When I lost a partner to AIDS in 1995, I immediately found myself adrift in a sea of ever-changing emotions, with which I wasn't yet equipped to deal. I didn't have the tools needed to properly channel and process my chaotic state until I tried writing about my experience. Author David G. Hallman suffered a similar loss when his partner of 30 years was diagnosed with cancer, only to die just two weeks later. He, too, used writing as a way to explore his emotional state, and that commonality helped us forge a friendship when we were fortunate enough to finally meet at the Rainbow Book Fair in New York. His memoir,August Farewell, details the death of his partner to cancer and was noted by The Advocate magazine as one of the 21 Biographies or Memoirs You Should Read Now. The Advocate also called his novel Searching for Gilead "an honest examination of questions about God, injustice, love, and death." It was a pleasure to speak with him recently about his life and journey to authorhood.
Hi, David. Nice to talk to you again.
Good to connect with you, too, Kergan. The last time was over martinis in New York after the Rainbow Book Fair! I remember getting fortified so I'd be in good shape for the Black Party that night.
Yes, the rest of us were a bit in awe that you were heading out to dance all night after being at the book fair all day!
Well, I'm not a father of two kids like you and your partner Russ. That takes an impressive amount of energy. I bow to you in the personal stamina department.
Speaking of stamina, you've been through quite an emotionally exhausting journey. While you'd written other books prior, you wrote your memoir,August Farewell, after the traumatic death of your partner Bill from cancer. When you began writing, was it as a cathartic outlet, or were you intending it to be a book?
I never intended anyone else to see it. Bill was diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer in August 2009 and died two weeks later. After it was over, I started panicking that I would forget the details of those excruciating, intimate, heart-wrenching, spiritual, god-awful 16 days that were, at times, punctured by Bill's uproarious sense of humor. So I started writing the story of those days and spontaneously began integrating vignettes from our 33 years together. I wrote nonstop for six weeks. But I only did it so that I could have that record to go back to and relive our time together in the years to come, just like how we treasure photo albums.
Why did you decide to publish it?
I shared it with a few close friends, who in turn passed it around to others. It started circulating wider and wider, photocopied pages in a black, three-ring binder. People kept telling me that this was a wonderful love story that should be more widely available and it could be helpful to others who were dealing with grief. But it took a year of cajoling from friends before I agreed to publish it.
So many people want to be in a relationship. What brought you both together, and what kept you together?
Sex, sex, and more sex. Actually, no, that's not quite true. I had lusted after him for months, but I thought that he was so good-looking he wouldn't ever notice a nerd like me. Unbeknownst to me, he had been trying to cruise me. But I was so dense, I didn't realize it. Anyway, once we finally did connect in 1976 -- yes, I am that old -- we started living together within a week and stayed together for 33 years. It was passion that brought us and kept us together -- intellectual, emotional, artistic, spiritual, physical passion.
Following August Farewell, your next book,Searching for Gilead, was a work of fiction. What was your inspiration for your novel?
Though writing August Farewell was cathartic, I still had -- still do have -- issues with which I'm struggling in my head and in my heart. So I decided to try and grapple with them through a work of fiction. That's where the title comes from. I made a list of those issues, and they spelled out GILEAD: God and religion in general, injustice in the world, love and relationships, environmental crises, the arts, and death.
You and I share some commonalities, in that we've both lost partners, mine to AIDS and yours to cancer, and that has led to common themes in our writing. And yet, although both of your recent books are very personal, they're also very different.
One of the things that I admire so much about your wonderful novel Songs for the New Depression was your artistic risk taking in telling the story in reverse chronological order. I think it worked brilliantly. Similarly for me, I wanted to push myself aggressively and with passion -- there's that word again -- to tackle the issues of love and loss that characterize the memoir August Farewell, but this time through the demanding genre of a novel. So while Searching for Gilead is a fictional story, the underlying themes are profoundly autobiographical.
While I've always viewed good writing as the connection between emotional authenticity and craftsmanship, someone recently accused me of using the death of Shane for my own aggrandizement. To me, it was essential that I try to honor him and to tell my story as well, but where is the line in telling others' stories? Do you ever feel that you've shared too much?
I worry about that all the time. I think sometimes I've skidded into an emotional exhibitionism.
What a great phrase, "emotional exhibitionism."
