Read Me!: "The Salt Point" by Paul Russell

TNG staff writer Philip contributed this post.

Last week’s “Hidden History: Five and Change” talked about some of my high school-era gay reading experiences and how memories of them flooded back upon a visit to Washington D.C.’s The Lantern. In the comments section for that post, two readers suggested that I create a “top ten” list of gay novels or nonfiction books, or that I in some way talk more about gay and lesbian books on TNG. That got me thinking.

Within a day of the column being posted, word was e-mailed to me that New York City’s Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, the oldest continuously operating gay and lesbian bookstore in the United States, will be closing at the end of March. Conversations a few years ago with a prior owner of Oscar Wilde, Larry Lingle, revealed to me how much financial difficulty the store had undergone and certainly the current economy makes the survival of all small stores uncertain. But it was still a disappointing blow to learn that the store can no longer survive. Its closing will leave New York City, a touchstone city in the history of gay and lesbian life, without a GLBT bookstore. That got me thinking some more.

I realize that some people believe that mainstream bookstores, which now almost always have separate gay and lesbian sections, will fill the gap. I realize some people believe gay fiction is an inherently narrow genre. Some think that GLBT writing is rapidly becoming irrelevant.

I firmly disagree. One of the reasons the genre may seem narrow or irrelevant is precisely because the gay community is handing its prerogative over to mainstream publishers and bookstores. Mainstream publishers will not take risks on challenging gay material; mainstream bookstores will all stock the same ten titles, guaranteed not to upset their patrons. I have seen the gay and lesbian sections in big box bookstores: according to them, we are blandly sex-obsessed or we are cheeky and cute. There is no other ground.

It may be impossible to turn back this cultural sea-change in GLBT life, but I’m going to make my small contribution with a once-a-month book review column on TNG, “Read Me!” Just think of me as a friend who’s tossing a book he liked your way. There is no rationale behind the selections except, “Hey! This is really good, and I think you might like it, too.”

Without further ado, below the fold, here’s a novel about three friends and the stranger who disrupts their lives’ careful balance…

The Salt Point
by Paul Russell
Dutton, 1990; reprinted by St. Martin’s (Stonewall Inn Editions), 2000

I first read The Salt Point as an advance, uncorrected proof when St. Martin’s reissued it in 2000, and when I reached the last page, I was convinced that I owned a defective pre-release copy. The ending seemed impossible—surely there must be missing pages? No first novel could afford to end on a note of such utter despair, could it?

It could and it did—although telling you that does nothing to spoil this book’s bleak, magnetic power. Anatole, Lydia, and Chris seem to be close friends, working undemanding jobs in mid-1980s Poughkeepsie, New York, and following minor rituals of dinners or dancing. But when Anatole and Lydia notice a stranger, a drifting teenager named Leigh, among the shops in Poughkeepsie, and when Anatole brings “Our Boy of the Mall” into their lives, Leigh’s presence exposes the unacknowledged fissures in their relationships.

Dennis Cooper is the gay writer best known for his stories about ambivalent, impassive teenagers, what Cooper called “the blank generation” in a poem from The Tenderness of the Wolves. Paul Russell should share this reputation, though; he chronicles this kind of character just as well. It would be easy to blame Leigh, who seems like a cipher out to get what he can from the others, for the destruction in The Salt Point (before two brilliantly conceived flashbacks, each entitled “Night Music,” provide him with some motivation). But Anatole, Lydia, and Chris are all at least ten years older, and they are no better at communication than Leigh, hiding their true feelings from each other. They seem more emotionally in tune with the songs they listen to than with any person around them.

Along that line, Russell’s use of period details to set the scene and reveal character is masterful. The Salt Point takes place in 1985, and MTV forms a constant backdrop to the story. Leigh’s look is compared to David Bowie album covers. Bronski Beat and Depeche Mode dominate the dance clubs. In one scene, Anatole and Leigh let the mood called up by a Psychedelic Furs song substitute for their having to reveal themselves to each other. Characters pay closer attention to records and videos than they do to the relationships that govern their lives.

Published well before the Internet contributed to shutting people off from others even further, what’s scary about The Salt Point is that it claims emotional detachment as the dominant feature of modern relationships—and its characters make the point seem inarguable. It is both an incredibly intelligent novel about the ways in which people fail to connect beyond a superficial level and a dire warning about the consequences of that failure. This is why The Salt Point still resonates and why it should be read into the future.


The Salt Point is available from St. Martin's Press (click the link on the title at the top of the review), and if you've got the $14 or so to spend, it's a great way to support one of the last remaining large independent publishers. Alternately, purchase it through Lambda Rising and support your local gay bookstore; the link here goes directly to LR's search results for The Salt Point. Their price is just as good as that of the publisher or of the evil Amazon. If you've not got the funds, support an independent bookstore by using ABEBooks.com; there are 81 copies there starting at $1 plus shipping.

Questions or comments about this column, The Salt Point, or another glbt novel? Recommendation of something I should read? E-mail me directly at philipclark@hotmail.com.