The very qualities that once made queer fiction seem too risky now make it useful. Queer books also come with organic systems of circulation: book clubs, queer bookstores, online fan communities and events that double as gatherings of friends. The decline of newspapers and book reviews has created space for new influencers such as Jack Edwards, a TikTok book critic who has championed Mr. Stuart’s “John of John,” and whose millions of social media followers give his recommendations impact and influence. For publishers, that is increasingly valuable. Queer books don’t simply find individual readers; they find communities.
The boom has created incentives for publishers to package gayness, and for straight writers to borrow it. André Aciman, who is not gay, wrote one of the defining gay love stories of the last 20 years in “Call Me by Your Name.” The 28-year-old Djamel White’s debut novel, “All Them Dogs,” was subject to a six-way auction. Mr. White is straight, but his sexy neo-noir novel imagines a love affair between two Dublin mobsters.
Josh Silver’s “Fruit Fly,” published this April, is a funny and nasty novel about appropriation: A blocked straight female writer latches onto a young gay addict, imagining that his pain might supply the authenticity her fiction sorely needs. Mr. Silver said he had been thinking about “Yellowface” and “Erasure,” novels about the appropriation of Asian and Black culture, and wondered why no one had written a gay version.
In May, I moderated a conversation with Mr. White and Mr. Silver. I asked Mr. White about appropriation. He first answered with a joke. “I personally just wanted to make some money,” he said. Then he gave the question its due. “I am writing outside my own experience to an extent,” he said, “but I’ve experienced desire and I understand desire and I can understand the desire between these two people on a human level. I hope that it felt true because it felt true when I was writing it, and I think that’s the important thing.”
Mr. Silver’s “Fruit Fly” is satire, but his irritation is real. He described the insult of being told early on not to seem gay, only to find, today, that gayness had become professionally useful. “It had currency all of a sudden,” he said. “I was offended by it.” That is the catch. The thing that once made you vulnerable can become the very thing other people want to borrow.