Pouring my broken heart out through the memoir and the novel, through my blogs and other recent writing, is so antithetical to the more personally circumspect person that I used to be. And Bill, though a larger-than-life personality, was quite a private person in terms of his personal life. So I do worry about how he would feel about people around the world reading our life story. But the feedback that I get from readers reinforces my gut instinct that these are important issues for us to be dealing with personally and as societies. And I guess I contribute to that social conversation through my writing.
How do you think the LGBT community as a whole has dealt with the AIDS crisis?
As a community, we've had to deal with a lot of death and have found ways to support each other personally, socially, and politically. Now that HIV is more of a long-term chronic disability and less of an automatic death sentence, I hope we as a community can generalize from our AIDS experience to help each other as we fall ill and die of the same sort of diseases that everyone else does, like, uh, I dunno, cancer, maybe.
What books have most resonated with you as a person, and why?
Gosh, to have to identify only a few titles that have really thrilled me... Well, of recent reads, I'd say David Rakoff's Half Empty (such a tragedy that he's just died -- of cancer -- at such a young age), Christopher Bram's Eminent Outlaws, Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child, Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Colm Tóibín's The Empty Family, Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader... The common denominator, I suppose, is that all of those have taken my breath away, the writing has been so damn good. Sometimes that's intimidating for me as an author, but generally the exhilaration of reading exquisite writing is what sticks with me.
Are you working on anything new?
I've started work on a collection of interrelated short stories. But I'm taking my time. During the two years that I spent writing August Farewell and Searching for Gilead, I did very little reading. I had no time. I was always writing. Now I find myself parched, and I'm reading, reading, reading. The energy for writing will come back, I hope, but at the moment, I feel the need to slake my thirst for the good writing of others. It's where my energy is. And I'm going with my gut, passionately.
For more on David G. Hallman, please check out his website, DavidGHallman.com. He can also be found on Twitter @authordhallman.
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Rainbow Radio (May 13, 2012)
A 20min interview with me on Rainbow Radio during which I discuss the background and writing of my memoir "August Farewell" and my novel "Searching for Gilead". You can listen to it at http://bit.ly/KjyvHW
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Modern-Day Algonquin Roundtable:
A Discussion with 5 Gay Authors
Filed on www.belerico.com by Kergan Edwards-Stout | March 31, 2012 2:00 PM and on http://huffingtonpost.com on April 2, 2012
One of the unexpected pleasures of my new journey as an author has been in meeting other writers, many of whom have formed a virtual Algonquin round table on twitter. Unlike the stereotype of competitors, battling each other for readers, this group has been exceedingly generous, supporting and reading each others' work, and tweeting positive reviews and news to their followers.
Recently, a few of us connected, following the Rainbow Book Fair in New York, to discuss our craft and the state of gay literature today. It was with great pleasure that I joined with Gregory G. Allen, David G. Hallman, Carey Parrish, and Arthur Wooten in our own gay take on the Algonquin round table.
Kergan Edwards-Stout: First of all, guys, I just want to say what a pleasure it is to actually connect with you. You've been a really important and supportive influence on me over the last several months, so thank you!
Gregory G. Allen: I agree. This is a really wonderful group!
Kergan Edwards-Stout: So, let me start off by asking you all each, what first inspired you to become a writer? Carey?
Carey Parrish: Being such an avid reader is what inspired me to write. Writing is a passion for me--it's something I can't not do. In fact, being a fan of books and readers is actually what prompted me to write my most recent novel, Big Business.
David G. Hallman: How so?
Carey Parrish: I'd gotten such a response from people who had read my first novel, Marengo, begging me to bring back the characters, that I had no choice but to write the sequel. That passion for reading needs to be rewarded.
Gregory G. Allen: For me, I think I've always loved telling stories. As a kid, I could tell some whoppers, and that grew until I was writing plays for the neighborhood kids, and next thing I knew, my plays were being presented on stage. Some years later, after reading Running With Scissors, I realized I had to write a novel. I wanted to touch someone in the same way that book's author, Augusten Burroughs, had touched me.
Arthur Wooten: Okay, that's sweet and all, but for me--honestly? Money was my inspiration. The first project I wrote, back in 1985, was a pilot for a television show called, A New Leash on Life. It was about a NYC dog walker who wanted to be an actor, plus the dogs and their crazy owners. Dick Cavett was producing it and although it didn't end up airing, it did give me the drive to continue.
Hallman: My inspiration was totally different. While I'd written books before, I had a really traumatic experience, which fundamentally altered my world. My long-term lover died from cancer, and that propelled me to write a memoir, August Farewell. There was so much angst roiling around in my head and heart that I had to find some way to get it out. And writing helped do just that... What about you, Kergan?
