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Rating: 
Summary: Inaccuracies and incorrect assumptions!
Review: I know little about the author of "Lost Gay Novels," Andrew Slide, but I do know much about one of the fifty authors written about in his book, as well as the novels that author wrote. Simply put, virtually all of the information about this one author contained in "Lost Gay Novels" is either blatantly wrong, simply inflammatory for whatever reason (to sell books, perhaps?), or has been fully misinterpreted and misconstured. As a scientific researcher myself, these errors and misinterpretations raise questions for me about the integrity of Mr. Slide's research methods. As consumers of literature, we must then ask ourselves, "Can I believe anything contained in this book?" and, "How can I make sure that what I read is true?" If Mr. Slide was writing a novel, these questions would be irrelevant, but he is writing about the real lives of real people, and he appears to be doing so without accuracy or integrity concerning the facts. Therefore, I strongly urge readers interested in this topic to look elsewhere for their information.
Rating:
Summary: Good idea, poor execution
Review: The author of this book seems not to have done very much research, and his aesthetic sense is questionable, to say the least. Thus, for example, he has little enthusiasm for Henry Blake Fuller's novel, Bertram Cope's Year (1919), which happens to be a fascinating, witty, Jamesian picture of American college life in the early 20th century. (Further, in the very first sentence of his description, Slade misstates the protagonist's age -- a mistake I would normally treat as insignificant, except that that Fuller goes to great pains to explain this detail and its importance). Anyone who wonders if Bertram Cope's Year is worth reading should just look at the amazon.com reviews. As for his research skills: Slide can write in his preface (p.4) that there must have been a gay editor at Greenberg Publishers "but his name is not recorded." It obviously did not occur to Slade to look at the Greenberg Publishers archive at the Columbia University Library, where the name of that editor (Brandt Aymar) is apparent to anyone who cares to look. Slide can devote a chapter to Myron Brinig's novel, This Man is My Brother, without even mentioning that Brinig wrote another fascinating gay novel, The Flutter of an Eyelid. Slide can devote a chapter to the novel All Things Human by "Stuart Benton," (pseudonym of George Sylvester Viereck), without any mention of Viereck's extraordinary gay novel The House of the Vampire (1907). That novel receives extensive discussion in James Gifford's study, Dayneford's Library: American Homosexual Writing, 1900-1913 (Univ. of Mass. Press, 1995), and so one must conclude that Slade didn't read Gifford's book -- an odd omission given that Slide's own book bills itself as a "reference guide to fifty works from the first half of the twentieth century." In short, while it was certainly a worthy effort to try to bring these novels to greater public attention, it would have been better left to someone with a better understanding of gay literary history, better research skills, and a greater willingness to be engaged by these novels.
Rating:
Summary: Good idea, poor execution
Review: The author of this book seems not to have done very much research, and his aesthetic sense is questionable, to say the least. Thus, for example, he has little enthusiasm for Henry Blake Fuller's novel, Bertram Cope's Year (1919), which happens to be a fascinating, witty, Jamesian picture of American college life in the early 20th century. (Further, in the very first sentence of his description, Slade misstates the protagonist's age -- a mistake I would normally treat as insignificant, except that that Fuller goes to great pains to explain this detail and its importance). Anyone who wonders if Bertram Cope's Year is worth reading should just look at the amazon.com reviews. As for his research skills: Slide can write in his preface (p.4) that there must have been a gay editor at Greenberg Publishers "but his name is not recorded." It obviously did not occur to Slade to look at the Greenberg Publishers archive at the Columbia University Library, where the name of that editor (Brandt Aymar) is apparent to anyone who cares to look. Slide can devote a chapter to Myron Brinig's novel, This Man is My Brother, without even mentioning that Brinig wrote another fascinating gay novel, The Flutter of an Eyelid. Slide can devote a chapter to the novel All Things Human by "Stuart Benton," (pseudonym of George Sylvester Viereck), without any mention of Viereck's extraordinary gay novel The House of the Vampire (1907). That novel receives extensive discussion in James Gifford's study, Dayneford's Library: American Homosexual Writing, 1900-1913 (Univ. of Mass. Press, 1995), and so one must conclude that Slade didn't read Gifford's book -- an odd omission given that Slide's own book bills itself as a "reference guide to fifty works from the first half of the twentieth century." In short, while it was certainly a worthy effort to try to bring these novels to greater public attention, it would have been better left to someone with a better understanding of gay literary history, better research skills, and a greater willingness to be engaged by these novels.
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