Jesse Monteagudo: This review was originally published in Gay Today (3/17/03). Jesse Monteagudo was a newly-out college student when he first read The Front Runner. He can be reached at jessemonteagudo@aol.com.
In 1999 the Publishing Triangle, an “association of lesbians and gay men in publishing”, issued a list of “the 100 best lesbian and gay novels” of the 20th Century, as selected “by a panel of. . . lesbian and gay writers”. Number 1 on the list was Death in Venice, a novella by Thomas Mann. Completely left out of the list were novels written by Patricia Nell Warren, most noticeably her 1974 classic, The Front Runner, a love story between long-distance runner Billy Sive and his coach, Harlan Brown.
Readers were outraged by the absence of The Front Runner: “A friend of mine told me about your web site, and as a gay author I was very excited to learn about your work,” wrote Michael R. Gorman. “However, when I accessed the site and read about your list of the 100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels, my excitement quickly boiled into anger. How could you have left Patricia Nell Warren's groundbreaking novel The Front Runner off your list? What were you thinking? It was the first gay love story to ever make the New York Times Best Seller list. . . . More importantly, at a time when gay men and lesbians could find no positive portrayals of themselves in mainstream culture, this novel made it to the top of the national publishing industry with a gentle and loving portrayal of a gay relationship.” Another reader was more direct: “Have you lost your collective minds?” Later, when visitors to www.publishingtriangle.org were given the opportunity to compile their own “best of” list, The Front Runner was Number 1.
In the 29 years since it first appeared, The Front Runner has shaped the lives of generations of gay men (and lesbians). It remains at the top of gay best-seller lists and “best of” lists (the Publishing Triangle's excepted). In my own list of the 100 Most Important GLBT Books of the 20th Century, The Front Runner ranked Number 5, just behind The Homosexual In America, the Kinsey Reports, The Well of Loneliness and Corydon. Hundreds of gay running clubs around the world have named themselves after Warren's best-selling novel, an honor that Warren, herself a long-distance runner, appreciated.
Looking back, Patricia Nell Warren is understandably pleased by her community's affection for her most famous novel. “Many gay men tell me that the novel helped them to accept themselves - to help themselves realize that it's okay to love someone of the same gender,” she tells me. “It's important to mention that perhaps, 30% of the novel's readers are women! Many women tell me that they connected with Harlan Brown's story on the human plane - it helped them to accept their feelings for other women.” As to the Publishing Triangle's snub, Warren admits “the political reality” that many in the literati “simply don't think The Front Runner is good writing.”
I beg to disagree: The Front Runner is good writing. It also sold 10 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 9 languages. It certainly encouraged Warren to write more gay novels and her publishers to publish them: The Fancy Dancer (1976) and The Beauty Queen (1978). In 1994 Warren released Harlan's Race, which continued the tale of Front Runner coach Harlan Brown. This was followed in 1997 by Billy's Boy, the third book in the series, which won a Lambda Literary “Editor's Choice” Award.
Next to The Front Runner, Warren's personal favorite is The Wild Man (2001), a love story between a bullfighter and a peasant set in Franco's Spain, “because it took me so long to get it written (30 years). And I think it's my best novel.” But there is more to Patricia Nell Warren than writing popular gay novels. Born in 1936, Warren grew up on a cattle ranch near Deer Lodge, Montana. She has published eight novels, including the “mainstream” novels The Last Centennial and One Is the Sun. She has also written four books of poetry - in Ukrainian - and countless essays. But none of her “mainstream” works have earned her the celebrity that she received from her gay fiction. One Is the Sun, a historical epic about “a great mixed-blood woman chief who lived in the Northwest during the mid-1800s,” even got lost in the shuffle when “Random House did no publicity for it when it first came out in 1991,” she says. “Even so, it did get some good word-of-mouth. It's back in print today with my own imprint, Wildcat Press, and I'm happy to say it's moving very well, finding its public and receiving great reviews.”
Almost as good, and even more thought-provoking, are Warren's articles and essays that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Reader's Digest, San Francisco Chronicle, Persimmon Hill, the Advocate, Gay & Lesbian Review, Genre, Philadelphia Gay News and other publications. They include essays about youth (“Youth - Seen and Not Heart”), seniors (“Elephant Graveyards”) and spirituality (“The Right to be Spiritual”). Some of Warren's most widely read and controversial columns appeared in A&U, an AIDS magazine, and dealt with the politics of public health: “When I started writing about AIDS misspending and corruption, one well-known gay man e-mailed to insist that I was making it all up. I wrote back with further facts about cases that already went through the courts, and heard no more from this guy,” she notes. “Another favorite essay is “Fourteen Dollars,” because it sparked the Just Dissent movement and brought attention to how rights of peaceful protesters are being trampled today. (Interested readers can go to www.justdissent.com.)”