Edwards-Stout: I've always loved reading and I also knew I enjoyed writing. But when I was younger, I never saw it as a career. I didn't really know who I was, then, so the idea of being a writer and having a specific voice wasn't even on my radar. But as I grew and had more life experiences, I found, hey--I do have a voice, and passion, and stories to tell. And a big part of that is telling stories which reflect my experiences as a gay man.
Hallman: Before my memoir, I wrote environmental ethics books, where my sexuality--obviously--played no role. But my being gay is a key element of both August Farewell and my subsequent novel, Searching for Gilead, because it is integral to my identity, though both books are primarily about the human experience of love and loss.
Parrish: In my writing, I like to depict the world as it is; not as I would like it to be or as anyone else would like it to be. My characters run the gamut as far as lifestyles, tastes, etc., just like in the real world. The people I write about come from all walks of life.
Allen: I hear you... Being gay is just one part of who I am. I'm also anal-retentive, a fighter, a go-getter. I think, more than anything, being gay sparked my need to tell stories of "the outsider."
Wooten: For me, being a "sensitive" gay man has helped my writing tremendously--especially when I have to get into the head of a very complicated female character. Sue me now, but prior to writing novels, I hadn't read a lot of "gay lit"--and by that I mean I hadn't read a lot of M/M romance, coming of sexual age or hot steamy sex stuff...
Edward-Stout: (laughing) That's the only kind I like!
Hallman: I read voraciously, both gay and non-gay literature. What attracts me most is good writing.
Wooten: A Separate Piece by John Knowles, Thomas Mann's Death In Venice--each literary greats. But would they be considered "gay lit"?
Hallman: Unfortunately, a lot of today's literature, both gay and non-gay, can't stand up to those--most of it isn't very well written. As gay authors, we have to work at improving the quality of our writing if we are to be taken seriously by readers.
Wooten: So, you're saying you didn't like Arthur Wooten's Shorts?
Hallman: (laughing) You saw that 5 star review I gave it!
Parrish: Gay lit will always have its core audience. In fact, I've seen comments from readers who have felt that some books weren't "gay" enough. To me, though, writers have to write what they feel in their hearts.
Allen: There was a time every gay book written had two elements: sex and AIDS. Now we have love stories and all kinds of genre stuff where being gay is not the main thrust of the story.
Parrish: There's something for everyone.
Edwards-Stout: And yet, for me, even though I came out 30 years ago, I still hunger for stories about people like me: gay men finding their way in the world.
Allen: And with Songs for the New Depression, you wrote just that. You touch on sex, AIDS, bullying--but in a way in which it all feels fresh.
Hallman: I've been HIV+ since the early 1990s--and open about it. It figures as an element in both August Farewell and Searching for Gilead, but as only one of multiple key elements. Still, it informs who I am... And AIDS figures prominently in your novel, Well With My Soul, Greg.
Allen: I think AIDS lit a fire in my belly. I mean, when so many were dying around me, I learned to live each day to the fullest. To not sit around dreaming of doing something, but to actually do it.
Parrish: I know what you mean. That experience made me aware of both how lucky so many of us are to be here, but also how our writing can help those facing the disease. Even if it just means giving readers fun diversions which help take their minds off their troubles.
Wooten: Both my first novel, On Picking Fruit, and its sequel, Fruit Cocktail, have a lead character that has been HIV+ for years...
Edwards-Stout: It's a really interesting concept to tackle--especially in books like yours, Arthur, with comedic elements.
Parrish: So many folks thought they were facing death, and making all the plans that go along with that, but then suddenly get a reprieve, and have to learn to live again...
Edwards-Stout: Speaking of living and envisioning your life--where would you each like to see yourself in 10 years? David?
Hallman: Hmm... I'd like to be a) still alive; b) have a framed Pulitzer, Giller, and Man-Booker on my wall; and c) a new lover in my bed. But I'd settle for two out of three. What about you, Greg?
Allen: Well, I hope I'm still happy with my husband, with a home in a warm state and a summer place on Cape Cod.
Wooten: You can keep the Cape. I want to be gardening...in the country. With a smart cocktail.
Edwards-Stout: (laughing) I'll take a chardonnay instead--and all of the above!
Allen: Carey, what about you? Where would you like to be in 10 years?
Parrish: I'd like to be writing. Simple as that.