ONYX, is set for re-release Aug 30
Felice Picano has been a force in American literature since bursting upon the scene in 1975. He’s become a living icon in his exploration of gay life and culture: memoirs extending back into the 1960s at Fire Island; his most recent novel (Justify My Sins) covering gay Hollywood three decades earlier; and several works exploring the New York AIDS era in which so many of us lived and lost lovers and friends in those dark, terrible years.
So it’s a bit surprising to read the jacket flap of his first novel, Smart as the Devil, comparing it to The Bad Seed and Rosemary’s Baby. The Dell mass paperback edition screamed: “More unholy than Rosemary’s Baby. More shattering than The Exorcist. More terrifying than anything you have ever read!” This was capped by a blazing quote from the Charlotte Observer: “FREEZING FEAR!” The book was nominated for a Hemingway/PEN award and two more psychological thrillers (Eyes and The Mesmerist) quickly followed. Then in his early 30s, Picano ought to have been on the top of the world: book deals from major publishers, in hard cover, mass market and — still then a potent force in reaching readers — the Book Club.
But instead, as Picano related it in later years, he committed “literary suicide”: he began a new journey “doing what I’m not supposed to do in my writing”. In a word, he publicly embraced gayness at a time which was hungering for gay voices. Gay Liberation got a kick in the pants with Stonewall in 1969, riding the wave of the 60s student unrest and the anti-Vietnam war resistance coupled with a burgeoning women’s movement fueled by mainstream availability of contraception techniques, the black power movement and a sexual revolution which created space for young people to change the world. Handsome teenager Lance Loud, on PBS’s “An American Family” stunned the nation by “coming out of the closet” in an early reality TV series which tracked the life of a “typical” suburban white family for a few weeks. Christopher Street Magazine launched and immediately became a must-read for gay culture; the Advocate rose in stature reflecting our voices, not just offering hook-ups and friendship via safe-space pink personal pages but in hard news as we clawed our way toward gaining civil rights.
Comedians know one thing is true: “Timing is everything”; it was true, too, for Picano who shifted gears to embrace gay culture. In 1979, The Lure, his fourth novel, was a sensation and the first queer novel to be offered at Book of the Month club. The story depicts a straight man used as bait for a serial killer, the main character delving into his sheltered life with disturbing self-discovery and a brilliant backdrop of gay sexual life in pre-AIDS New York: it tantalized and thrilled a mainstream audience. A year later, William Friedkin’s Cruising, starring Al Pacino, assaulted audiences (in good and bad ways): clearly Picano had struck a chord.
Now, forty years on, Picano has mined gay culture from an astonishingly wide variety of angles including nearly a dozen memoirs and almost as many “gay” novels. A founding member of the Violet Quill writers group, he and allies Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro and George Whitmore wrote seminal gay works that both inspired and mentored a generation of gay writers (Stan Leventhal is among those). Picano also turned his energy to publishing, establishing Sea Horse Press in 1977 and Gay Presses of New York in 1981. He’s a five-time Lambda Literary Award winner and received the Ferro-Grumley Fiction Award in 1996. In addition to his novels, memoirs and short fiction, he’s been a frequent contributor to magazines, newspapers and journals as well as editor of numerous gay fiction anthologies. Now in his mid-70s, Picano is in the midst of a book tour for Justify My Sins.
Not for nothing, and with deep affection, Montreal journalist Richard Burnett calls Felice Picano “The Godfather of Gay Lit”.
Among his most celebrated are a cluster of works published in the mid 1990s: Like People In History (1995), The Book of Lies (1999) and Onyx (2001). ReQueered Tales, a publishing venture restoring out of print gay authors to circulation, has acquired rights to these as well as a 1983 book of short stories, Slashed to Ribbons in Defence of Love. Onyx is set for release Aug 30 with Like People in History to follow in January.
Roger Durbin, in Library Journal, welcomed Onyx in 2001: “the author … creates an incredibly rich and densely textured world. Picano guides us through the spiraling vortex of Jesse’s dying from AIDS-related diseases and lover Ray’s finding the means to let go through work and accidental sex. Picano is honest and excruciatingly descriptive, especially in the concrete details of a body literally falling to pieces and finally going up in smoke in a crematorium. It’s a raw journey through death and dying, unsparing in his take on how survivors cope. Highly recommended for general and gay literature collections.”
Greg Herren in Lambda Book Report called it “a complex tableau of life and death”. While the book is primarily about the intersection of three men – Ray, Jesse and Mike – there is a sub-theme of administrative, legal obstacles for gay partners imposed by hospitals, courts and family. This is embodied as “another character is added to the tapestry: his Southern, bigoted, homophobic, controlling mother. Has there been a more monstrous mother in fiction since Medea?”
It is Herren, again, who sums up why Onyx is such a powerful read: “Picano has always drawn his main characters as gay heroes, unashamed and unafraid of who they are and what life has to offer, whether positive or negative. This, ultimately, is the measure of Picano’s genius.”
The new edition of Onyx, with a 2019 foreword by the author, is available for pre-order at Amazon, Kobo, Nook and Apple iBooks.
