Edmund White, an appreciation

by Green Appler Kevin Davis

This month I’m celebrating the publishing event of Sacred Monsters--a collection of Edmund White's “New York Review of Books” essays--and Jack Holmes and his Friend, a romance novel heavily informed by White’s pre- and post-Stonewall Manhattan life.

I have lived vicariously through this pioneer of gay sensibility in literature, who is also a generous, astringent critic with a monumental breadth of literary knowledge, entrenchment in high culture, and even friendships with late 20th century East Coast artistic luminaries.

White, who chairs Princeton’s Creative Writing Department, has lived a rarefied life by his pen in places like Rome, Key West, and the Ile Saint-Louis by cultivating wealthy patrons and grants.

In Monsters, White breathtakingly weaves criticism with biographical details that illustrate the wider story behind 20 artists and writers--Isherwood, Mapplethorpe, John Rechy, to name a few.

In his review of Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky, a standout, White recalls the death of his lover in Morocco’s Atlas Mountain harrowingly wrought in his The Married Man.

Mr. White, who is 25 years my senior, first educated me at age 16 at San Diego’s Fashion Valley mall Waldenbooks on Christmas Eve, when I read his pointed instructions on the, to me, exotic gay men’s ritual of cruising.

He appeared again in timely fashion, to illuminate both our shared community and his own authentic, intricate emotional exploration when I read The Beautiful Room is Empty at age 27 in (former rare book dealer) Dr. Jack Collins's Queer Lit class at City College. The specific resonant events White illustrates from his young adulthood, are not so appropriate for this family medium though.

Today I still read White like those guys paint the Golden Gate Bridge. I read from one end of his memoir trilogy-- A Boys Own Story, Beautiful Room, and Farewell Symphony -- to the other, and back again. The consequences for me of foolishly opening a White title at bedtime is bleary sleep deprivation upon awakening. I am spellbound, entranced.

I’m not an open-minded, well-rounded reader, though. I tried Hunger by Knut Hamsun, a White progenitor who shares his exquisite cognitive honesty, only Hamsun operates in Nowheresville, Norway instead of Manhattan’s Chelsea Neighborhood, or Venice, and has no leather bars or casual sex to speak of.

I believe if one is lucky enough in life to discover one sympathetic artist applying his talent to elevate the customs and relationships of one’s tribe, well, that’s all I need.

Mr. White played a role in a mortifying event from my halting arts reporting “career.” I was given an open-ended 20 minutes of phone time in connection with a review I wrote of White’s 2006 memoir, My Lives. I crafted sweeping, informed questions, to convey my respect, and then out of nowhere, he turned the tables and asked, “Do you write?”

Flustered, I guffawed merrily. No, I don’t write in the sense that this Guggenheim fellow, and French Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, writes. But, tragically, I responded with one of those tactless, horrifying non sequiturs I’ve been guilty of many times which I now recall like a grisly slow-motion accident. I responded blithely, “Gosh your voice is so effeminate,” and laughed again.

Well, it really was high pitched, not the timbre I expected from one of the Great Men of Letters.

The newly created Magnus Books published Sacred Monsters under the aegis of esteemed longtime editor Don Weise, formerly of Carroll and Graf. Weise, who chose all the collection’s essays, was recently one of “Out” Magazine’s 100 most powerful gay people.

The Best Books We Read 2011

Kevin D.'s pick:

My favorite book of 2011 arrived just under the wire on our free advances shelf in November. As with Thomas Frank’s last book, The Wrecking Crew, I’m telling everyone to read his newest, Pity the Billionaire (available in January), a harrowing, scrupulously sourced and footnoted report delivering an incisive examination of, as he puts it, the “purified market populism of the right-wing renaissance.”

Frank offers astute insight into what motivates the naïve and xenophobic Tea Ninnies aiming to “take our country back,” fearing burdensome, invasive regulation toward modest small business owners thus rallying for toothless oversight by the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and SEC, much to the delight of fund managers at JP Morgan.