Still, “even in my editorials, I try to tell a story,” Warren wrote in her web site (www.patricianellwarren.com). “I am not interested in labels or being politically correct. I explore the disastrous consequences of labeling people.” In answering my questions, Warren elaborates by adding that “when it comes to issues, I try hard to think for myself. . . . When it comes to the great GLBT debate about our position in society, I think that isolationism will never be truly possible for those who want to live that way. Why? Because, like it or not, we GLBT people are affected by the same laws and government policies as everyone else. We are also affected by the laws made by non-gays that target us specifically! So we must constantly fight and lobby to get the best laws possible. This takes us straight into the mainstream. Yet I don't think we GLBT people will ever be ‘assimilated,' any more than certain racial or religious groups have been assimilated. In short, my position is usually more toward the middle. In my opinion, the tendency to label everything in the GLBT world, and to politicize those labels so heavily, is harmful to us. It prevents us from seeing one another as unique human beings.”
In 1994 Warren, fed up with the big publishers, joined Los Angeles media specialist Tyler St. Mark to establish Wildcat International “to pilot the book and film development of my work.” Warren's own Wildcat Press reissued Warren's previous novels and published Harlan's Race, Billy's Boy and The Wild Man. She and her partner also “retrieved The Front Runner's film rights and recently got an independent production under way. There are still a few GLBT writers who say they are happy with their big publishers, and I recognize that,” she says. “But we live in the golden age of author imprints now, where ‘print on demand' and desktop technology makes it possible for authors to take command of their own publishing and marketing process. It's hard work, but it's worth it! Randy Boyd, Tracey Stevens, Ronald Donaghe, Charles Ortleb and Mark Kendrick are some of the other pioneers in this new field of publishing.”
Warren's activism began in the 1960's when, while working as an editor for Reader's Digest, she worked for the rights of Ukrainians and other ethnic groups living in what was then the USSR. Later she was the plaintiffs' spokesperson for Susan Smith v. Reader's Digest, a landmark case that resulted in a class-action victory for women. “I was one of 18 women who filed Title VII charges against the Reader's Digest, Warren recalls. “It was one of several major lawsuits against the media in the 1970's. The media were full of talented and ambitious women who had been blatantly discriminated against - the very media that kept America informed on news from the civil-rights movement! The Digest tried to have the class-action aspect of the case dismissed. But the federal judge - who was a woman! - didn't buy their arguments. If the Digest had succeeded, it would have set a disastrous precedent for class actions,” she adds.
Warren is also active in the struggle against censorship, by the government and others. “Today, I feel a new urgency about communicating with others,” Warren wrote in her Personal Statement, published on her web site. “Our country is in trouble. We see a steady erosion of human rights, and a steady encroachment of big government and big censorship as defined by religious right-wingers.” Though the post-9/11 backlash has led to a wave of crackdowns against free expression, Warren reminds me that “there were already significant erosions of free speech going on before that. These range from the religious right's efforts to keep minors away from GLBT online content, to the growing use (by corporations) of SLAPP suits to stifle web criticism of dangerous or shoddy products. New software is being developed to prevent in-house whistle blowers from e-mailing problematical corporate documents to the media or the authorities. This too is a form of censorship!”
High in Patricia Nell Warren's list of causes is her work on behalf of GLBT youth. In her “Personal Statement,” Warren noted that “I served for two years on the Gay & Lesbian Education Commission in the vast, problem-ridden Los Angeles Unified School District. I also did six months of volunteer teaching in L.A.'s ‘gay high school,' EAGLES Center. More recently I helped found Project Youth Empowerment (PYE), a new community-based scholarship fund that will be targeting education hardship among LGBT youth in Los Angeles County”.
Today, Warren remains actively involved with youth issues: “Young people are still a big concern,” she says. “My Patricia Nell Warren Endowment Fund helps targeted youth to transition into creative careers (writing, the arts, fashion, etc.). I speak at youth conferences and write about youth issues. My greatest worry, as the country grows ever more reactionary, is that our gay youth will be pressured into less visibility as they fight to get good jobs and a career.”
For decades the gay community has been looking forward to a movie version of The Front Runner, only to be repeatedly disappointed. Now that she owns the film rights again, Warren is quick to reassure and delight millions of fans with the announcement that “the Front Runner film is finally going to happen! Gays in sports is still a scary issue for many straights - witness the negative reaction when Sandy Koufax was outed. But the film industry may finally be ready to deal with Harlan Brown's story.” I can hardly wait.
As for Warren's own literary future, she “hopes to have the fourth novel in the Front Runner series out in a couple of years. Meanwhile, Wildcat will publish some anthologies of my short writings on different subjects.” No matter what she does, Patricia Nell Warren is sure to make an impact in our community.
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