Art and Sex in Greenwich Village: Gay Literary Life After Stonewall

Felice Picano is the man who was there and who did the work. He devised SeaHorse Press and built it up into a larger agglomeration called GPNy, with a pair of other likeminded publishers and dreamers. SeaHorse was responsible for some of the very best books of the 1980s, some authentic landmarks like Dennis Cooper's IDOLS and SAFE, Bob Gluck's JACK THE MODERNIST, Brad Gooch's JAILBAIT AND OTHER STORIES. And plays like FORTY DEUCE by Alan Bowne and the book that put SeaHorse on the map, TORCH SONG TRILOGY. Along the way, as Picano describes it, he encountered everyone from Robert Mapplethorpe to Nico and he lived to tell the tale. The subtext of the book is survival, one man's survival through the worst of the AIDS crisis in Manhattan. No sooner do we come to know a writer, an artist, a lover, a friend, than he is carried off by the disease and that which he left behind becomes more precious. This terse threnody runs all along the underside of this delicately written book like the runner of a carpet; just when it seems to be all about publishing trivia and how many printings had this or that forgotten volume, Picano's novelistic sense surges forward and real human interest takes its place on center stage. And the book has its own humor too! Gore Vidal averts Picano's overtures towards the republishing of MYRA BRECKINRIDGE with his own King Charles' head, the alarming spread, even in youth, of American men's backsides, and how the Germans do these things so much better. Boyd McDonald, the notorious editor of STH, perplexed by a royalty statement; James Purdy, genius among plebes, equally baffled by niceties of copyright. SeaHorse and GPNy didn't last very long--not nearly long enough in my view--but the very compression of the period provides Picano with exactly the right amount of material for his project, a book which brings back all the glory days, and much of the terror, of a certain era in literary and artistic history. I had a great editorial experience with him even though, in the end, SeaHorse passed on my book of memoirs, and the press was running down when I sent it in. He took the trouble to read the entire thing and made one enormously sweeping editorial suggestion which actually saved the whole thing and made it hang together, rather than the ragbag of halfassed New Narrative experiments it had previously been. I'm sure there are hundreds of younger writers who can attest also to Picano's generosity and, what would you call it, in Scotland it would be that he is a canny man. In the USA, he's a mensch.

Felice Picano's Art and Sex in Greenwich Village is an informative and entertaining history on the emergence of gay literature in the 1970's and `80's from someone who was not only there, but helped pioneer it. With his own SeaHorse Press and later Gay Presses of New York, Picano published the works of then- unknown gay writers such as Harvey Fierstein, Brad Gooch and Dennis Cooper. With his no-holds-barred candor, razor-sharp memory and quick wit, Picano recollections (from visiting Fierstein's tiny Brooklyn apartment to an after-hours private photo session with Robert Mapplethorpe) are, at times, dishy and gossipy, yet always incredibly fascinating to read. Picano also settles some scores and puts a few rumors to rest along the way, too. I also enjoyed the many photos of book covers, artists and writers of the era. But I was mainly touched by Picano's stories on lesser-known writers, many who died too young to establish great literary legacies. Although never becoming big names, these writers' contributions were no less important, and Picano's book reverently honors their place in gay literary history. Salvatore Sapienza, author of Seventy Times Seven

As a writer and poet in the 21st century, I owe my success to people like Felice Picano, who opened doors for all of us in the business. His newest effort, Art and Sex in Greenwich Village: A Memoir of Gay Literary Life After Stonewall, a non fiction recount of the creatively rich, landmark period during the 1970s and '80s when the first dedicated gay presses arose in New York City. Focusing primarily on SeaHorse Press and the seven writers that formed the Violet Quill: Andrew Holleran, Christopher Cox, Edmund White, George Whitmore, Michael Grumley, Robert Ferro, and, of course, Felice. He covers the two decades following the 1969 Stonewall riots, outlining how he (and others) fostered a GLBT literary tradition that continues today, with writers such as Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Larry Kramer and, of course, Picano. As an HIV survivor, I am aware that we have lost two generations of GLBT history; one to HIV/AIDS, and the other to The Vietnam War. We have kids under thirty years old that have no idea how the GLBT movement, much less our literature, came into existence. Most of them take them for granted. For me, personally, Art and Sex in Greenwich Village: A Memoir of Gay Literary Life After Stonewall is a reminder that we should continue the struggle, and, at the same time, we need to be thankful to those who led the way, when most of us were too afraid and closeted to do what needed to be done.

Picano, Felice. "Art and Sex in Greenwich Village: Gay Literary Life After Stonewall", Carroll & Graf, 2007. A Look at Our Lives Amos Lassen and Literary Pride Felice Picano is one of our A-List authors. He is a pioneer in gay literature and one of our best loved authors. In "Art and Sex in Greenwch Village" he gives us a deep look into what brought about contemporary gay literature as well as gay culture as he looks at life in New York in the 70's and 80's. He, himself, has written more than 20 books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry so he is well equipped to provide this look. When gay liberation began with the Stonewall riots in 1969, a new era in the history of our community began. It seems that politics were affected and, in fact, everything else felt he change except for the arts--literature, movie, and drama. Sure, there were films and plays and a few books written but most did not deal with our newly won liberation. It was not until six years later, in 1977, that things began to take a turn. Picano founded a small press to be devoted to publishing gay books to be known as Seahorse. Coming along to launch another new venture was author Larry Mitchell who began his own press for gay books, Calamus Press. Terry Helbing also began JH Press to publish his plays. In 1981 the three men joined their separate presses together and formed Gay Presses of New York which was to become the most influential gay press of the time. It published books by some of the giants of gay writing including Harvey Fierstein, Martin Duberman, Dennis Cooper, several women writers and brought in some up and coming writers. Here was the beginning of gay literature as we know it and Gay Presses of New York influenced popular culture greatly. What Picano gives us is a behind the scenes look at that press and what it produced. Those days in New York were a time of moving ahead in gay writing and publishing which held both frustration and fascination. Picano relates stories to us in his beautiful eloquent writing and he also tells us about the writers of the time. We learn about the gay bookstores in New York and the famous Violet Quill writers group and how difficult it was to get gay literature both written and published. This was a time when the pressures of society were great and AIDS was affecting our lives so terribly. . Picano tells it like it was and to show how brave he and the others were. It is so interesting to compare this where we are today--seeing mainstream publishers publishing out work and not having to have special houses to do so. We can look back ay and see how things were but we must remember that we are where we are today because of what some heroic people did for us.