James Lear is the author of several gay erotic novels, including The Palace of Varieties. His newest, The Hardest Thing (Cleis Press)--the first in a series featuring ex-Marine Jack Stagg--is Lear's take on the macho Lee Child/Jack Reacher genre.
On your nightstand now:
I'm currently reading The Nether World by George Gissing. It's a fantastic and little-known novel about working-class London in the 1880s by one of my favorite Victorian writers. Coincidentally, the title sounds like a James Lear novel, because I always try to work in a none-too-subtle reference to the male sexual parts.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. I love the whole Narnia sequence, but that one in particular stood out for me, largely because it features a hidden underworld populated by strange creatures--a bit like the London gay scene I grew up in. And there's a great bit in which the handsome hero is tied to a chair. Even when I was very young that struck a chord.
Your top five authors:
Charles Dickens, Honoré de Balzac, E.F. Benson, Evelyn Waugh, Guy de Maupassant. Ask me this tomorrow and it might have changed.
Book you've faked reading:
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I really want to read the big Russian blockbusters, but I've never got round to it. I'm quite embarrassed about that, and sometimes I have to lie to save face.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Where do I begin? I'm a terrible evangelizer. "What? You haven't read so-and-so? Do so immediately!" Probably the book I've done this most for is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos. People know the Marilyn movie, which is fun, but not the novel, which is a work of genius, possibly the funniest book ever written. It's also full of great wisdom, and at various points I've tried to live my life according to the philosophy of the heroine, Lorelei Lee.
Book you've bought for the cover:
When I was a young lad in the 1970s, I was desperate for anything with gay content. There was a paperback edition of the novels of Jean Genet with very sexy, partially clad men on the front, so I'm pretty sure I bought Our Lady of the Flowers and Querelle de Brest on that basis. And while they had plenty of "good bits," they were very heavy going for a 15-year-old. I grew to appreciate them more in later life, although now I'm kind of over Genet.
Book that changed your life:
One book that changed my life, but not necessarily in a good way, was City of Night by John Rechy. It's a novel I admire tremendously, but it does paint a very bleak picture of gay life. I remember being very excited by the sexy boys and fabulous drag queens, but I also bought into the idea of gay men as outsiders, constantly drifting, unable to find love etc., etc. Rechy is very convincing on that subject, and I'm sure he was being honest about his experience at the time. I thought that's how it was going to be for me: lots of fun, but ultimately empty and tragic. Fortunately it wasn't.
Favorite line from a book:
It's hard to beat the opening sentence of Anthony Burgess's masterpiece, Earthly Powers: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me." I'm also very keen on the line in Flaubert's Madame Bovary when he recounts Emma's death: "Elle n'existait plus." Cruel and concise.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. I will never get over the experience of reading the first chapter: it's like falling into space, realizing you're in the hands of a complete genius. You just have to surrender and let the novel take control. I read it on a London underground train in rush hour, and the people around me thought I was a lunatic.
What makes for good erotic writing?
Humor, economy and contrast. I think that very serious erotic writing is a bloody disaster, it just seems ridiculous to me; you need to leaven it with a bit of humor. You have to rein in your descriptions as well, and avoid metaphors and similes. Also, it's no good having two very hot young people getting together: it's great on film, but dull in books. There needs to be some contrast between them, ideally an imbalance of power, to make it exciting. That said, the most successful erotic novel of all time breaks all of those rules, so what do I know?