The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 173

THE PALM BEACH POST SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 1996 1 'I The death of gay stereotypes BEYOND A series of enlightening essays correct long held misconceptions about the politics of homosexuals. tn A John Dos Passos 'USA5 trilogy is kuthor at his best Rititr timi BRUCE GAY LEFT ORTHODOXY i BAW In one of the more amusing essays, "Gay White Males: PC's Unseen Target," Stephen H. Miller takes on prejudice against gay men from a most unlikely source: Lesbians. Yaakov Levado is the pseudonym of an Orthodox rabbi who poignantly describes his yearning to be both an Orthodox Jew and an openly gay man. Andrew Sullivan, conservative and Catholic, questions a church hierarchy that tells him it's no sin to be homosexual as long as he remains celibate.

Ultimately, Sullivan is unwilling to give up either his sex life or his faith. Many of the contributors to Beyond Queer embrace positions most on the liberal left would also endorse, if for different reasons. Leftists support same-sex marriage, for example, because they want gay men and lesbians to have the same romantic options as heterosexuals. In "Who Needs Marriage?" Jonathan Rauch argues in part for gay marriage as a welcome curb on the unhealthy promiscuity of some gay men. Indeed, several of the book's contributors are what Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition calls "people of faith," religious men involved in committed partnerships.

An underlying assumption of these essays is that they are far more vocative 1993 polemic, Bawer was a single voice calling for political moderation in the name of pragmatism. For Beyond Queer, he's gathered 16 fellow writers most but not all gay to explore in 40 thoughtful essays what it means to be gay, proud and, if not conservative, staunchly middle-of-the-road. The book is divided into six sections, moving from counterproductive gay activism through conservatism and political correctness to gay identity, religion and, yes, gay family values. Bawer makes his point early and forcefully. "Senate opposition to gays in the military was led by a Democrat, Sam Nunn," he notes, "while Republican Senator Alphonse D'Amato argued for lifting the ban." Truly, life is not black and white, and in the essays, Bawer's collaborators explore the gray, gay middle.

Paul Varnell wonders who really speaks for conservatism in America the hysterically bigoted Pat Buchanan, or former Senator Barry Goldwater, who has publicly supported both gays in the military and a gay civil rights bill. By RON HAYES Palm Beach Post Staff Writer BEYOND QUEER: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy, edited by Bruce Bawer. The Free Press; 329 pages; $25. We're here, we're queer and some of us are going to vote for Bob Dole. The stereotypes about gay men that have crumbled like a Berlin Wall of sexual misinformation since the advent of the modern gay rights movement 25 years ago lie dying all around us: All gay men are effeminate, flamboyant and artistic.

All gay men are promiscuous. All gay men are athletically inept. All gay men are child molesters. No intelligent American in 1996 believes these once unquestioned truths about "all gay men." And yet, almost inviolate amid the rubble, one unshakeable pillar of prejudice still stands tall: All gay men are liberal Democrats. With Beyond Queer: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy, poet and critic Bruce Bawer means to topple this lingering lie.

In A Place At The Table, his pro To hear him tell it, John Dos Passos' fall from critical favor coincided with his turn towards the political right along about the time of the Spanish American War, when old friends like Hemingway were rushing to the side of the anti-Franco forces. To hear everybody else tell it, Dos Passos' fall from favor was because his writing went to hell. The latter is incontestably true, but let's face it, lots of writers get good reviews after their talent runs out (have you tried reading Anne Rice No one likes to slam old friends, and Dos representative of gays in America than the shrieking drag queens and men in leather some in the media still hold up as examples of gay life. Every publishing season brings another deluge of gay nonfiction, most of it shrill, mediocre and, worst of all, self-congratulatory. Beyond Queer is a striking exception complex, unsettling and thought provoking.

No straight person who reads these essays will ever assume all gays are liberal again. And no gay person will ever assume that all conservatives are his enemy, either. i. ii in. A i Passos made the mistake of turning his back on his friends just when he needed them the most.

