My bookshelf
Brendaniel Weir
Our family bookshelf resided in the office — a single room isolated from the rest of the house by the formal entranceway. Any guest who wandered to the left didn’t get far in our home. Half of the carefully allotted space bore a set of leather-bound Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the late 70s this was my internet — the place I could find pictures of Mars, the history of Trinidad or learn who the hell John Denver was and why he loved the countryside.
It was also the place I first looked up the word “gay”. Older schoolboys had begun whispering, pointing fingers and muttering the word as I skipped past lost in the dramas playing in my head. Gay — adj: light-hearted and carefree, joyful, frolicsome. Well, fair enough, I was guilty of being a happy if somewhat dramatic pre-teen. And reading had always been the starting point for the stories I cast myself in.
The first book I remember reading was tucked into the end of the bookshelf — Biggles in the South Seas. I read it and promptly decided I would become a pilot. My hunt for more Biggles titles became an obsession; libraries, second hand bookstores, church fairs, and soon I had devoured the entire series.
And so began a love affair with books. My teen tastes moved through sci-fi and fantasy to horror. But it was Stephen King’s Dark Tower trilogy that changed my perspective. For the first time, I looked beyond the story and saw the craft of writing. I still have that early edition on my shelf — it’s a part of my journey.
Rushing into adulthood, the public library provided my real education. LGBT fiction introduced me to the world I yearned for. E.M Forster’s Maurice, Patricia Nell Warren’s The Front Runner, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City and Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story.
I dug gold from those shelves when I discovered New Zealand LGBT voices: Peter Wells’ Dangerous Desires, Witi Ihimaera’s Kawa (Nights in the Garden of Spain) and Paula Boock’s Dare, Truth or Promise all spoke to me. Here were my people — my family.
Times are changing. I think we’re moving past the idea of books needing an LGBT label. Lecturing at AUT, most of my students were comfortable reading diverse sexualities or gender-identities. What they were searching for hadn’t changed — a glimpse of themselves, of where they came from, of the world they want to build and be part of. That should sound familiar to all of us.
I’ve been accused of having eclectic tastes. I prefer to think of myself as open-minded. On my shelves Annie Proulx and Adam Johnson fight for space with Iain M. Banks, all bracketed by the inevitable classics. And sometimes I find myself buying a book for its delicious title or aesthetic appeal. But I’ve given up organising the shelves. They talk to one another, I’m certain, when I’m not reading. Let them plot.
Epilogue: A recent reread of Biggles had me gagging between horror and amusement. Casual racism and misogyny wove its way through the adventure; the final sentence as I slammed the book shut — “‘Good grief, we’ve stirred up the natives,’ Bertie ejaculated fiercely.” Hmmm, enough said. I’ve forgiven my 11-year-old self. Auckland-born Brendaniel Weir has been an LGBT community activist since he took part in the Homosexual Law Reform marches as a schoolboy. He has written educational television, worked in the film industry and is a lecturer in English language. In 2013, he graduated with a Masters of Creative Writing (Hons), also winning the postgraduate writing prize. His first novel, Tane’s War, will be launched at the SameSameButDifferent literary festival on Saturday February 10, part of the Auckland Pride Festival, February 2-18.