Fresh Air

the first book that was published, Forgetting Elena, is only gay by virtue of participating in this mysterious thing called the gay sensibility. There are no explicit gay scenes in it.

I think that it didn't pigeonhole me as a sort of selfhelp writer amongst gay people because the interesting thing is if you compare The Joy of Sex with The Joy of Gay Sex, you see that whereas almost all of The Joy of Sex for heterosexuals is about sexual positions, The Joy of Gay Sex, about 40% of the book is devoted to lifestyle questions like coming out with your parents, sex and religion.

After your first or second novel, you cowrote the book The Joy of Gay Sex. And I wonder what effect that had on your literary career.

it began with him reading from a story called Watermarked, about first love. It was from his collection of short stories called Skinned Alive.

In your new collection of essays, The Burning Library, you write about the first time you saw one of the backroom bars of Greenwich Village in 1970, and this was shortly after you got back to the village after living in Rome for close to a year.

the third book in his trilogy, The Farewell Symphony. The book is narrated by a writer who has outlived most of his gay friends. He's looking back on the 1970s, the postStonewall preAIDS era.

There was a passage I'd like you to read from The Farewell Symphony that is about the period and about that sense of sexual mania of the period...

he had written the autobiography My Lives... he wrote that when he was 15 he stopped thinking of homosexuality as being interestingly artistic and saw it as a problem to be overcome.

The presence of the uncanny is even more potent in Dwyer Murphy's new novel, The House on Buzzard's Bay. Gothic chill wafts like ocean mist throughout this tale of college friends reuniting at an old house one of them has inherited.

Laura Lipman's latest novel resurrects a character from her beloved, Baltimorebased Tess Monaghan series. Murder Takes a Vacation stars Tess's former assistant, Muriel Blossom. The widowed Mrs. Blossom, as she's known, has won the lottery, and she's treating herself to a river cruise, starting in Paris. But when the handsome man who flirted with her on the plane is found dead, Mrs. Blossom's vacation literally becomes a getaway, as she tries to dodge both the police ... It would be easy to underestimate Death Takes a Vacation, to assume it's just a Miss Marpletype romp. That would be a mistake.

I was attracted to underground literature. Jean Genet, you know, Hubert Selby, Last Exits of Brooklyn, Charles Bukowski.

And the cat in the hat and the five Chinese brothers?

including Fellow Travelers, his McCarthy-era novel that was made into a Showtime series two years ago.

I have loved Thomas Mallon's writing ever since I reviewed Henry and Clara, his 1994 novel about the young engaged couple who shared the Lincoln's box at Ford's Theater on that fateful night in 1865.

Today, author Todd Purdom talks about his new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television.

The new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television, by my guest, Todd Purdom, is about Arnaz, I Love Lucy, the early days of TV, the seminal role he played in shaping it, his marriage to Lucille Ball, and the excesses that did him in.

I really enjoyed the book. It has so much interesting TV history in it.

His new book is Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television.

He's the author of the previous books, Something Wonderful, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution, and An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Two Presidents, Two Parties, and The Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

He's the author of the previous books, Something Wonderful, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution, and An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Two Presidents, Two Parties, and The Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

He's the author of the previous books, Something Wonderful, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution, and An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Two Presidents, Two Parties, and The Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

He's the author of the previous books, Something Wonderful, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution, and An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Two Presidents, Two Parties, and The Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

He's the author of the previous books, Something Wonderful, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution, and An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Two Presidents, Two Parties, and The Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Well, one of my favorite poets is Reginald Shepard. He passed away in 2008. He's a brilliant poet. He wrote this beautiful book on black poetics called Orpheus in the Bronx. If there's one book you read this year, please read Reginald Shepard's Orpheus in the Bronx.

the new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television, by my guest, Todd Purdom, is about Arnaz, I Love Lucy, the early days of TV, the seminal role he played in shaping it, his marriage to Lucille Ball, and the excesses that did him in.

I really enjoyed the book. It has so much interesting TV history in it.

He's the author of the new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television.

Todd Purdom is the author of the new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television.