The Library of America has issued Dos Passos' USA trilogy in their usual classy package ($40.) As a matter I ot tact, the package might be too classy; the modern I face slightly detracts from Scon Eyman BOOKS EDITOR the period flavor of Dos Passos' writing, and the experimental nature of his Camera Eye technique is best appreciated in a more stylish, ))ublish or i 1 Packed with desperate, ambitious authors and intriguing plots, this epic novel delivers real insight into the publishing world. even antiquated typography. Other than that, the three novels (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money) still resonate as a portrayal of two Americas, one privileged, the other desperate and struggling for purchase on hard, rocky ground. They remain his best testament. Whodunit? I haven't read any of Larry Beinhart's mysteries, but based on his new book How to Write a Mystery (Ballantine, $11), I think I'll take a look.

This is a lot more than another dry primer about fitting bolt A into hole Beinhart sails right into the middle of other mystery writers with both fists flying and takes no prisoners. "Year after year, Dick Francis tells the same story, with the same hero, in the same way. All he changes is the horse." He calls Robert Parker's Hawk, Spenser's sidekick, "a cheap racist contrivance." And the thing of it is, Beinhart likes Dick Francis (he does not, however, seem to have much respect for Parker). At any rate, this is a book that can be of use by almost any aspiring writer, not just one trying to break into the mystery field. It's actually a kind of primer for literary reality, including dealing with publishers, and what to expect from your publisher's publicity department.

(Nothing.) Beinhart sums up genre fiction this way: "It's a train. People get on. The qualitative questions come afterward: Did you give them a good ride? How was the scenery and how were the companions When it's a really good railroad, the passengers don't care where the train goes." Good fun, and good sense. Quote unquote "Nobody loves me but my mother, and she may be jivin', too." B.B. King, as quoted in The Little Blues Book, to be published by Algonquin in October.

tool with which to weave a story, were now a chain that was dragging her down." We also meet Jude Daniel who is actually two people, Judith and Dan iel Gross, a husband-and-wife team who hope to make it big; a lonely but lovely young English woman, A Camilla Clapfish; the aging and de- I jf" creasingly popular star author, Su sann Baker Edmonds and mega-publisher Gerald Ochs Davis imp (GOD to his employees). The wonderful thing about Goldsmith's novels one dealt with divorce, one with show business, and one with the fashion world is that readers mmmm By MARILYN MURRAY WILLISON Special to The Palm Beach Post THE BESTSELLER, by Olivia Goldsmith. HarperCollins; 507 pages; $25. When readers outgrow Judith Krantz or Danielle Steele, if they are very, very lucky, they will discover Olivia Goldsmith. The author of First Wives Club (which will be released as a movie in September), Flavor of the Month and Fashionably Late, has done it again.

This is a huge novel tailor-made for anyone who has ever dreamt about becoming an author, for The Bestseller gives readers five authors and five novels, all in search of a prominent place on The New York Times bestseller list. As the action unfolds, Goldsmith gives her readers a divorce, a pregnancy, two romances (hetero and homo) and two suicides. The bulk of the action revolves around mega-publisher Davis Dash, the center of Manhattan's throbbing book world. The novel begins with Terry O'Neal, a struggling would-be author and bookstore employee who dreams of seeing her book (The Deception of Man) in print. In spite of numerous rejections, she perseveres until the pain becomes more than she can bear.

"Books, her mainstay and her escape, had turned on her. Every published book taunted her. Words, which had been her comfort, her learn so much about the machinations of the worlds she chooses to write about. In The Bestseller, it is wonderfully entertaining to pick out which character is mimicking Michael Korda, Which Barbara Taylor Bradford, which Danielle Steele, etc. There are, or course, a few minor flaws in this book like the misspelling of Lenox and a few grammatical snafus but what is right with this book overwhelms whatever might be wrong.

It is particularly satisfying that Goldsmith allows her "good" characters to triumph and the "evil" ones to fall flat on their faces. Readers are sure to feel heartened when they discover this development in the life of a middle-aged Indiana librarian: "She had spent her own life reading and last year at this time she felt that perhaps hers was a pathetic and wasted life. She hadn't 'done' enough. But her adventure in New York had renewed her faith in reading. It wasn't an alternative to experience, or an escape from it.

