The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal (Vintage). Vidal was 20 when he wrote this coming-of-age novel, set in a post-war America when the word homosexual conjured netherworlds of perversion and depravity. The feat here isn’t the various affairs or even the self-lacerating observations of the characters (and what a bunch!). Maybe déjà vu is the word for it: Vidal’s hero grows in increments, until what emerges is a clear-eyed, honest look at one man coming to terms, a coming out that, in its hills and valleys, remains emotionally indistinguishable from the lives of gay men today.
The Way We Live Now by Susan Sontag with art by Howard Hodgkin (Noonday Press, First Edition). First published as a short story in the New Yorker, this slim volume focuses on a small circle of friends coping with the illness of a mutual beloved. Like a fly on the hospital wall, Sontag, mostly through strands of connecting dialogue, deftly recreates a time filled with fear, benevolence and wonder as the characters try to make sense of the disease that, in the 80s and 90s, devoured Manhattan’s creative demimonde. The word AIDS is never mentioned, but anyone who soldiered through those dark days will recognize the heart-sinking horror.
Court and Spark (33 1/3) by Sean Nelson (Continuum). The album as an enduring form of art? Some of us think so; if you’re ever been derided for believing in the wisdom lurking in pop songs, Sean Nelson has your back. Part of the 33 1/3 series of books that analyze seminal pop recordings of the modern age, the author takes a look at poet/songwriter Joni Mitchell through her 1974 breakthrough (that criminally, contains her only certifiable hit, Help Me). Like the songs on the album the book’s a honey, a bountiful melding of musical insight and historical perspective that, thanks to Nelson’s song by song analysis, will forever change the way you listen to Mitchell’s work.
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud (Vintage). My first read by this author, but definitely not my last. You’d think everything had written about the Upper West Side crowd of privileged writers, palatial dwellings on CPW and bright young strivers on the far side of 20-something. But hold on: as the clouds of 9/11 descend, this witty dissection of aspiration becomes a dark, powerful rumination on damaged lives. Messud grabs you by the scruff with her elegant prose and won’t let go, leaving the reader helpless to do nothing except sit back and marvel as catastrophe unfolds.