reviews_and_ramblings | 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.

That fabric is stressed and frayed when I am in-between books, when a suitable suitor isn’t lined up for immediate consumption after finishing a satisfying book, I’ll rip through back issues of the New Yorker and pull out all of the amazing but just-not-right-now books I’ve hoarded for years. I’ll visit the Strand and hunt online and never ask for recommendations as this is my problem, not yours. It’s as personally crushing as an engagement deferred. Often I’ll fortify myself with four or five pending titles so that when I finish a book there are ample choices, always a healthy mixture of fiction and nonfiction, representing different cultures and time periods (I favor all things Japanese, the later Roman Empire, and Twentieth Century author biographies and in keeping with my tradition of reading one author biography a year and breaking my own rules, I’ve read five so far this year and can strongly recommend Marijane Meaker’s memoir of her relationship with Patricia Highsmith).

I read some great books last year. Rabih Alameddine’s The Hakawati and Geoff Ryman’s The King’s Last Song were both stellar reads. Interestingly, both take place in countries I’d not previously fully explored in literature, Alameddine, Lebanon. Ryman, Cambodia. Both books absolutely moved me in those large and small ways that great books do as they propel you along, making you think you’re going to arrive somewhere else when actually when you end up finding yourself.

I’ve been reading Geoff Ryman for years and consider him one of my favorite speculative fiction writers. I encountered his early work (The Warrior Who Carried Life and The Unconquered Country) when quite young myself, and have always thrilled at the expansiveness of his imagination; even then, I was completely unprepared for the richness of this book, in both the telling and the research, The King’s Last Song was impressive at every turn. A book, inscribed on gold leaves, is unearthed and discovered to be the writings of the 12th Century Philosopher King Jayavarman VII, who united Cambodia. Much is revealed about the countries’ recent darkness; its past is illuminated as the ancient manuscript is stolen and chapters begin to alternate between the life of this historical king and the book’s kidnapped archeologist. His life as a westerner growing up in Cambodia, fluctuating with vital scenes of ancient life, his love affair with pedicab driver and the following horrific war, as well as the trials other characters endure hunting for the lost book, all stunningly portrayed with an emotional realism that is at times genuinely transcendental.

I went looking for Alameddine’s The Hakawati, having read his collection of short stories, The Perv. I’ve recently edited a book, The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered, covering over two dozen out of print queer books, some forgotten classics, all deserving of further consideration. The Perv was reviewed by one of the contributors, Michael Graves, and I was immediately drawn to the book. First, it was hard to find and a bit expensive. Secondly, the stories were strikingly original, though again, I wasn’t ready for The Hakawati. A hakawati is a traditional Lebanese story teller, a weaver of magic carpets that transports his audience on currents of myth, fable, story. And again, chapters shift across the centuries, from contemporary Beirut to the desert tales told by a hakawati; and like The King’s Last Song, these changing perspectives and time periods gives the reader the feeling that the very fabric of life itself is being minutely examined.

The richest part of The Hakawati is that the gay character’s homosexuality is never discussed or revealed. He is closeted to his family, within a culture that doesn’t recognize gay desire, much less gay rights, and Alameddine deftly allows these holes to appear in the manuscript. Just as the art of the hakawati is a lost art, so is a large part of the world lost to tales of genuine love by not recognizing or seeking gay stories.

Rare is the author that speaks eloquently with silence.

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.