The Nowhere City

There are only 3 very minor gay/lesbian characters in this novel. One of them is me ("Peter Thorsby"--the bitch!), and the other two were my colleagues in the English Dept. when this novel was written. Not one of her best, but entertaining, in a bitchy sort of way. The other gay male is "Rudie Habenicht" and the lesbian is "Florrie Ridley, " who send an illiterate fan letter. I don't mean to imply that Alison Lurie is a homophobe--she has merely a mean streak, and she used these allusions to get back at people who she may have thought did not treat her or her husband properly in the UCLA English Dept. Her husband was fired at the end of his third year--but we (gay/lesbian) faculty members had nothing to do with that. She simply did not like UCLA. She is much meaner to Neal Oxenhandler ("Paul Cattleman, " in the novel), a professor of French who professed to be completely at a loss to explain her malice. She doesn't make him gay, however.--Peter Thorslev.