A House on the Ocean a House on the Bay Author:Felice Picano A leading light in the gay literary world, Picano won last year's Ferro-Grumley Award for the best gay novel for Like People in History (LJ 6/15/95). Here the versatile author turns his novelist's eye on his own life in what is officially dubbed the third volume of his memoirs--though in some citations the previous two "memoirs" turn up as ficti... more »on. He divides this work into two "books," like neatly matched, summery novellas. The first takes place in late 1969 and 1970, as his writing career evolves; the second moves ahead four years as his first novels are published. There is the standard name-dropping (Bette Midler, Rose Kennedy, and Arnold Schwarzenegger) and the usual settings. The post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS New York gay scene of Greenwich Village bars and Fire Island summer sublets is not completely realized here. But Picano brings honesty and intimacy to the story with such details as a shadowy triad love affair, a cancer scare, and the conflict between writing and publishing. His glints of flashing wit and subtle hints of dark decadence transcend cliches.« less