Gay Book Recommendations?

[Anonymous No.6079455]

So I'm reading Moby Dick.
I'm a gay male.
I like gay things.

I can't help but feel warm and fuzzy about the relationship between Ishmael and Queeqeg.

I'm here to ask of you for book recommendations, with either slight or even dominant homosexual undertones.

[Anonymous No.6079477]

>>6079455
I'm not looking for gay books in an allegorical sense either.

bump

[Anonymous No.6079489]

have you read confessions of a mask by yukio mishima?

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.6079493]

Consider Mishima.
The dialogue "Charmides", by Plato
Some people read homosexuality in the Iliad

[Anonymous No.6079498]

I think people overemphasis the homoerotic elements of Moby Dick. They're there but in the background and hardly touched upon.

>>6079489
I second this. Mishima can be pretty gay sometimes.

[Anonymous No.6079510]

>>6079498
I'm new to /lit/ and books really. I'm going to either read Confessions of a Mask, or "Me talk Pretty" dependent upon the University Library. Prob both, but I'll see. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.6079515]

Burroughs, but that's... "undertones" does not...

I don't think you'd find more gay sex in even any MM romance, is what I'm saying.

[Anonymous No.6079524]

>>6079455
there are loads of books with homosexual protagonists, mr gay anon
try stella duffy for a bit of lightweight fluff

[Anonymous No.6079530]

>>6079455
Gilgamesh

[Anonymous No.6079536]

Giovanni's Room
Maurice

[Anonymous No.6079555]

Proust, In Search of Lost Time, if you have the time for it. The fourth volume deals heavily with gay relationships, and the whole novel has plenty of gay stuff pretty out there for its time. Both f/f and m/m. I think there's nothing too lewd, but it's there. You even have the narrator spying on some gay S&M stuff.

Of course, Proust himself was gay. And they say the main love interest of the narrator, Albertina, was based on his actual gay lover.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.6079563]

>>6079530
Naw man. That was extreme bro tier

[Anonymous No.6079566]

>>6079555
>>6079536
>>6079530
>>6079524
>>6079515
Op here, I'm grateful for the suggestions (I didn't think anyone would reply with anything other than an insult)

However, I think I'm going to go with Mishima, as it's fairly critically acclaimed. I just hope it's not stale or dull.

[Anonymous No.6079573]

>>6079566
>stake or dull
Die.

[Anonymous No.6079587]

Start with the Greeks.

[Anonymous No.6079607]

>>6079573
stale

the word is stale

[Anonymous No.6079621]

>>6079566
/li/ can be shit most of the time, but every now and then it surprises you. I've had some awesome recommendations from threads that started out being shit.

[Anonymous No.6079655]

>>6079455
I'm a gay male too and I'm dropping in to say you're shitting up Moby Dick by adding to the spook interpretation that Ishmael is somehow gay.

Being afraid to be perceived as gay wasn't that big of an issue back then. People didn't even realize gay was a thing.

[Anonymous No.6079670]

>>6079655
>People didn't even realize gay was a thing

How? I'm genuinely curious because I thought the Greeks were pretty open about being gay. Did society forget between then and the Greeks? Or was it just repressed so much it disappeared?

[Anonymous No.6079685]

Women in Love, but you would probably have to read The Rainbow first.

[Anonymous No.6079687]

>>6079670
Greek societies didn't have sexual orientation as an identifier, they had only active/passive with the passive being the much younger partner in homosexual acts

[Anonymous No.6079688]

>>6079670
I mean there was a huge dark age, and if you grew up and nobody talked about it, how were you supposed to even consider dudes fuckin each other?

Anal sex is complicated and messy enough without a how-to guide anyway.

[Anonymous No.6079699]

>>6079687
>>6079688

I wonder if the Greeks had a how to anal sex guide.

[OP No.6079711]

>>6079655
God, you self loathing gays are the worst.
Never did I imply Ishmael was gay, but that the situation made me feel warm and fuzzy.Refer back to the op.

>I can't help but feel warm and fuzzy about the relationship between Ishmael and Queeqeg.

Maybe it's the word "relationship" throwing you off, and my meaning may have been misconstrued, and for that I apologize. Wouldn't want to tarnish the holy dick.

[Anonymous No.6079732]

>>6079711
I mean, I hate myself, but I hate most people. And yeah, a lot of people interpret them as fags. One of my professors now thinks they're total homos.

[OP No.6079752]

>>6079732
I'm sorry to hear that, not really surprised at the self hate as we're both posting on /lit/ on a Saturday night. I see you fam.