Not if you did it right. Reading was the only way we could transcend our own experience and deeply engage in that of another's Opal had never written a book, but she knew now that the reader was as important as the writer Each of the Book's 110 short chapters begins with a quote from someone connected to the book world, like this one from William Styron: "I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell." This is undoubtedly going to be Olivia Goldsmith's fourth consecutive bestseller. It is the kind of book that readers enthusiastically recommend to each other. Goldsmith probably did not get one of those legendary million-dollar advances for The Bestseller, but she should have.

Marilyn Willison is a West Palm Beach freelance writer. Bestsellers New York Times News Service HARDCOVER Fiction 1 SERVANT OF THE BONES, by Anne Rice. (Knopf, $26.) 2 THE RUNAWAY JURY, by John Gnsham. (Doubleday, $26.95.) 3 THE LAST DON, by Mano Puzo. (Random House, $25.95.) 4 CAUSE OF DEATH, by Patncia Cornwell.

(Putnam, $25.95.) 5 THE CELESTINE PROPHECY, by James Redfield. (Warner, $17.95.) 6 FALLING UP, by Shel Silverstein. (HarperCollins, $16.95.) 7 THE TENTH INSIGHT, by James Redfield. (Warner, 1 9.95.) 8 EXCLUSIVE, by Sandra Brown. (Warner, $22.95.) 9 HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK, by Terry McMillan (Viking, $23.95.) 10 THE WEDDING, by Julie Garwood.

(Pocket, $23.) Non-fiction 1 THE DILBERT PRINCIPLE, by Scott Adams. (Harper, Business, $20.) 2 UNLIMITED ACCESS, by Gary Aldrich. (Regnery, $24.95.) 3 OUTRAGE, by Vincent Bugliosi. (Norton, $25.) 4 BAD AS I WANNA BE, by Dennis Rodman with Tim Keown. (Oelacorte.

$22.95.) 5 MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, by John Berendt. (Random House. $23.) 6 UNDAUNTED COURAGE, by Stephen E. Ambrose. (Simon Schuster, $27.50.) 7 BARE KNUCKLES AND BACK ROOMS', by Ed Rollins with Tom DeFrank.

(Broadway Books, $27.50.) A political consultant recalls his 30 years behind the scenes. 8 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, by Daniel Goieman. (Bantam, $23.95.) 9 DOMINIQUE MOCEANU: An American Champion, by Dominique Moceanu as told to Steve Woodward. (Bantam, $14.95.) 10 THE AWAKENING HEART, by Betty J. Eadie.

(Pocket, $20.) Dual bio sure to enrage Hellman, Hammett fans PAPERBACK Fiction 1 THE GREEN MILE: Night Journey Delacroix, by Stephen King. (Signet. $2.99.) 2 A TIME TO KILL, by John Gnsham. (IslandDell, $6.99.) 3 FROM POTTER'S FIELD, by Patricia Cornwell. (Berkley, $6.99.) 4 IS FOR LAWLESS, by Sue Grafton.

(Fawcett, $6.99.) 8 MORNING, NOON NIGHT, by Sidney Sheldon. (Warner. $7.50.) The mystenous drowning of a respected tycoon reveals a tangle of scandals. 6 LIGHTNING, by Danielle Steel. (Dell, $7.50) 7 SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS, by David Guterson.

(Vintage, 1 2.) 8 THE GREEN MILE: The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix, by Stephen King. (Signet. $2.99.) 9 BEACH MUSIC, by Pat Conroy. (Bantam, $7.99.) 10 A PLACE CALLED FREEDOM, by Ken Follet. (Fawcett, $6.99.) nearly over by the time he met Hell-man in 1930, which is where the literary portion of Hellman's career and the interesting part of Hammett's life begin.

Hellman and Hammett is skimpy on the early part of Hammett's life and the events that led up to the writing of his classics Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key. But Mellen's book is definitive if only because it gives us an enormous amount of information we haven't been told about Hammett before, largely because Hellman succeeded in keeping it from us. For instance, Mellen proves beyond doubt that Hammett was indeed a Communist, or at least a fiercely loyal supporter of the America Communist Party. Hammett did father a daughter, Josephine, by Jose Dolan, a nurse he met while in a Tacoma, hospital, but Mary Jane, long thought to be his oldest daughter, died without knowing that Dash wasn't her natural father. And Josephine had to wait 30 years to receive her inheritance; Hellman appropriated the money.

