Prolific author, publisher and editor Felice Picano died at his home in Los Angeles on March 12 of lymphoma. He was 81. Since then, numerous authors and people in the publishing industry had praised him and remarked on his generosity as well as his multiple accomplishments in bringing gay literature to the forefront of culture.
One could also point to his being an activist, a mentor to younger writers, and a "passionate advocate for storytelling in all its forms," as his New York Times obituary noted. Whenever we met (and other writers have said the same), among his first words were, "What are you working on now?"
Writing was Felice's lifeblood. In spite of a very active social calendar, writing was always his first priority. His versatility was staggering, especially in his genre writing. He wrote novels, memoirs, crime thrillers, Sci Fi, dystopian, fantasy, poems, mysteries, other world romances, plays, historical fiction, and screenplays.
He was proud to call himself a popular writer, meaning his books actually sold and were read by gay men, but they were honest about gay men's struggles, their unexpurgated sexuality, and common everyday lives.
He was fiercely dedicated to gay literature. Felice defined gay literature as promoting gay fiction by gay men. He was one of the founding members of the Violet Quill, a group of seven gay male writers who would read their work to each other and critique them. They met in New York City in 1980 and 1981. The group included Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, and Robert Ferro, among others. Four of them died of AIDS. Only White and Holleran remain now.
Felice in his inimitable way told me, "We were all friends, lovers, or boyfriends of each other. I had started dating (playwright, novelist, poet) George Whitmore. We were really just looking for other gay writers to discuss what gay literature could or would be and how we would go about doing it. Other writers (i.e. James Merrill, Richard Howard) were questioning what gay writing was, thinking it was just pornography. No one took it and us seriously. The group felt we had to produce a literature to reflect the kind of lives we were living and the people around us who saw themselves reflected in our writing."
Early years
Felice was born in 1944 in Queens as part of a middle-class Italian American family. He grew up on Long Island, and graduated from Queens College in 1964. He was employed in many different jobs, everything from social work to astrology, experiences that became fodder for his novels. He created 17 novels and eight volumes of memoirs. He was so prolific, he kept a drawer of ideas for future works.
His two best novels were "The Lure" and "Like People in History." "The Lure" was a fictional account based on a series of Greenwich Village gay male murders in the 1970s. The police, unable to find the killer, and savaged by the "Village Voice" newspaper, recruit an academic widower, Noel Cummings, presumably straight, to act as a decoy for the killer.
The experience exposes his secret desires. Picano, cleverly knowing a gay protagonist would be a provocation for straight readers in the late 1970s, gradually seduces his readers to empathize with Cummings.
This psychological thriller novel has never gone out of print. It became the first gay-themed book to be selected by the Book of the Month club. It was also a best seller. Picano recalled, "The publisher did me a wonderful favor, writing 'Warning: sex and violence' on the cover."
"Like People in History" is the tale of two gay cousins who become best friends in the mid-1950s and details their lives from the beachboy surfer days of the 1960s to Greenwich Village AIDS activism in the 1990s.
Felice considered it his gay American epic, with Edmund White calling it "the gay 'Gone With the Wind.'" When asked how much of the book actually happened, he replied, "100% of it is true and 80% is biographical." He was determined to show how gay men and lesbians were part of American history. The book also remains popular today.
Risky revelations
Two of Felice's memoirs stand out. "Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children," described graphically his sexual encounters with both boys and girls, beginning at age 11. He introduced a taboo subject about precocious childhood sexuality and his coming to terms with being gay at an early age. The book was banned and "destroyed by immolation" upon its arrival in England.
Even when the book was republished 30 years later, critics reacted by saying that children don't have sex. He was often accused of writing about the dirty laundry of gay life, especially what happened late at night, but he was determined to show all sides of gay living, feeling this was his calling as a modern queer author.
"Nights at Rizzoli" concerns his being a clerk and manager at the famous high-class Italian-inspired Manhattan bookstore in the early 1970s. He met famous clients such as Jackie Onassis, Mick Jagger, Elton John, Jerome Robbins, and Salvador Dali. He would leave work then write all night. He observed during this period, he "consumed recreational drugs, including LSD, the way most people pop in breath mints...My personal mantra became: If it feels good let's do it. If it feels good and it's illegal and it makes old people wince, let's do it twice – and in public if possible."
Sexual joy
He was also the author with Charles Silverstein of "The New Joy of Gay Sex" (1992). The original version had been written with Edmund White in 1977.
"Edmund didn't want to work on the new one," Picano said. "Charles wanted me to do it. I suggested several other people like John Preston and talk with them first, but he answered he felt really shaky about his own writing and wanted an accomplished pair of eyes to edit it. I checked with Edmund who said he hadn't kept up with the material and wouldn't know frottage from a hole in the wall, so he gave me the go ahead. I went and reread the book deciding it was very '60s, with rubbing oils and lighted candles. I didn't know anybody that did that, even in the '60s."
Felice continued, "We added history to the psychology, so that 92% of the book was rewritten including a chapter on safe sex. Edmund's sections had all been written in the passive voice, but since I'm a top, it was redone in active prose. It's published in 17 languages and we revised and expanded it for the Computer/Internet Age in 2003. When I was in Europe and would pick up a guy, he would pull out every sex toy he owned, thinking I was the expert!"
Hollywood swingin'
Felice tried his hand at screenwriting. He even worked with actor Cary Grant to adapt his heterosexual thriller, "Eyes," for almost a year. But eventually he had to go back to Manhattan to finish his gay novel. When he showed Grant a suggestive photo of he and actor Randolph Scott hanging out on a pool diving board, Grant replied, "I used to be gay."
Because Felice was one of the very few openly gay people in Hollywood at that time (1979), people who had lived in Hollywood during the 1930s and '40s would tell him stories and information about gay life in that era.
