You Must Remember This: 2010 Lambda Awards

Anyone who may be worried about the state of LGBT publishing need only look at the massive list of books that have been submitted as eligible for this year’s Lambda Awards (or Lammies). We are talking about no fewer than 400 books.

Many critics have noted that 2009 seems to have been the Year of the Memoir. In the Lammies’ Gay Memoir/Biography category there are 20 entries; the Lesbian Memoir/Biography list totals 13.

Familiar names among the gay memoirists include Lev Raphael, Martin Duberman, David Plante, Augusten Burroughs, and Reynolds Price. I’m so far behind in my reading that I can’t say I’ve read more than a fraction of the books, but I have read what is perhaps the best-known book on the Gay Memoir/Biography list, Blake Bailey’s massive biography of John Cheever.

Cheever is, in many ways, a sad book. The man led a miserable life, not least because he was tormented by homosexual impulses that now and again led to some sordid, not to say despicable, acts. He even blackmailed some male writing students into having sex with him. It was only near the end of his life that he admitted, in his journal, that he was gay. Is this a book that we really want to be known as a “gay” book? I certainly don’t want to be seen as a member of Cheever’s particular club.

That’s not to say that Cheever isn’t a great book. It’s a remarkable achievement by anyone’s standards, impeccably researched and immensely readable. I also loved Bailey’s earlier biography, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates.

This is a formidable selection of books and authors to compete with. I hope you will wish me luck!

The finalists for the Lammies will be announced by March 15, 2010; the winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in New York in May. You can see the list of entries here.