[Anonymous No.6080241]

Why would your sexual orientation have any effect on the books you like? I genuinely don't understand this. This is coming from a bi man so I'm not completely out of the sphere of comprehension of what it might be like to be gay.

[Anonymous No.6080251]

This

[Anonymous No.6080280]

>>6079563
People didn't distinguish "homoerotic" as something separate or different from "very close bros" until maybe the Enlightenment.

[Anonymous No.6080418]

There's an implied homosexual relationship in The Great Gatsby. Otherwise, there's always Hamlet...

[Anonymous No.6081846]

>>6080280
this is not true. there has been a distinct gay subculture, including the notion of distinctly gay people (as opposed to merely acts) going back to the elizabethan era at least, and probably earlier than that. read some rictor norton.

[Anonymous No.6081857]

>>6079498
>I think people overemphasis the homoerotic elements of Moby Dick.
It's incredibly gay. But then it is about sailors.

[Anonymous No.6081865]

Book in pic related really made me re-miss by boy/boy crush from high school.

[Anonymous No.6081905]

>>6081846
You seem to misunderstand what I'm saying.

Back then, there was nothing considered gay about thinking your friend is very comely and enjoying his company for it, with holding hands, with caressing, with kissing on the lips, people didn't have to be full-time gay for these things, and males didn't feel threatened by them until the idea of "homosexual undertones" came around. Whether or not there were people who cruised for boys and made gayness a big part of their lives is beside the point, because you didn't need to be a full-time gay for physical intimacy and beauty to be part of a male relationship.

Inserting "no homo" in Gilgamesh is anachronistic, just as it would be anarchistic to say such of David and Jonathan. Hell, even Greek outright homosexuality as a recognized relationship didn't involve sodomy.

[Anonymous No.6081942]

>>6081905
>Back then, there was nothing considered gay about thinking your friend is very comely and enjoying his company for it, with holding hands, with caressing, with kissing on the lips, people didn't have to be full-time gay for these things, and males didn't feel threatened by them until the idea of "homosexual undertones" came around.
no, that was always considered gay.

[Anonymous No.6081992]

>>6080241
Because most (or a lot of) gays are shallow as shit and literally the only thing about their personality is their sexual orientation

[Anonymous No.6082000]

Sherlock Holmes books have that same cozy "are they or aren't they and does it matter" feel to it.

When Watson's bitching at Sherlock for leaving rubbish all over the place or shooting up cocaine in the living room, they're like an old married couple.

Until Watson gets married to his beard and moves out.

[Anonymous No.6082003]

>>6081942
Yeah that's how it was in my youth in the late 1700s England as well

[Anonymous No.6082027]

Moby Dick is the gayest book. Ishmael is Queeqegs wife in the bedroom... that says it all. At least Gatsby tried to make the gay stuff subtle (but ultimately failed)

[Anonymous No.6082038]

I'd like to get a pair of gay eyes on this story if that's cool - what's your opinion of it as a gay man?

https://brophwords.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/making-them-pay/

[Anonymous No.6082039]

>>6079687
>Greek societies didn't have sexual orientation as an identifier
They had a whole mythology about 2 people originally being part of a whole to explain homosexuality and heterosexuality. Look up Plato's Symposium

[Anonymous No.6082063]

>>6079655
>I'm a gay male too

[Anonymous No.6082187]

>>6082038
Ends too soon. No mutilation or agony. Cocktease of a story.

[Anonymous No.6082307]

>>6079455
Flaubert - The Sentimental Education
Eca de Queiroz - Cousin Bazilio
Borges - The intruder

>>6080241
Oh no, God forbid people wanting to read books that portray a world to which they can relate!

>coming from a bi man
>I'm not completely out of the sphere of comprehension of what it might be like to be gay

Except you are. Libidinal response to the different sexes may differ on degree, being a sort of continuum. The interpretation of experience, however, is a product of the individual's identity, and identity is shaped by interaction of the individual with society. And for today's society, and especially for today's LGBT community, "bisexual" and "homosexual" are distinctly different things. Being so, you will never intuitively understand neither gay nor straight people's motives.

>>6081942
yes, heterosexuals discussing romance and sex is an unheard thing. Totally not a central motif in the majority of western novels

[Anonymous No.6082333]

>>6081942
Then Napoleon and Alexander I were a couple.

[Anonymous No.6082336]

>>6082333

[Anonymous No.6082367]

>>6082307
I dunno, Foucault was gay as all fuck and he seemed to be skeptical of orientation identity as something as concrete as what you're getting at.

[Anonymous No.6082467]

>>6082367
>concrete

please expand on this?