Frank delivers a seething survey of the “funhouse mirror of contemporary conservatism” where unions “oppress” workers and what’s left of the middle class became a cheering squad for paid-for politicians and the industrialist Koch Brothers, all aided by the stealth astro-turfing machinations of Dick Armey, and Glenn Beck’s socialist-baiting histrionics.

Democrats whistle as workplace unionism dwindles, while a bizarrely aloof President Obama capitulates and compulsively offers olive branches to Rep. John Boehner and his bullies.

The last, chilling, four-page chapter, “Trample the Weak,” foresees a future where the market-minded moneyed interests, no longer fearing incorruptible government agencies, are free to call highways and parks--wasteful subsidies, and FEMA and Medicare are just the unfortunates’ power grab from big government.

This is not bedtime reading unless you enjoy getting both fired up and terrorized before bed.

Meet Our Neighbors: Jersey's edition

[Here's Green Appler Kevin Davis with a story on our newish neighbors]

In our continuing endeavor to entice East-of-Stanyan-Street-dwellers to spend a day in the Avenues, may we introduce Jersey’s Sandwiches one block north of us at 6^th Avenue and Cornwall.

Erick Morton, who owns the store with his wife Shannon Gnatek, curates his selection of ingredients: Charlie’s Pride brand navel cut pastrami, Carando brand Genoa salami, Dutch Crunch from South City’s Ofiesh family bakery outlet, freshly ground horseradish, homemade Russian dressing, freshly made pesto with roasted pine nuts, Chevrine brand goat cheese, Tillamook cheddar, crumbled Maytag pungent blue cheese, imported fruity and complicated Emmental Swiss cheese.

“It’s either that or not have Swiss cheese,” says Morton. “I’m kind of a nut about it. My food costs are out of control. I won’t serve anything I’m not proud of.”

“My starting point was friends and acquaintances,” says Morton, who developed his recipes through trial and error, seeking advice from contacts in his six years bartending at Beach Chalet, the old Broadway Street Enrico’s, Presidio Heights’ Spruce, and most recently the TenderNob’s Fly Bar. “I’d pick the brain of whatever chef I was working with.”

Jersey’s complex and time-intensive spicy chicken, for example, is brined in vinegar, then marinated in olive oil, rosemary, thyme, shallots, and garlic, which Morton then serves slathered in tangy chili pepper Sriracha aioli sauce.

Morton, 35, who grew up in the Manhattan suburb of Ramsey, New Jersey, poaches his meatballs in his own marinara sauce, and roasts the Angus beef and hormone-free turkey in the morning at Divisidero Street’s Solstice Restaurant.

The tiny Sixth Avenue storefront seemed a fit for both his small

convection oven and budget, without involving deep-pocketed partners.

“I saw the space available and it seemed affordable without getting a bunch of loans, just using personal savings to get a foot in the door,” said Morton, who has an SJSU Masters in Education.

Jersey’s has become an “industry spot,” said Morton, drawing a chef from Ligurian eatery Perbacco, a Michael Mina manager, and 23^rd Avenue’s Pizzetta crew.

“That our customers are chefs, servers and bartenders, people in the know, who know what good food is, it’s high praise when people in the culinary industry like what we’re doing,” said Morton who lives with Gnatek across the street from the Masonic Street MUNI barn.

Royal Oak, Michigan, native Shannon Gnatek, 34, left waitressing at the casual Bell Tower Bar and Restaurant at Polk and Jackson to help at Jerseys full time, and before that waited tables at Union Square Morton’s Steakhouse for sometimes big personalities like Hulk Hogan.

“I dropped a bottle of wine on his foot,” says Gnatek who is taking a break from studying at 17^th and Capp Street’s Shelley Mitchell Method Acting School.

Gnatek, who quit drinking two years ago, is currently reading Daniel Okrent’s prohibition history “Last Call,” which she was motivated to purchase by a Green Apple shelf talker.

Morton counts Orwell, Palahniuk and Suzanne Collins as favorite authors, but was most recently impressed with Michael Lewis’s The Big Short.

“It will piss you off,” says Morton, who honeymooned with Gnatek by visiting 23 countries in eight months.

Jersey's is at 200 6^th Avenue at Cornwall. Call ahead to avoid waiting: (415) 221-0444