The Library Lady

by Wendy K. Smith

I just knew I was going to have to review Silence of the Lambs sometime. It has simply become too well known and to controversial to avoid. So, when my friend Pat gave me a copy, I couldn't put it off any longer, despite my basic distaste for "the transvestite done-its."
If you have been living in the proverbial cave since the movie came out, the storyline revolves around the hunt for a serial killer who is literally skinning his female victims to I'm quoting the book "make himself a girl suit out of real girls". He's holding one victim still alive and the novel's heroine has just a few days to find the anonymous killer before this victim too is killed. To do this, she seeks the help of the brilliant, charming and thoroughly evil Dr. Hannibal Lector, himself a serial killer.
Lector, because of something a patient once told him already knows the killer's identity, but he is manipulating the situation for his own fun and profit. While the ostensible menace, Jame Gumb kills to accomplish a demented obsession, Lector kills far more casually, not because he's crazy, but simply because it amuses him to cause as much unnecessary pain as possible. Frankly, Lector is the real villain of the story.
You have probably heard that the killer, Jame Gumb, is "not really a TS." True. The author makes it very clear that Gumb is not a transsexual, but a psychotic who has been turned down by every SRS program in the country precisely because he does not fit the profile for a TS. The author goes into detail about exactly why and how Gumb doesn't fit the profile for a TS.
It doesn't matter. Gumb is the only guy in the book who crossdresses; he's an insane killer, and that is all the average audience needs to know.
As a horror thriller, it is undeniably good, but just once I would like to see a novel where even one of the good guys was a TV or TS.
"Two Strand River" by Keith Maillard possible comes as close as I'll get. This Canadian novel may be hard to find - I'm not sure if it's in print just now - but it would be well worth your while if you can find it. Try inter-library loan if nothing else.
The setting is Vancouver. The protagonists are a tomboyish woman swimmer who dreams of past athletic glory and works as a children's librarian, and a lonely hairdresser who lives in a basement apartment he has converted into the perfect refuge for the femininity he cannot otherwise express. Maillard weaves the traditions of shamanic magic into the tale of Alan's emergence as Ellen and her meeting with the androgynous Leslie.
I've always found one piece of advice from the book very helpful. At one point, the shaman Mildred McKenzie tells Alan/Ellen: "The way I broke the string for you, you can break the string for everyone else. You could stand up right now, dressed as a woman, walk out the door and everyone would take you for a woman… but you must not show the slightest doubt or fear or hesitation… All you have to say is `Now I am a girl' and then you are and you will go firmly ahead without the slightest doubt."
This is probably not the great serious TV novel of this century, but it is one of the better contenders.
I also see that "I Will Fear no Evil" by Robert A. Heinlein is back in print. This is one of the all-time classics of transvestite science-fiction, revolving around the idea of brain transplants.
Actually, aged millionaire, Johann Smith isn't trying to change sex. He simply wants to end a life that has become unendurable by the only means his doctors will allow. He doesn't expect to wake up in the body of a healthy 25-year old female; let alone that of his secretary Eunice, who was killed by a mugger. Certainly, he didn't expect to be sharing it with what may be the ghost of the slain Eunice, or just his own imagination.
However, he quickly discovers that life as a wealthy woman may be more fun than life as a wealthy man, if he lives to enjoy it. After all, his fortune is very large and several of his heirs have better ideas for spending it than they think she does.
Since Heinlein was a heterosexual man, some readers may not find his version of the joys of womanhood very authentic, but he is always readable.
That is more than can be said for Samuel Delany's "Triton." That's disappointing. Delany is one of the very few openly gay science-fiction writers.
And, yes, he has a real gender-bender novel here, with male police officers calling themselves "E-girls", matriarchies, a female to male TS who has changed race as well as sex, but still nurses babies, as well as a hero who becomes a woman about two-thirds of the way through the novel.
But I don't like it. Maybe it's just that Delany's future society is too alien, or gender issues don't matter outside of their own cultural context, but life on Delany's world simply doesn't make sense to me. Also, the heroine is portrayed as a really complete wimp. Her love for the lesbian artist, Spike is both totally doomed and treated as a sick joke by everyone but the heroine. None of her other actions seem to make any difference to anyone, either.
Even her sex change is a thoughtless impulse, that changes nothing in her life. In short, this is one dull, depressing book, at least to me. Feel free to form your own opinion.
Since I'm a comics-and-Roberta Gregory fan, I'll mention her Unicorn Tapestry story in Gay Comix #5. To be honest, this is one of the most confusing stories Bert has ever done. The action jumps dizzyingly among the present and future reincarnations of several characters, one of who is male to female in her 20th century life. Whatever the other faults of the story - and they are several - her portrayal of Harriet's first excursion in public and to a lesbian bar dressed is dead on.
Enjoy.

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