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Elaine Showalter and Christopher Benfey

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from: Elaine Showalter

Sexual Anarchy in the U.K.

Posted Thursday, July 8, 1999, at 4:48 PM ET

Dear Chris,

Sexual anarchy at the millennium is also a good description of the London Gay Pride parade I saw over the weekend. Families turn out to see hundreds of spectacular drag queens, leather-clad bikers, and whistle-blowing celebrants of all sexes march through town from Hyde Park to Westminster Square. It was also the day of the grand re-opening of the Admiral Duncan on Old Compton Street in Soho, the gay pub bombed by a homophobic, racist nutter last spring, so Elton John cut the ribbons, and the street was packed with people dancing and crying. The London parade has always been very festive and imaginative, although there's a wing of the gay and lesbian movement in London that thinks it's become too festive and lost its political edge.

Harry Potter Day went off without a hitch, and the TV news reports that there were queues everywhere, with kids dressed as characters from the books panting to get their copy home and upstairs for a good long read. A copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is winging its way to you and Tommy, while we hold on to another one for our grandson Jack, who is now 9 months old and not much of a reader of books, although a great ripper and chewer. According to the Evening Standard, mint copies of the first edition of Harry Potter I are going for 950 pounds, so it could be a good investment in its unchewed state.

I suppose this passion for Potter means that the Brits are raising another generation of clever clogs and masterminds to be on their fiendish radio quiz shows. I was listening to one on BBC Radio 4 called "The Write Stuff" in which two teams of novelists and journalists casually came up with things like the first lines and production dates of Look Back in Anger and Waiting for Godot (in English and French), dashed off Shakespearean soliloquies for TV sitcom characters, and explained what was wrong with a passage from Julian Barnes' first novel, Metroland (he made a mistake about the first edition of Madame Bovary). Meanwhile Gemma Bovery, in the Guardian comic strip, has redecorated her weekend house in Normandy and seems to be flourishing with her handsome young French lover Herve.

I'm puzzled about the dearth of male beach novels you mention. Aren't American he-men interested in Hannibal the Cannibal? And what about Kurt Andersen's The Turn of the Century? Here, all of us, man, woman, and child, are spoiled for choice, with several hit, cult books out and new ones appearing every day. But my recommendation to you is to read Alex Garland's The Beach--a brilliant, gripping first novel that is going to become a cult classic even if Leo DiCaprio is in the movie.

Hope you enjoy Harry Potter, too, and wave to a wave for us.

Best,
Elaine

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112
from: Elaine Showalter

Sexual Anarchy in the U.K.

Posted Thursday, July 8, 1999, at 4:48 PM ET
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Elaine Showalter, chair of the English department at Princeton University, is the author of numerous works of literary criticism, including Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (click hereto buy the book). Christopher Benfey is a professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and the author of Degas in New Orleans (click hereto buy the book). He covered art for Slate for two years.
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