Yesterday at Salon, Daniel D’Addario raised an important question: when will there be a buzzed-about novel that finally gets the gay experience right? D’Addario mentions Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings, a big novel with a rainbow-colored cover that follows a group of friends in the late ’70s and early ’80s; one of them is a gay man. And, of course, Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, the popular novel from 2011 about the interpersonal relationships of collegiate baseball players and the middle-aged college president who, despite his lifelong heterosexuality, falls head-over-heels in love with the sole gay player. Both books, along with Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children, feature fairly limited views of the gay experience, as their homosexual characters are more symbolic than fully realized. All three of these authors are straight, but would their characters feel more real if they were written by non-heterosexuals? … Read More