Jesse Monteagudo: Reprinted with permission from gaytoday.badpuppy.com / www.badpuppy.com
For over a decade St. Martin's Press's line of Stonewall Inn Editions has given us some of the best gay literature. St. Martin's recent decision to end Stonewall Inn creates a gap that is hard to fill. One of the line's latest (and last) publications is a paperback reprint of Briefly Told Lives: Stories by C. Bard Cole.
C. Bard Cole emerged from the queer punk movement of the 1990s. His stories and cartoons appeared in Holy Tit-clamps, Riotboy, Dirty, Boy Trouble and other “zines”, not to mention the self-published chapbooks Tattooed Love Boys and Fag Sex in High Schools. Briefly Told Lives is Cole's first mainstream collection of stories and drawings.
In a recent interview in The Stranger, Cole announced that “gay literature is over. In a way, my book killed it. That's why I wrote it. That's what I hope to achieve as a writer, to end gay literature.” Though there will always be books by or about lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people, we understand Cole's reluctance to be segregated in the “alternative lifestyles” section of the local Barnes & Noble.
Though Briefly Told Lives deals mostly with gay men, its sharp character sketches and clever drawings should appeal to anyone regardless of sexual orientation. Cole's stories, while brief enough for beach reading, are well-written “diamonds in the rough”; the start of what we hope will be a long literary career. Far from “killing” gay literature, Briefly Told Lives guarantees its future.
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