ANN BANNON

'Ann Bannon' (pseudonym of 'Ann Weldy' b. 1932 in Hinsdale, Illinois) wrote a series of six lesbian pulp fiction books from 1957 to 1962 known as 'The Beebo Brinker Chronicles' that earned her the title of '"Queen of Lesbian Pulp Ficton."'^[1] She has been described as "the premier fictional representation of US lesbian life in the fifties and sixties"^[2], and that her books, "rest on the bookshelf of nearly every even faintly literate Lesbian"^[3].
Her first in the series, ''Odd Girl Out'' was the second best-selling paperback of 1957, which she did not learn until 30 years later ^[4], after references to her characters began to show up in poems and songs. Bannon was 22 when she began writing her first pulp fiction novel. She was newly graduated and freshly married and on her way to having two children. In her spare time, she began to write.

Writing career

Bannon was influenced by Vin Packer's ''Spring Fire'' from 1952. She wrote to Packer, whose real name is Marijane Meaker, asking for professional assistance in getting published. Meaker introduced her to Gold Medal Books editor Dick Carroll, who read Bannon's initial manuscript - a story about the women in her sorority - and told her to take it back and focus on the two characters who had an affair. Bannon claims she went back and told their story, delivered the draft to Carroll and it was published without a single word changed.

The Beebo Brinker Chronicles

'''Odd Girl Out''' was published by Gold Medal Books in 1957. The plot involves a lesbian relationship between two sorority sisters in a fictional sorority at a fictional midwestern university. As was custom with pulp fiction novels, neither the cover art nor the title was under the control of the author. Both were approved by the publisher in order to be as suggestive and lurid as possible. The characters in ''Odd Girl Out'' were Laura, the younger and more naive pledge who becomes infatuated with Beth, a more experienced and charismatic leader in the sorority.
Lesbians depicted in literature was relatively new in the 1950s. It was the norm in any novel that involved lesbianism that the characters would never receive any satisfaction from the relationship. One or both usually ended up committing suicide, going insane, or leaving the relationship. Marijane Meaker discusses this in the 2004 foreword of ''Spring Fire'': she was told by editor Dick Carroll that postal inspectors would send the books back to the publisher if homosexuality was depicted positively. Although the ending to ''Odd Girl Out'' didn't veer too far from the unsatisfactory resolution, it did recognize that one of the characters realized she was a lesbian and embraced it, which was rare in lesbian fiction.
Bannon followed up ''Odd Girl Out'' with '''I Am A Woman''' ''(In Love With A Woman Must Society Reject Me?)'' in 1959. ''I Am A Woman'' (the working and common title) joined Laura after her affair with Beth as she found herself in New York City's Greenwich Village, navigating new experiences such as a new job, a new apartment, a beautiful new roommate named Marcie, a new closeted gay friend named Jack, and a fascinating new character, Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the description of a thoroughly butch lesbian. Beebo was smart, handsome, chivalrous, and virile. Laura's conflict involved choosing between Beebo, straight-and-smarter- (and more calculating) -than-she-looks Marcie, and a rocky relationship with her father. The resolution to ''I Am A Woman'' completely flouted the trends of miserable lesbian fiction endings, which made Ann Bannon a hero to lesbians and bisexual women across the nation.
Following ''I Am A Woman'', Bannon's third book reflected the conflicts she was experiencing in her own marriage. '''Women In The Shadows''', also in 1959, proved very unpopular with Bannon's readers. Once more we find Laura and Beebo in a very rocky relationship worsened by alcohol, jealousy, and affairs. It was a complex book even for pulp fiction that blurred lines between heroines and villains. Laura ends up marrying her best friend Jack, who is also gay, and Bannon illustrated the mind-boggling details of the relationships of people who were gay in the 1950s and the lengths they went to in order to "pass" as heterosexual and live some semblance of what was considered a normal life at the time.
With Bannon's fourth book in the series, '''Journey To A Woman''' in 1960, Laura and Beebo are again main characters, but it is now six years after Laura's marriage, and she and Jack have a child. Six years later also has Beth, from ''Odd Girl Out'', questioning her marriage and going to New York to find Laura again, and to escape a deranged woman who has a fixation on her.
A fifth book, ''The Marriage'', in 1960 chronicled Laura and Jack's difficult marriage. This book has not been reissued or reprinted.
The last book in the series, '''Beebo Brinker''' in 1962 was Bannon's prequel to ''Odd Girl Out''. It follows Beebo around Greenwich Village ten years prior to her meeting Laura in ''I Am A Woman'', as Beebo literally gets off the bus from her rural hometown into New York City and navigates her way around the city and its gay bars. She begins an affair with a famous and fading movie star, follows her to California, and realizes her worth as a person.
Bannon also contributed several articles to ONE, Inc. in 1961 and 1962, one of them a chapter cut from the final draft of ''Women in the Shadows''. ^[5]^[6]^[7]

Rediscovery

Post 1960s

After ''Beebo Brinker'', Bannon claims the energy to write about the characters left her.^[8] Returning to school, Bannon completed her master’s degree at Sacramento State University and her doctorate in linguistics at Stanford University. She was an English professor for Sacramento State and later became the University’s associate dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and later the College of Arts and Letters^[9]. Bannon received the Sacramento State Alumni Association’s Distinguished Faculty Award for 2005.

Second and third lives of the books

Ann Bannon's books began to fade away from publishing memory after initial publication, especially after Gold Medal Books went out of business. In 1975, Bannon was asked to include four of her books in Arno Press' library edition of ''. Then, in 1983, lesbian publishing company Naiad Press reissued the books in new covers. Bannon, now a divorced professor of English at Sacramento State University, was shocked to find out that her characters were not only remembered, but that they were archetypes among the lesbian community. Greenwich Village had long since became a place that thousands of lesbians recognized as a place they could go to be comfortable.
Bannon's books were featured in the documentary ''Before Stonewall'' in 1984 about how gay men and lesbians lived prior to the 1969 Stonewall Riots, and she was featured in the Canadian documentary '' in 1992 recounting women's personal stories living as lesbians from the 1940s to 1960s. Bannon also provided the foreword text for '' in 1999.
Five of the Beebo Brinker Chronicles were reissued by Cleis Press again in 2001 (excluding ''The Marriage'') with autobiographical forewords that described Bannon's experiences of writing the books and her reaction to their popularity, causing another wave of interest.

Longevity

In the US, only a handful of books were published with lesbianism as a subject before the 1950s, and even fewer during and until 1969 that were not considered pulp novels. Bannon's books are remarkable for portraying homosexual relationships relatively accurately ^[10]. The continuity of characters in the series also gave her books a unique quality. The relationships between her characters were mostly positive, satisfactory and at times complex depictions of lesbian and gay relationships.^[11] Bannon set her stories in and among gay bars in the 1950s and 1960s. These were secret clubs and bars: as described in ''Beebo Brinker'', one had to knock on the door and be recognized before being let in. In reality, women were not allowed to wear pants in some bars in New York City. Police raided bars and arrested everyone within regularly^[12]^[13]; it was a raid on a gay bar that prompted the seminal Stonewall Riots in 1969. