The Gay & Lesbian Review

A NTHONY G UY P ATRICIA Death in Venice, California by Vinton Rafe McCabe The Permanent Press. 192 pages, $28. N OVELIST AND POET Vinton Rafe McCabe presents a compact story that’s as compelling as it is discon- certing. Though darkly comic and at times quite erotic, this is not a light read. It is, however, an elegantly written and artfully plotted gay novel that will make you think seriously about art, relationships, obsessions, ageism, philosophy, pornog- raphy, and sex. At the center of Death in Venice, California is a character named Jameson Frame, a fifty-year-old writer of some renown, who has published exactly three works during his career: a pair of novels titled Pennyweight and The Antecedents and a very slim collection of poems called On Scrimshaw and Others . Be- yond that, he’s a professor of creative writing at an unnamed university in New York City. For all his modest success, Frame suddenly finds himself dissatisfied with his life and disturbed by the endless gray, cold days in Manhattan from November till spring. So he heads west by commercial airplane and takes up an extended residence at the posh Hotel des Bains in Venice Beach, California. Poised as he is on the liminal edge, it is difficult not to sus- pect that something momentous is about to happen to Frame as Death in Venice, California unfolds in its leisurely but insistent cause trouble. Despite Dorian’s usual preference for young men as bedfel- lows, he is haunted by a recurring dream of a beautiful young woman whose aura of innocent love shows his life in perspec- tive. Perhaps he is haunted by his own hopes for salvation, which confront him in New Orleans in the “present day” (post- Hurricane Katrina). There he is recognized as a kindred soul by a group of apparent goths who are actual vampires (shades of Anne Rice). This close-knit group is led by a modern-day dandy who reminds Dorian of his old mentor, Lord Henry, in the Lon- don of over a century before. Unfortunately, the vampire-leader is a man of few words who lacks the breezy wit of the original Lord Henry. The climax of Dorian’s long search for something he is only dimly aware of wanting is as satisfying in Mitzi Szereto’s ver- sion as it is in Oscar Wilde’s—possibly more so. Szereto’s use of language is faithful to the original, even in the frequent sex scenes. She’s a novelist who knows how to construct a coher- ent plot, and she treats Oscar Wilde’s book with respect. So by all means check out The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray , espe- cially if you’ve already read the original novel, or use it as an excuse to read The Picture of Dorian Gray if you haven’t. ________________________________________________________ Jean Roberta is a widely published writer based in Regina, Saskatchewan. If Aschenbach Returned...

If Dorian Had Lived...

J EAN R OBERTA

The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray by Mitzi Szereto Cleis Press. 288 pages, $15.95 A UTHOR Mitzi Szereto, who recently wrote a funny, sexually explicit riff on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prej- udice subtitled Hidden Lusts (2011), has now written an erotic sequel to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray , that gothic tale of a young man who magically trades places with his portrait, which ages for him in the attic. The Picture of Dorian Gray , first serialized in a magazine in 1891, is a kind of literary experiment by a playwright who was attempting a novel. Approximately one third of it follows the moral degeneration of the attractive Dorian after his friend, the painter Basil Hallward (who believes that everyone’s character can be read in their face) asks him to pose for a painting. Basil’s friend Lord Henry Wotton insists on meeting the young Adonis, and then apparently corrupts the innocent Dorian by constantly making witty comments that overturn conventional Victorian morality. Another third of the book could be titled “The World According to Lord Henry.” A final third is devoted to references to historical figures and descriptions of the beautiful objects that Dorian obsessively collects, including ecclesiastical garments worn by Roman Catholic clergymen during Mass. Dorian en- joys the perversity of owning these things as a nonbeliever. Oscar Wilde’s real-life disgrace in the 1890s due to his reck- less lawsuit against the Marquess of Queensbury (father of Oscar’s younger friend and lover, “Bosie”)—followed by Wilde’s conviction for sodomy, his prison term, and his early death in exile in Paris—has made his story of the beautiful, dan- gerous boy, Dorian Gray, seem like a prophesy. The book itself, however, which lacks the coherence of most celebrated 19th- century novels, can only hint at the nature of Gray’s degeneracy, still an unspeakable topic in literature. Mitzi Szereto has wisely avoided following the structure of the original work. Instead, she has resurrected Dorian (who dies upon destroying his hideous portrait) as a kind of immortal predator. After a brief chapter in London in the 1890s in which the original exchange of Dorian with his own image is summed up, we next encounter Dorian in Paris in the 1920s playing sex games with thinly disguised avatars of the writers F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and the painter Salvador Dali. Dorian is shown to be a sensation seeker for whom nothing is off-limits, fully pansexual with a special appetite for playing the dominant part- ner who sometimes “tops from below.” Dorian moves to Marrakesh in the 1940s in order to prevent aging London acquaintances from recognizing him in Paris. The influence of Lord Henry in some sense accompanies Dorian wherever he goes, taking the form of aphorisms directly quoted at the beginning of each chapter. Dorian eventually takes refuge in a Peruvian monastery in the 1960s, where he finds a way to

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