Gay literature champion Fellis Picano, died at 81

Felice Picano, who died in Los Angeles on Wednesday, as a writer of landslide novels and memoirs in a golden age of gay literature in the 1970s and 80s. He was 81 years old.

The causes of his death at the Cedar-Sinai Medical Center were the complications of the lymphoma, a close friend Jennifer Levin.

Sri Picano, who published memoirs of 17 novels and eight editions, was a member of the Vental Quill, a group of seven gay male writers, who used to meet regularly and on fire island in Manhattan in the early 1980s, to discuss their work, at a time when gay literature was entering mentream only.

Two Violet Quill members, both the best -selling writers, survive him: Andrew Holarn (“Dancer from the Dance”) and Edmond White (“A Boys on Story”). If other participants – Christopher Cox, Robert Ferro, Michael Gromeli and George Whitmore – are not known as well, it can happen because all four died of AIDS by 1990.

Mr. Picano often wrote about difficult topics including his early life. His 1985 memoir, “Ambidextrus: The Secret Lives of Children” described a teacher, who crueled him to write with both hands. It also described the sexual encounters of Mr. Picano along with both boys and girls starting at the age of 11. When the young Mr. Picano wrote a story about his experiences, hidden identity and removed the most laurel description, his teachers insisted that they had made it.

When he published “Ambidxtrus” after about 30 years, some critics had the same response: that children do not have sex. Mr. Picano referred to him for the definition of “memoir”.

He was a author with “The New Joy of Gay Sex” (1992) and “The Joy of Gay Sex: a fully modified and expanded third version” (2003) with Charles Silverstein. Dr. Silverstein, who wrote the original “The Joy of Gay Sex” with Edmund White in 1977, asked Sri Picano to help produce a second version that could convince gay men to have sex safely. After less than a decade, after the arrival of effective AIDS remedies, and social changes, including internet dating and rise of hookup sites, led to the third version, including entries when children have children, older, bisexual and homophobia. Like the other two versions, it was arranged in the alphabet. For example, B section began with bareback, bar, bath and bear.

But he was mostly a novelist. His first three books, including thriller “Eyes” (1975), had no gay subjects or characters. Then he had an idea for a story about a straight man, which has to go to the undercover in a gay world to help solve a murder. It became “The Lure” published in 1979. Writing about this at the New York Times Book Review, crime novelist Ivan Hunter saw, “Suspense here is in the form of threadbare in the form of a male Husler’s jeans, and psychology is five and and – dime ‘store.” The book made many best -sellers list. “A lot for poor reviews,” Mr. Picano commented in an interview in 2019.

Encouraged by the success of “The Lure”, he began an epic novel, which follows two cousins, a gay and a bisexual since his early childhood. It was published in 1995 with the title “Like Peepal in History”. He said in the 2019 interview that the book was classified as a story, “100 percent truth and 90 percent were autobiographical.”

At that time, he said, “Nobody was writing about gay life. I felt that I had to take it down in print, otherwise it was about to disappear. This helped that Mr. Picano had placed a magazine every day since 1968. He also had this, he said, an ectic memory, by which he meant that whatever he had seen, he not only remembered, which he heard, tasted or touched. “Like Peepal in History” became his second best seller and perhaps his most famous novel.

He founded the C Horse Press in 1977 to publish the work of other gay writers. In 1981, he worked with two other publishers to create a New York’s gay press. Together, he said, the press lasted for 18 years and published 78 books (including three of his). Those who stand on the criterion of time include Harvey Fiestein’s “Torch Song Trillogy,” Dennis Cooper’s books “Safe” and “Closers”, Brad Gooch’s collection “Jailbits and other stories” and Rev Boydon McDonalds Strait to Hell Magazine. Companies re -released important old works. As a publisher, the novelist Catherine Texier wrote in the Times Book Review in 2007, Mr. Picano was both “chief and present”. He said, “Promoting those new gay voices, at that time, was nothing short of a revolutionary.”

“He was a life changer for many of us,” Mr. Gooch remembered. More than just a publisher, “he was a literary matchmaker who helped create an audience for our work.”

Felis Anthony Picano was born on 22 February 1944 in Queens, the third of the four children, described as “Italian American family of a middle class”. His father, Philip Picano, run a wholesale production business, and her mother, Anne (Delcento) Picano, was a department store manager. When she was 11 years old, she surprised her teachers with an Erudite essay on the “Elliad”.

After graduating from Queens College in 1964, he earned money as a social worker, a magazine editor and an astrologer. He marched in Washington to oppose the Vietnam war and publicly burnt his draft card. He lived on many community and wrote in the memoir in the memoir, “Nights in Rizoli,” “My personal mantra became: If it feels good then let’s do it. If it feels good and it is illegal and it wins the old people, then let’s do it twice -and if possible.” Pop it. “

He eventually worked at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street at a high -grade book shop Rizoli, where his customers included Salvador Dal, Jerome Robins, Jacqueline Kennedy Onas, Gregory Peck, Elton John, Mick Jagger and SJ Perelman. After leaving work, he often wrote all night. In addition to his books, he created articles and reviews for The Advocate, Bluey, Mandate, Gesvek, Christopher Street, New York, Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review and Lambda Book Report. His criticism also appeared in many general interest publications.

In various memoirs, he described encounters with writers Gor Vidal and Edward Gore, poet WH Auden, photographer Robert Mapplaterape and actor Anthony Perkins. For 15 years, his partner, a lawyer Robert Alan Lowe, hunted AIDS related diseases in 1991.

Although Mr. Picano spent an extended period abroad, he lived in New York City and Fire Island before leaving Los Angeles in 1995.

Information of the remaining people was not available immediately.

Among their fellow Violet Quill members, Mr. Picano wrote in an email last month: “We shared the hope that one day any gay or gay teenager can go to any book shop or library and get a book about her kind. Our dream has come true! ,