Oscar Wilde Bookshop is closing,
but don’t pretend you suddenly care.

Every gay man I know sent me the NYTimes link about the imminent closing of Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York’s Greenwich Village. After reading about it earlier I shrugged — “oh well.” Of anyone who writes for this blog, and of my many intelligent friends, I frequent Oscar Wilde the most. One. I live in the West Village. Two. For 3 years I worked in the books business. Three. I like books… ones with words.

I venture to say that most of the fags forwarding this link have never read Henry James or E. M. Forster or Thomas Mann or Radclyffe Hall or Oscar Wilde or Audre Lorde (though they may pretend otherwise). They’ve never cracked open a book by a contemporary queer legend like Alan Hollinghurst, David Leavitt, Sarah Waters, Peter Cameron, Andrew Holleran, Manuel Munoz (though they pretend otherwise). Nor read even someone as popular as Alison Bechdel (the cartoonist) or Kay Ryan (The nation’s Poet Laureate) or Ed-fucking-White (he was featured in BUTT for chrissake!).

The closest they’ve come to “gay” literature (I’ll take a “wilde” guess) is something short and sweet by David Sedaris or Chuck Palahniuk or something sexy by Dennis Cooper — all brilliant writers, don’t get it twisted.

The thing is. Oscar Wilde closing is a good thing in more ways than not.

1. Buying habits have changed. When was the last time you purchased a book, at a bookstore… in the West Village? Rarely do we go out and purchase shoes and jeans and music in stores anymore–let alone books which don’t need to be sized or fitted or heard. My being upset by the closing of a bookstore is like crying over the loss of Tower Records or the Virgin Mega Store. Who wants to buy porn in a store with clerks, when you can more easily buy it online — because let’s face it, porn, not literature, has always been “the bread and butter” of the gay bookstore. Ask the folks who work there.

2. Culture has shifted. And independent retailers (like Oscar Wilde) are closing down nationwide. As tragic as it may seem, Americans rarely invest the money (books are expensive habits) or time (time is money) in a 900-page tome. Technically, we read more. We read blogs, text messages, emails, message boards, video-porn descriptions, subtitles, Facebook status updates — books fall by the wayside.

3. “Gay” books are mainstream. Gay-themed books can be purchased in any bookstore or most online retailers–sometimes directly from the publishers.In fact, the very idea of “gay books” is changing. Of the authors mentioned above, few rarely (sometimes never) discuss their sexuality — nor is their sexuality a driving plot device or book theme. When you think David Sedaris — you don’t think “gay” book — because gay authors of a certain echelon can now enjoy mainstream acceptance and success (if the author is good/marketable). Even post-gay is out dated.

4. New ideas can infiltrate the marketplace. The entire publishing model is fucked-up. Ask anyone in the business. With so many indie bookstores and book publishers closing, that out-dated model will have to shift. The way books are publicized has changed. Many authors have found that the Internet is their friend — and they need not rely on indie bookstore promotions to get the word out about their novel, or memoir, or cook books, or self-help-bullshit guide.

The best commentary on the Oscar Wilde Bookshop comes from openly gay author (I bet he hates that modifier) David Leavitt in the NYTimes of all places.

“Thanks in great part to the efforts of the men and women who opened the first gay bookshops, a new generation is coming of age for whom the whole matter of homosexuality is just one of a host of different ways of being.”

So there folks. GLBTQ writing doesn’t need to be “segregated” into “discrete” book shops anymore. Horray for the Gay Rights movement, and Stonewall, and Harvey Milk. After so many years of stubborn struggle, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop can finally rest in peace. The legacy it leaves behind will not be forgotten, but the chapter of the unspeakable culture of the homosexual (see Chanel’s quote below) has ended. Gay authors can compete against the Latino, and African American, and bi-cultural, and women, and old-white-guy writers — they’ve now earned the right to duke it out on Amazon. May the best books — gay, straight, bi, trans, confused — win.

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