strangest yet most mature tale: an atmospheric, slowly grinding revelation of unstoppable obsession and revenge.”

“Although not usually categorized as a ‘gay novel,’ Maxwell’s 1945 book about the uncommon friendship between two teenage boys named Lymie and Spud is the sweetest and saddest love story I’ve ever read.”

“Paul Monette’s memoir is a devastating account of his encounter with a disease that would kill him. It is so intimate and personal that I often felt I was reading someone’s diary and was ashamed to be committing such a gross invasion of another person’s privacy. Paul Monette was not a careless man. He wanted us to know and remember what AIDS did to him. He succeeded more than he could ever have realized. Books about what it means to be human have no expiration date.”

“The Beautiful Room Is Empty taught me that a one-night stand can be like a poem. White’s poetic oeuvre is impressive.”

“It’s hard to say which Virginia Woolf I would choose, since she is, of all writers, the one who most clearly articulates the world as I live in and perceive it, and from whose books I draw the most acute comfort. But I think I would say that the particular sadness of Jacob’s Room somehow reminds me of myself when life has taken me away from myself: ‘Their lack of concern for him was not the cause of his gloom, but some more profound conviction—it was not that he himself was lonely, but that all people are.’ ”  

“Where I learned—in eighth grade, I think—that in the future you could have unbridled sci-fi sex with every man and woman within reach, without guilt, fear, or weirdness, and have great end-of-times adventures. Just like my dreams! Fantastically futuristic!”

“To me, this remains one of the most beautiful books of love poetry ever written, but it is also a crucial chronicle of the worst days of the AIDS epidemic. And Monette’s love for his lover, Rog, who died of AIDS early into the epidemic, becomes something transfigured—calling it a tour de force doesn’t cover the grandeur of it. Reading it as a young gay man, before I’d ever fallen in love, made me hope that I could love as deeply, as strongly, as greatly—and that I would be loved that way in return. To me, it was and is an education in how men can love each other and a reminder of how what we have made for ourselves in the 30 years since is so important and must be defended at all cost, even as we expand our fight for equality past what we can currently imagine.”

“A salaciously satisfying novel that’s a great read, especially if you’re having a sexual nervous breakdown.”

“Baldwin is one of my favorite writers and cultural critics. His work always feels both relevant and revelatory. This book-long essay on film and moviegoing is part memoir, part homage to cinema, and also an exploration of the ways corrosive ideas seep into the collective imagination.”

“This has been on my list forever, but it’s been getting a lot of attention lately because of Todd Haynes’s excellent movie adaptation, Carol. It was the first novel about lesbians to have a happy ending, but it’s also a really unnerving and propulsive story, like all of Patricia Highsmith’s books. She originally published it under a pseudonym so it didn’t wreck her career.”

“Kathy Acker was a punk-rock, postmodern writer-artist, and she wrote this piece after her mother died. The title says all there is to know about her feelings toward her mother. Acker’s writing coalesces to its most epic as she reinvents, bends, and destroys language to build a world that is a complete psychological immersion and creative experience. Her books are a gift to humanity.”

“A simple but magnificent proof of genius. A first novel by a 25-year-old with absolute command of his craft, uncanny knowledge of his world (its past and present), and a daring originality which makes its last pages among the most startlingly moving I know.”

“It’s a memoir based on Benderson’s obsession with a Romanian hustler, and it made him the first American to win France’s coveted “Prix De Fleur.” There are many pleasures in this book: sex, travel, philosophy, art history. Benderson’s louche tale is woven through a closely observed study of Romania—politically, historically, and sociologically—and deals with the end of his mother’s life.”

“The greatest (gay) novel, translated by its great (gay) translator. I much prefer the original English translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff to all the subsequent attempts by others to make it into In Search of Lost Time.”

“This is like a dark lesbian genius rolling in a giant heap of damp, dead leaves. What a great, shaking, grieving party this book is—the best.”  

“This book made me want to write, to write more honestly than I had ever written before. No other book has done quite that.”

“There are five books in this series, and I love every one of them, but if you’re starting out, then begin with Mapp and Lucia, because it’s a vivid introduction to the characters who carry on in the other novels. A dear friend in London turned me on to Benson’s frolicking work, and I’m forever grateful to her.”

“Chin was a strong presence in the queer literary world, and all of his works are stamped with his trademark style: witty, dark, clever, tender, brutal, absurd, hilarious. Gutted is my favorite, a collection of elegies and anthems. We lost this important writer last year, too young, and the singular place he occupied in queer literary culture will be forever vacant. Thankfully, we have his work.”

“Will someone please—please—republish Joseph Torchia’s 1979 novel, The Kryptonite Kid? Gay men of my generation probably remember Torchia, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1996, as the author of As If After Sex (1983), a dirty little book that shined a coruscating light on gay body culture. The Kryptonite Kid is a completely different affair, tender and heartbreaking. Its protagonist is a 7-year-old Catholic boy in the 1950s who writes letters to Superman to cope with the abuses meted out by his father and the nuns at his school. The premise is exactly as earnest as it sounds, yet that doesn’t diminish the wallop at the end."