The last bit of information is merely one of the nasty shockers Mellen has uncovered and points to why Hellman and Hammett is unique: It's the first book about either one written with free access to Hellman's papers in other words, the first book on either one that Hellman couldn't control. The result would appear to support Mary McCarthy's famous remark about Hellman: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'a' and McCarthy was probably being generous in allowing her sole authorship of those words; Mellen's book suggests that the playwright was a liar of almost insane proportions on nearly every aspect of her life. She began with the myth of Soph-ronia, a black woman who worked briefly for the Hellman family in Louisiana when Lily was a baby. By the time she was an adult, Sophronia had become the key figure of her childhood perhaps the most important female in her life. (She despised her weak, easily dominated mother.) Yet Hellman's most successful scam, according to Mellen, was pass-, ing off the "Julia" segment in her memoir, Pentimento, as fact.

The story, which concerns Hellman's mission to Austria before World War II to help a childhood friend and smuggle cash past Nazis, was made into a motion picture in 1977. Julia and her story, it turns out, were products of Hellmari's fertile imagination. The story might have been accepted as a first-rate work of fiction if Hellman hadn't insisted to her death that it was true. There's something in Hellman and Hammett to outrage nearly everyone. Conservatives will be angry at how principled Dash's stand against McCarthyism was, and how unjust his imprisonment for refusing to name names.

Literary leftists, meanwhile, will be angry at the dismissal of two heroes as "Roosevelt Bohemians." And Hammett cultists will be upset for not having Lillian Hellman to kick around anymore. Hammett, it seems, was flaming out as a writer well before he met Lily. Feminists, too, lose something: If you believe Mellen's account of Hellman as myth-mongering, venal and hypocritical, she will never again be available for display as an early feminist icon. No woman who models her own personality so completely after a man's Mellen continually refers to the tough-talking, heavy-drinking Lily as a "She-Hammett" could deserve such an honor. About the only readers who won't be enraged by Hellman and Hammett are those with no ideological ax to grind.

They will put down the book more fascinated than ever by the story of two people who were so much in love for so long mainly because they might have been the only two people on earth who could have possibly loved each other. By ALLEN BARRA Special to the Los Angeles Times HELLMAN AND HAMMETT: The Legendary Passion of Lily and Dash, by Joan Mellen. HarperCollins; 549 pages; $32. A few years ago, working on a piece about the school of hard-boiled detective fiction, I reread Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man for the first time in 15 years and was shocked. The wise-cracking private eyes Nick and Nora Charles of my memory had been replaced by a pair of cynical, hard-drinking shrews who seemed at least as unsavory as the characters they were trying to put in jail.

The reason for my faulty memory is simple: The Nick and Nora I liked were created by William Powell and Myrna Loy, while, as Joan Mellen reveals in her meticulously researched new dual biography, Hell-man and Hammett, the Nick and Nora of the novel were modeled after the real Dash and Lily. The three-decade relationship between Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman ranks with Scott and Zelda and Jean Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir in 20th century literary legend. But while the others merited individual biographies or studies, Mellen makes it clear that the stories of Dash and Lily can't be separated: I Iammett's career as a writer was i Non-fiction (Drew- 1 MINDHUNTER, by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. Pocket, $6.99.) 2 REVIVING OPHELIA, by Mary Pipher. (Ballantine, $12.50.) 3 THE LIARS' CLUB, by Mary Karr.

(Penguin, 1 1.95.) 4 HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION, by Thomas CahiH. (AnchorDoubleday. $12.95.) 5 A GOOD WALK SPOILED, by John Feinstein. (Little, Brown, $13.95.) 6 MY AMERICAN JOURNEY, by Colin L. Powell with Joseph E.

Persico. (Ballantine, $6.99.) 7 THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED, by M. Scott Peck. $12.) 8 GOD: A Biography, by Jack Miles. (Vintage, 1 5.) 9 PAULA, hy Isabel Allende.

(Harper Perennial, $12.50.) 10 WHEN ELEPHANTS WEEP, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy. (Delta, $13.95.) Denotes first Hmt on list.