by Richard LaBonte
Q Syndicate's Bookmarks
March 4, 2011

True Stories: Portraits from My Past
by Felice Picano
Chelsea Station Editions, $16

If you’ve read all of Picano’s nonfiction, and there’s a lot, portions of these “portraits from my past” will seem familiar – some essays are expanded from shorter versions that appeared in previous books, restoring text excised, most likely, by page-count restrictions or editorial decisions. No matter. Picano is such a vibrant memoirist that every extra word is welcome. As a lithe youth he charmed “British auntie” W.H. Auden and an intimidating Diana Vreeland, was physically aroused at the Continental Baths by Bette Midler crooning for near-naked boys at the dawn of her career, and later crossed paths with Tennessee Williams and revived the literary career of Charles Henri Ford – appealing anecdotes all. But the best essays reveal a less celebrity-centered side: Picano besting a boyhood bully; Picano reconnecting with his curmudgeonly father; Picano explicating with wrenching honesty his complex relationship with publishing partner Terry Helbing; and, most poignantly, Picano remembering men he played with, partied with, and forged friendships with, men who died in the early days of AIDS, when it was a death sentence, and whose shortened lives Picano honors.   

Memory lane

Franz Kafka once wrote, "It is hard to tell the truth, for although there 'is' one, it is alive and constantly changes its face." Telling truths is something that popular, prolific author and memoirist Felice Picano does extremely well. This is most evident in True Stories: Portraits from My Past, his latest collection of expanded personal essays and life reflections. While some are new, many of these pieces have enjoyed publication in other anthologies, but Picano presents them in their unedited form, free from the shackles of word counts and the red editing pencil.

In the introduction, Picano bows to the "strange, wondrous, or simply nutty" people who have passed through his life, since they're the ones who helped him become the writer that he is today. By extension, his writings are a grand gesture to "those I related to, over the years."

As far as celebrity encounters are concerned, Picano boasts a lion's share of personal interactions with divas, doyennes, and a few gayer-than-gay scribes along the way. The "British Auntie" in the opening story is none other than poet W.H. Auden, who accidentally (and quite flamboyantly) dropped a geranium flowerpot down onto St. Mark's Place where a youthful Picano and "working" actor-pal George Sampson happened to be strolling. While "his costume was curious and his apartment a horror," Auden remained magnificently "something to behold."

Getting Queer Straight
By: MICHAEL EHRHARDT
07/26/2007
GayCityNews.com

ART AND SEX IN GREENWICH VILLAGE
By Felice Picano
Carroll & Graf
$15.95; 272 pages

Prolific gay literary icon Felice Picano ("Like People in History") wrote his captivating new memoir, "Art and Sex in Greenwich Village," to set the record "straight" about the glorious rise of a brave new literary movement on the cooling heels of the 1969 Stonewall uprising. His aim, he said, is to correct "wildly erroneous views on what our life was like a mere 20 or 30 years ago. Errors do tend to creep in and, through the Internet, errors are instantly perpetuated unchanged forever and all over the e-verse. So this is a real problem."

Now, in his early 60s, Picano gives an insider's account of the creatively charged atmosphere that resulted in the spontaneous formation of the renowned Violet Quill Club, a sort of Lavender Bloomsbury group that included Andrew Holleran, Edmund White, and Robert Ferro and promoted what the author calls its "beneficent conspiracy" on behalf of gay literature.

Andrew Holleran (Dancer from the Dance, The Kingdom of Sand) and Felice Picano (Late In the Season, A House on the Ocean, a House on the Bay) are considered founders of modern gay literature, along with other members of the The Violet Quill from the early 80s.

Both authors spent considerable time on Fire Island Pines in the 70s and 80s, turning their personal experiences into some of the most memorable literary descriptions of the liberated post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS era.

Last month Beinecke Library at Yale invited the authors to share stories about their longtime friendship and contributions to gay literature, in conversation with Bill Goldstein. The discussion can be viewed at YouTube <here>

 

 

 

 

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