Anything Goes -- with John Barrowman and Torchwood

Here's everything you ever wanted to know about John Barrowman -- plus a lot you couldn't have imagined, and a few items you probably could have lived happily without knowing, but hey, if you're broad-minded it's all a chuckle.

Name me someone, anyone, who doesn't love John Barrowman?! Most people, though, would be tightly focused in on a couple of aspects of JB. It's going to be either Captain Jack Harkness who's their fascination, or it's going to be the very gayness of a very gorgeous actor who's out and always has been, or it could easily be the lure of the world of live theater.

In this book, you get to pick what you want, like you're strolling down the buffet table. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones ... I'm interested in the theater, and I'm interested in JB for his own sake, and I've been watching Doctor Who since about 1966, so anything that has DW or Torchwood in it or on it will send my antennas up faster than Uncle Martin's. (I could tell you coming out stories. What, coming out as gay...? No. Coming out as a Doctor Who fan. It was a harrowing experience, but the fact the place had gone gaga just recently for Captain Jack made it easy. I never came out as a DW fan back in the days of rubbery monsters and $2 spaceships. No guts.)

Anyway -- Anything Goes is basically the story of John Barrowman: The First 40 Years ... without omission, and with boatloads of detail, especially about his early years. Those chapters are endearing and amusing. His family (and his father especially) seem to have been fonder than usual of practical jokes, and JB grew up with an, uh, broad sense of humor that knows no shame. If you're of a delicate nature: be warned!

The Doctor Who and Torchwood years are obviously the last few chapters in a bio that's telling four decades of story. (I've heard a few criticisms of the book for this, but I can't see a good enough reason for being critical on this. Anything... isn't "Behind the Scenes with John on Torchwood." It's the story of the man's whole life, of which Jack Harkness features in the last few years. Be reasonable, guys.)

I hadn't realized that JB only "officially" came out to the world at large about five years ago. He gives the impression of a guy who was never "in," so I never thought to question his "in or out" status. I have to confess, my first experience with JB was in the Chris Eccleston season of DW, and like everyone else I was bowled right over. Anyway, the coming out parts of the book are light and easy ... Anything Goes also isn't any kind of "coming out" story. JB had it easy, it seems. I actually wish he'd written a bit more here, but it's possible there isn't anything else to write! If one's life isn't screwed up and traumatized, you just get on with your future, like the song says -- "Don't worry, be happy!"

Anything Goes is a very happy book. In a couple of places the humor isn't the kind of thing you'd want your dear old mom and aunt to read ... and maybe someone's romantic illusions will get a fracture or two ... but this is also a very male book: it's by a guy, about a guy, and one of the best, most interesting things about it, is that it opens a doorway into the mind and heart of a gay guy who's happy and successful -- and invites you in.

The book has loads of surprises which I'm not even going to get into here. It'd be like giving plot spoilers for a fiction book. Just because Anything Goes is non-fic doesn't mean you want somebody to tell you all the best bits before you read it! And do read it --

You can get it in hardback and paperback ... loads of fun, highly recommended! AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Here's John Barrowman online: http://www.johnbarrowman.com/, and right now you can get very good deals on Anything Goes at Amazon:



(There's also a bunch of Torchwood goodies which I'm going to be naughty and link you to here, as well. I know I should concentrate on the review in hand but ... what the heck, it's MY blog, and I'm going to bend the rules because ... well, because it's Torchwood. So here goes... I'll link a few, but seriously, link on over to Amazon and drool for a while!)

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Being gay was dangerous ... The Mayor of Castro Street

Here's a book that's topical right now, because there's a major movie coming along ... it's also a very good book in its own right! The title tells all: it's the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay political figure in the US of A, who was shot dead by a rival political candidate, in 1978.

Correspondingly, Randy Shilts was the first openly gay journalist to make a place and name for himself in the US press (and have the nerve to write gay stories). He worked in San Francisco for The Chronicle (it took him six years to get hired on in a homophobic industry!) and from what I've read, he had known Harvey Milk personally.

So, no surprise that RS should have made the biography of this amazing, milestone figure his debut work. The book is a very good read. The style is practically what we think of today as "docudrama." Almost like a novel in large patches. It's like a great collection of dramatized "bites of life," that build up to make an overall picture of Harvey Milk in episodic installments. The writing style is very journalistic -- which works well, in the context of the book. I found the methodical, meticulous, leave-nothing-out approach very satisfying.

You could wish wholeheartedly that RS had written more books, but he only did three. He was an AIDS victim and passed away in 1994 at a tragically young age. Mayor... is the first of his books, and you can actually tell. The style still has to settle down a bit! Maybe he could have done with a bit of polish here and there. But actually I'd slap the editing hands away and tell people to "leave off," don't mess it about, because there's also a candidness about it that's accentuated by the less-than-perfect style. (You could say it was the literary counterpart to the always-moving, jiggly camera work you see on modern tv shows, where the director's trying to make his million-dollar show look like it was shot on a handheld camcorder like Blair Witch ... Hollywood currently believes this effect makes footage look "real" and "immediate" and "exciting." Well, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the damn' gander! In the literary world, editors need to learn when to leave well alone and let the "reality" and "immediacy" of slightly rough writing speak for itself. I'll probably get beat up for saying that...)

Back to the book! Mayor... is a truly marvelous portrait of time and place and people. The book was put out by Saint Martin's Press in 1982, and then fell out of print for eons. It was reprinted just a few months ago (August or September of '08) also by SMP, as a partnership for the upcoming movie. I read a borrowed copy back in the late 1980s, and just got the new edition. I read it again, and was just as impressed this time around. Yet...

The book is a strange mixture (not RS's fault) of the contemporary and the historical. Hard to define. You swing back and forth like a pendulum while reading, when "this" strikes a chord as being contemporary, then "that" strikes another chord as being a historical note, and you realize how much has changed in the world since the era of the book.

30 years later it seems so totally weird that somebody like Dan White, who had once been a policeman, could haul off and shoot a guy for being gay and having the audacity to run for public office. But it happened. It was a real event. Nobody made this up. The first thing that hits you as being "out of the past" is the weirdness of the fact this actually happened. (A few years earlier, Patricia Nell Warren had written of the assassination of a gay athlete in The Front Runner ... which shows you a little bit about what the state of things was like in the USA at the time. Thank heavens things changed.)

The second thing that hits you when you read Mayor... is even more sad. AIDS wasn't an issue in 1978 when Harvey Milk was killed. Mr. Milk would never have even heard the word. He represented the gay and lesbian community for one of the cities that was about to be hit the hardest. He could probably have made an incredible difference in the next thirty years, using his influence to get funding for research and support -- and public AIDS education. A lot of lives could have been saved. And Randy Shilts's life could have been one of them.

Don't let me give you the impression that Mayor... is a sad book, because it's not. It's vigorous and witty, clever and insightful. Does it have a downside? Yes and no. Yes, if you're one of those readers that needs a footnoted citation for every syllable that comes out of someone's mouth. You're not absolutely sure where "fact" blurs into "faction" (can't say fiction ... would have to be a cross between the two, with RS as the stable master). For myself, I'm not that all-fired bothered, because somebody who knew Harvey Milk personally (and did as much research as Randy Shilts did, to bring this book together) would know the truth of things better than anybody else. I'm prepared to take what RS writes on trust.

Great book -- very timely, with the movie coming out and also with the Proposition 8 travesty taking place in the same location. California again! Harvey and Randy are up there somewhere, shaking their heads over us. Highly recommended. AG's rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Here's Randy Shilts's page at Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Shilts

And you cam get great deals on The Mayor of Castro Street at Amazon right now:

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