Sad, Old Faggot

Prolific playwright and novelist Gilbert unsuccessfully steps into autobiographical fiction with this mixed bag of 16 monologue-like bursts of prose. As the subject, narrator, and author, he creates a semi-fictional double who is lonely, resentful, alcoholic, prone to over-sharing, seething, and often explosive with complaint. Aside from repeatedly listing the indignities of being 62 years old, the narrator expresses an overwhelming sense of bitterness because he has been cheated of deserved fame and recognition. He rails against heterosexual male critics who avoid reading his books because they fear the seductiveness of his homosexuality and gay reviewers who have panned his work because they are threatened by his talent. He vents about overrated playwrights, actors, and musicals, theater-world homophobia, monstrous nurses who mistreated him during his recovery from an operation, and newly “bourgeois” Toronto (because “all the people who live there now are stupid rich suburban people”). Other, funnier anecdotes from this loudly self-proclaimed “out slutty drag queen faggot teacher” detail sexual adventuring, including complicated bathhouse trysts, literally scatological mishaps, and a surreal trip into the U.S. Abrasive, self-pitying, and furious, the wearying narrator seems intent on self-marginalization. It’s a counterintuitive strategy. And when he quips, “I mean, who cares?” the reader will likely agree. (Sept.)