5 Giftable Books for the Holidays

Here are Five Giftable Books (In no particular order):

1. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. Mariner Books. (Paperback.) Ideal stocking-stuffer. What's not to love? Alison Bechdel, creator of Dykes to Watch Out For, pens a memoir about her life with a father who was probably queer and maybe a child molester, but he never quite talked about it. The backdrop is a funeral home. And it's written as a graphic novel. This is an exceptional work. It is a sincere attempt by Alison Bechdel to understand her father. I strongly recommend this book.
2. Hollywood at Home by Architectural Digest, Gerald Clarke, Paige Rense. Abrams. (Hardcover.) Ignore the tacky John Travolta Florida home on the cover. This is the ideal coffee table book for the queer on your list. Probably worth the price for the Cary Grant/Randolph Scott photos alone. (Only Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon photos do more to reinforce the queer Cary Grant theory.) Also: Gorgeous photos of queer icon/reactionary Katharine (Or is it Kate?) Hepburn's house. Add in one of Judy Garland's houses and some fabulously campy photos of Jayne Mansfield's fantasy bedroom--red leather walls and all. Trust me on this.
3. Cary Grant: The Biography by Marc Eliot. Aurum Press. (Paperback.) Some biographies seem to inhabit their subject--such as William Mann's almost-miraculous Kate. Other biographies are written more like legal arguments. Mr. Eliot's Cary Grant is a biography of the latter variety. It is also very good. At times Mr. Eliot plays the attorney for the prosecution--carefully dissecting Cary Grant's complex relationship with J. Edgar Hoover, but just as often he steps in as the lawyer for the defense. For whatever faults he might have had, Cary Grant is presented as a sympathetic figure. A man who literally started out with nothing and ended up leaving roughly seventy million dollars to his survivors. A man haunted by a horrible childhood. A man who explored his own identity through many therapeutic sessions with LSD. In the end, Mr. Grant comes across as something that is now so rare in our society it has become hard to define: a gentleman.
4. The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Wilson by Robert Hofler. Carrol and Graf. (Paperback.) Mr. Hofler accurately portrays the slightly sleazy life of the agent who brought us not only Rock Hudson, but also Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue and Robert Wagner. And Henry Wilson didn't just represent these icons; he created them--giving them new personaes and (usually) new names. (Of all these clients, only Robert Wagner kept his original name.) It's a dirty world that Mr. Hofler re-creates. He also puts it all in context--illustrating how heterosexual agents and studio heads continously used their positions to sexually harass women. For example, he points out that Daryl Zanuck had a room off his office for "auditioning" the female talent. If Henry Wilson was sleazy, his sleaziness paled in comparison with the boys who really ran Hollywood. In the end, Henry Wilson represents a parenthesis in film history. But this parenthesis is juicy.
5. Ridiculous! The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam by David Kaufman. Applause Books. (Paperback.) Probably the most difficult biography in the world to write is the biography of a stage personality. Without a film record, the reader must enter into the subject's world cold. How can we, for example, know the magic of Sarah Bernhardt or Nell Gwynn? Whose account can we turn to? And how accurate will that account be? The theatre is perhaps the most subjective of all the arts (ironic because the experience is collective). So how do you show (not just tell) the story of Charles Ludlam: the theatrical phenomenon of the Ridiculous Theatre Company in Sheridan Square? A man who died of AIDS at the age of forty-four just a few months before he was scheduled to make his debut on Broadway? David Kaufman does not appear to possess a magic wand. Nor does he demonstrate any supernatural powers. Instead, he just works hard--interviewing seemingly everyone involved in the, at times, rag tag productions Charles Ludlam pushed through. The effect is an incomplete mosaic. Incomplete because Mr. Ludlam's life was arbitrarily ended by AIDS. No, Mr. Kaufman's book does not have a happy ending. But it it is story that needed to be told.