The Gay Place

The First Lines above are taken from The Gay Place, Billy Lee Brammer's classic 1961 novel set in the demimonde on Texas politics, based in part on his experiences as an aide to Lyndon Johnson and as an associate editor of the Texas Observer. The title comes from this poem by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

In the fall of sixteen

In the cool of the afternoon

I saw Helena

Under a white moon--

I heard Helena

In a haunted doze

Say: "I know a gay place

Nobody knows."

It's been nearly thirty years since I read The Gay Place, so I won't review it here other than to say that I remember it being very good. And that rereading the first chapter after discovering the First Lines made me want to pick it up again. The first chapter contains this priceless exchange between Governor Arthur Fenstemaker (a fictional hybrid of Johnson and Earl Long) and his butler:

"Siddown for Christ sake," Fenstemaker said.

"Yes sir."

"Goddam."

"Sir?"

"I'm just goddammin'."

Although critically heralded for The Gay Place, Brammer never wrote another novel, although he did work on an unfinished sequel called Fustian Days. Brammer died in 1978 of drug overdose. He worked in the kitchen of Austin's Driskill Hotel...

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