Years later, Felice would travel with a presentation called 'Gay Hollywood in the Golden Age,' based on the gossip. He remembered meeting Marlene Dietrich, who he claimed was mostly lesbian.
"I said to her, 'I know you slept with one man who was your husband since you had a daughter together, but were there any others?' She replied that she did love the French actor Jean Gabin. He was in the French Resistance and I was very patriotic."
A born raconteur, he would tell amusing stories of sleeping with closeted celebrities based on his Tinsel Town exploits. His fondest wish was that Hollywood studios would turn some of his books into movies and TV series, which regrettably has not yet happened.
Publishing pioneer
He founded his own Seahorse Press in 1977 to publish the work of other gay writers. He named it after seahorses because they are one of the few animals in nature where the male gives birth. He saw it as a metaphor for the creativity of gay men. He discovered such talented authors as Brad Gooch, Doric Wilson, and Dennis Cooper.
In 1981 he combined several other small gay presses to form the Gay Presses of New York. Its first title and biggest success was playwright/actor Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy."
Picano's honors include five nominations for Lambda Literary Awards and the Lambda Literary Foundation's Lifetime Achievement/Pioneer Award. He also received the PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award.
Since 1995, Felice lived in West Hollywood. In Steven Reigns's obituary of Felice in the WeHo Times, he wrote, "His home (overflowing with books) was a place where friends and fellow writers gathered, often drawn in by his encyclopedic knowledge of literature, and unfiltered storytelling. The anecdotes he shared were a mix of humor and insight into the past secretive world of Hollywood and literary circles."
David Davis, a former West Hollywood librarian recalled, "I met Felice at the West Hollywood Library and our conversations eventually led to the library's writing workshops. Felice was the heart of our workshops; writing and screenwriting. He had command of his audience and a way of giving feedback that was honest, instructive, and constructive.
"He was not afraid to let us know what worked and didn't work and was generous in sharing his experience and anecdotes," David added. "You could tell he loved writing and he shared his love and excitement with us. He inspired authors to write boldly and authentically."
Picano also taught gay literature at LA's Antioch University, and was bestowed the City of West Hollywood's Rainbow Key Award in 2013.
Gay books
Felice was also well known for his phrase, "gay books without dicks." I asked him how he invented this expression.
"I was being interviewed and I was discussing how difficult it is to get published. This was in the mid-1980s. And the interviewer remarked, 'Well, David Leavitt has no problem getting published.' And I replied there are no dicks in his books, meaning no sex. Meanwhile I would run into him in East Hampton (on Long Island) at what we then called the Dick Dock and see him on his knees, so it wasn't like he wasn't sexually active. I thought there was some hypocrisy there."
You could play a game with Felice, naming gay writers from the 1950s to the 1990s, and ask if he had slept with them. About 75% of the answers were "yes."
Felice didn't see that much difference in gay writers today than in the 1970s.
"But in the 1970s we expressed many of the major themes still being written about today such as coming out, how to be gay, dealing with your birth family and your family of choice, fidelity in gay life," he said. "Did it count and how, as well as being gay as a young boy which was Edmund's theme and mine in some of my books. We pointed out you could be a sissy but also a butch boy like my characters and still be gay. We discussed building a gay society and all that meant."
What Felice felt is lacking in today's writers is a sense of excitement, that one is breaking new ground.
"Oddly, it was easier back then to get published by major publishers which is not true today," he said. "Also, in our time we were concerned with sexual liberation and I don't see that now in writers. People want to get married, settle down, and have babies, which is certainly different."
Paying tribute
David Bergman, emeritus professor of English at Towson University, wrote the definitive history of the Violent Quill in his book, "The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture." He had been good friends with Picano, but lost touch after he moved to the West Coast.
"What is notable about Felice was his generosity and energy," said Bergman in an email. "He was everywhere. He wrote a journal, some of which I published in my "Violet Quill Reader." My instinct is that with skillful editing, they may give one of the most complete pictures of gay life of the last 50 years."
Bergman contrasted Picano with his friend and rival Edmund White.
"Felice began as a writer of popular genres and he remained writing popular genres through most of his career," said Bergman. "That is very different from Ed White, who began as a novelist Vladimir Nabokov could praise, and has continued writing mostly memoir, autobiographical fiction and a good deal of critical prose. What they represent is the emergence of gay subjects into mainstream and literary fiction. They are both important in different ways."
I also asked Edmund White to comment on Felice's legacy.
"He was that rare combination of egotism and generosity," wrote White. "He was tireless in promoting his own innovative and effective work just as he campaigned for the publication of younger meritorious writers."
The B.A.R.'s Arts and Nightlife Editor Jim Provenzano also counted Felice as a friend.
"What I enjoyed most about Felice's company was his relentless enthusiasm for new adventures and publishing ideas. He blurbed my debut novel in 1999 and later edited a few other works. Since his passing, several friends have noted how meeting him led to them eventually getting an agent or a book published, or how he inspired them to complete a novel. He truly was the godfather of gay literature. I hope his legacy will continue."
In 2017, I asked Felice what he saw as his legacy.
"Well, I'm in the history books now, as I helped create a genre that had not existed previously, and it's ongoing," he said. "Several of my books have never gone out of print and I think they will last."
To his many friends, Felice was ribald, intelligent, witty, down-to-earth, and with his creative vision, a literary trailblazer. In his final years, he was editing and encouraging published works of people his age or older so that their stories wouldn't vanish. This was his mission from the very beginning, to promote new gay voices.
The same could be said for him, that many of his works document gay life from the 1970s to the present, sexually, historically, and culturally. With his perseverance, talent, and groundbreaking ability to transcend boundaries, it's highly unlikely Felice Picano and his books will be forgotten any time soon.
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