The Inside Reader: Tom Cardamone

Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends - Silas Weir Mitchell

I love the Inside Reader serial, and I love how different authors share with us their preferences, trying to stick on the 10 books limits rule... but sometime you find an author who is not able to do that. I understand them, since I would be probably like that. Tom Cardamone asked me time and again more time, but in the end he told me, Elisa, this is what I wrote, is it good for the serial? Tom, not only is good, it's perfect! (but now, authors, my friends, I'm doing an exception only for Tom ;-))

From here on all the post is by Tom, no bold this time, otherwise it would all in bold ;-)

"As a compulsive list maker, the task of compiling favorite and recommendable books for this blog seemed easy, yet every time I tried to approach this project, I ended up rather far afield; I was forced to confront a part of myself that I prefer to let ferment in the dark. My literary taste is a nighttime twin. It certainly represents so much of who I am, who I was and who I want to be, yet I can never really grasp this shadowy reflection which, if forced to envision, is my cameo, black on the blue twilight of a chipped paperback, one eye gleaming like a dying red star. The title is noirish, the author unheard of (and likely pseudonymous), my skinny black figure part science fiction, part gay pulp. The font just begs you to take drugs.

I shun best sellers and dig behind the classics, thinking that knowledge must be secret or mildly unattainable, that you have to work at finding the best books. Over the years I’ve made several rules and have broken them all. Example: I never read a series. I’m convinced that the present incarnation of trilogies and their lengthier ilk are simple marketing ploys to sell more books, that great writers are compelled to lay it all out in one tome for fear of their own impending deaths (yet I was carried across time while reading Mary Renault’s Alexander series and didn’t understand what all the fuss over Edmund White until I reached the end of his New York Trilogy, The Farewell Symphony, not to mention the multiple fantasy and science fiction series that fed my youth). Another rule: I read one biography of a writer each year. This is a bit more of a dance, the selection of the writer and then the choosing of the right biographer is quite a complicated and time consuming tango in search of an appropriate partner. From reading one biography of a writer a year for two decades I have been able to distill the collective secret to their various degrees of success: time.

(I’ve read two biographies of Edgar Allen Poe and was perplexed, amazed, reassured and amused that two capable writers would reveal divergent facets and facts about a single subject though the scales tip in favor toward the biographer who noted that his black cat died on the same day Poe expired).

I’m still avoiding the heart of the matter, what throws the flame that forms my flickering silhouette. For me it’s all about the story. Everything, everything must be right, the title, the length, the cover, the author, even the season I read the book in -I circle the story like a shark in reverse, testing for strength, not weakness; there should be no blood in the water, no clear trail to follow. I am the lone shark that wants itself to be eviscerated, to forget and be forgotten.

If I read a book I’m committing the best kind of suicide, the one that allows me to resurface and enter my shaky self with renewed passions. That’s why I read. That’s why I choose quite carefully. Oh so warily. I approach a book with more suspicion than I approach a person. Consider that dramatic if you will, but people are destroying themselves everyday, throwing themselves off bridges, gassing themselves in cars. They are willfully heading towards their own deaths and you know that you have the answer that would have stilled them. We’ve all read books that we think could save a life. How do we know? Because we’ve done such an excellent job saving our own. If only we could reach others. We read to live -to die and live again thrilled at having dug our toes into the crumbling precipice of dusty death –always stopping short of going over the edge.

The fabric of my nighttime twin is made of desire, of music, from the ash of the books that mattered most.

( Read more... )

Well, I spent an embarrassing amount of time talking about myself and why I read rather than the books I was contacted to write about. Well so what? -I’m a writer and the question hit a rather compulsive nerve and I just ran with it. Unasked is the question, why do I write? That shadow, thrown by my nighttime twin, is as every bit as evasive as the light that casts it. Though I have my suspicions I’d rather not solve the crime until I’ve generated the required evidence." --Tom Cardamone

The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered edited by Tom Cardamone
Paperback: 232 pages
Publisher: Haiduk Press (March 2010)
Publisher Link: http://www.haidukpress.com/index.php/bookhome/17-the-lost-library-gay-fiction-rediscovered  
ISBN-10: 097146863X
ISBN-13: 978-0971468634
Amazon: The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered

What if you wanted to give a friend the book that saved your life when you realized you were gay, but it was out of print? You could hunt in used book stores, or search online for reviews, but you’d be lucky to find it. In "The Lost Library" twenty eight modern gay authors reminisce about their favorite out of print gay novels, bringing the texts to light and telling intimate stories of their own.

The book includes an essay on reprints of gay literature by Philip Clark. With a dramatic cover illustration by Mel Odom, "The Lost Library" is a unique offering for the GLBT audience and anyone who appreciates eloquent accounts of the human experience.


Cover Art by Mel Odom

Winner of the 2010 San Francisco Book Festival Prize in the "Gay" category.