Homo Libris

Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps by Michael Bronski © 2003

Noting research that included reading "just over 225 novels," cultural critic Bronski (The Pleasure Principle) delightfully chronicles gay pulp novels from their emergence in the late 1940s through the post-Stonewall era in this expansive, exhaustively researched amalgam of fiction and gay history. In the earliest novels, homosexual characters were often drawn as angst-ridden men living hideaway lives. These mild tales gave way to the more outrageous and sexually intrepid plot lines of the 1950s and early '60s.

The Gay Detective by Lou Rand © 2003

Before there was Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, vintage pulp writer Lou Rand delivered this high-camp masterpiece. Set in Beat-era gay-mecca-in-the-making San Francisco, the 1961 novel stars a sissy gumshoe, his butch ex-Marine assistant, a nymphomaniac on the make, and plenty of dishy humor. This flamboyant whodunit is now available for the first time in three decades.


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