Tyrone and the Book Bank pt. 2

So, to continue where I left off from my last Tyrone update. No, I haven't managed to read all the Mishima yet. In fact, long before I got anywhere near them, Tyrone was back and so instead of butter for the table and bread for the hungry mouths of my weeping, jaundiced offspring, I spanked all my cash on:

In Patagonia - Bruce Chatwin (suitably foxed)
Flesh and the Word - ed. John Preston (nicely stained)
The Other Face of Love - Raymond de Becker (surprisingly presentable)

I haven't started the Chatwin yet - although I read Songlines last year and was quite excited: it blew apart the notion of a travel book, that it had to be a needless recitation of events and became instead a meditation on nomadism and tradition. That said, there's nothing wrong with a really great journey - and we might return to my personal theories about possible links between Thesiger and Chatwin at a later date...

Great story about Chatwin: A man after my own heart, he considered a famous London address one of life's Gentleman's essentials. He found one in Eaton Square, but due to limited funds, took a place so cramped that a 'friend' who came around was electrocuted in flagrante by putting their toe into an electric socket.

I've mentioned Preston before, in the last Tyrone post, and once again he comes up with the goods. Flesh and the Word, subtitled An Anthology of Gay Erotic Writing, is much more than simply porn - although it's very good at that too - it is an overview of a certain kind of gay men's (and straight women's) writing stretching back for 50 years. Articulating both the changes in society and in gay mens' lives over this time, Preston starts with Samuel Steward, protegee of Gertrude Stein, sometime English Professor and Tattoo Artist, and moves through the 60s, 'liberation' and the AIDs crisis (during which Preston was one of the first to call for and write and Safe Sex erotica). Authors include Edmund White (A Boy's Own Story), Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst, and Anne Rice - yes that one - who writes some of the filthiest stuff in here.

Finally, The Other Face of Love is just the kind of dog-eared, faux-Pelican, sensationalist scholarship I enjoy. The first two chapters cover animals and pagan tribes, before launching into a massive reappraisal of the oldest piece of literature on the planet, the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, essentially outing Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and his friend Enkidu, the first characters in literature. Quite a coup. I'll keep you updated.