Didn't he say orientation identity was a social construct? isn't that agreeing with 80% of what I've said? Social construct is such a buzzword in the academy that I might have radically misunderstood what he meant by that.

At any rate, I'm no Foucault scholar, all I've read by him is a very short reader. What are some good books related to the discussion? pls rec me some

>Foucault was gay as all fuck

that's irrelevant to his theory of orientation identity

[Anonymous No.6082491]

>>6082467
>Didn't he say orientation identity was a social construct?
Well, yes, but that's not really the point. His point was is that is not something that is necessarily helpful. He traces homosexual identity back to homosexuals being classified as mentally ill and sick in the head, and that the identity can't help but contrast homosexual with "normal" on some level, no matter how positive we try to make it.

> What are some good books related to the discussion? pls rec me some
The History of Sexuality would be the main one.

>that's irrelevant to his theory of orientation identity
No, not at all, because he actually suffered discrimination for it. He dissociated himself with the communist party because of the homophobia he experienced in it, and he got fired from being cultural ambassador for being a homosexual. So the point here is that he wasn't someone removed from understanding gay struggles and just dismissing homosexuality identity as special snowflake syndrome, he understood very well the homosexual condition at the time.

[Anonymous No.6082514]

the homosexuality in moby dick is blown out of proportion, the book is how many pages long? and only about 3 pages worth of text that you'd say is questionable...that doesn't exactly ad up to a gay themed novel. Surprised since we're on the topic of Melville that no one brought up Billy Budd...

[Anonymous No.6082559]

>>6079455

Start reading this guy:
James Prudy
and get back to us

also, would the gays stop trying to co-opt the Ishmael and Queeqeg scene in Moby Dick
it is definitely not about anything gay

[Anonymous No.6082662]

>>6082491
Everything you said is very interesting, yet I can't see how it relates to my first comment at all. First you dismiss it for being concrete with respect to the identity of minorities and now you talk about understanding the homosexual condition of the time.

>His point was is that is not something that is necessarily helpful

I never made a value judgment of sexual identities.

I think you still haven't raised a point about how libido being a continuum and identities being different orders of things make it impossible to correlate one with the other, nor about the interpretation of the world and how we interact with it is tainted by our socially constructed identities, which are the heart of my entire argument

[Anonymous No.6082672]

>>6082514
>>6082559
Just being a sailor in and of itself is pretty gay. Snuggling in bed with a cannibal harpooner before he even bothers to leave port just seals the deal.

>>6082514
>Surprised since we're on the topic of Melville that no one brought up Billy Budd...

How can you have read Billy Budd and claimed that Melville was innocent of all gay implications in Moby Dick?

[Anonymous No.6082705]

>>6082672
>was innocent of all gay implications in Moby Dick?

there it is again
2 men enjoy their friendship
must be gay

if you are guy you would see fellatio or some such nonense having to arise

hetero men have been enjoying deep relationships with other for millennium with no fellatio between them

to the (gay) man with a hammer the world looks like (gay) nail

stop with the co-opting

[Anonymous No.6082736]

>>6081865
There's that really quick passage where it's implied they fool around. Awesome.

[Anonymous No.6082754]

>>6082736
and dat goodbye kiss
;---;

[Anonymous No.6082760]

>>6082705
> if Melville wanted them to gay he would have had them blowing each other
>and tried to get that published in 1851 US of A
You have to read between the lines. You have to think critically.

[Anonymous No.6082763]

>>6082736
>dat implied passage
Boris confirms it at the end of the novel. He basically tells Theo, no homo even though they fucked.

[Anonymous No.6082776]

>>6082705
>hetero men have been enjoying deep relationships with other for millennium with no fellatio between them
>gay men haven't and are thus incapable of seeing the difference between friendship and romantic relationships

lel

>to the (gay) man with a hammer the world looks like (gay) nail

in my opinion, it is more the squeamish hetero culture of "not gay until proven otherwise."

[Anonymous No.6082825]

>>6079493
>Some people read homosexuality in the Iliad
elaborate

[Anonymous No.6082877]

>>6082825

Achilles and his close friend and assistant Petrocles who's spelling I no doubt butchered more than he got in The Iliad. When news of P's death reaches Achilles he fucking loses it. Pulls some of his hair out throws dust on his face. It might be a little biased since his character is the focus of the story, which would explain why his grief stricken reaction is the most visceral in the epic, but at the same time it's really not too hard to see them having fallen in love and fooling around before hand.

Hercules had a catamite, so it's far from impossible that another of their heroes lusted after nubile boy booty.