James Robert Baker Band of Thebes writes: “Like John Kennedy Toole, gay novelist James Rob
James Robert Baker Band of Thebes writes: “Like John Kennedy Toole, gay novelist James Robert Baker became despondent over his stalled career, went off his meds, and killed himself in 1997, sixteen years ago next month. In 1992, Simon & Schuster released his angry, funny, unapologetic fourth novel, Tim and Pete, which, like all his work, takes place around Los Angeles, begins as a love story, and ends with a violent response to indifference about aids. It was exactly what some readers needed, yet every publisher rejected all his subsequent manuscripts, possibly because they took his violent fiction as a call to arms. Two books appeared posthumously: Anarchy andTestosterone, which became a movie directed by David Moreton (Edge of 17), written by Dennis Hensley (Misadventures in the 213), starring Antonio Sabato Jr., Sonia Braga, and Jennifer Coolidge, all to no avail. It was a critical and commercial disaster. James Robert Baker’s partner Ron Robertson became his literary executor. His earlier novels were Adrenaline (1985), Fuel-Injected Dreams (1986), and Boy Wonder (1988). Three later works remain unpublished, as do his four screenplays. (He graduated from UCLA film school.) The total number of his novels available as ebooks is one or zero. The UK's Gay Times wrote, "Baker’s suicide is particularly tragic because it robs American gay writing of a refreshingly distinctive voice quite unlike the po-faced prose of so many of his contemporaries.” Today he would have been 67.“ -- source link