(no subject)

"W. Somerset Maugham was perhaps the classiest writer of the lot. Born in Paris to well-heeled British parents but orphaned at an early age, Maugham's severe stutter and homosexual inclinations ruled out for him the career in law that had made his father's fortune. But he turned his sense of difference from the dominant culture in a literary direction, winning widespread fame for his pioneering treatment of physical disability in Of Human Bondage. The witty and sophisticated author of dozens of novels, plays, essay collections, travels stories, and memoirs, Maugham also served as a British spy in World World I, inspiring the creation of his friend Ian Fleming's most famous fictional character, James Bond."

-Susan Stryker, Queer Pulp, p. 12

How cool and friggin' ironic is it that the model of heterosexual masculinity was inspired by a gay man? =D

By the way, for you lovers of queer culture and pulp novels, this book is awesome. It has the most unassuming appearance on the outside, a bland brown cover with only the title on it, but inside it's chockfull of color illustrations of pulp novel covers. And it's academic, so looking at all these trashy covers is totally justified. <3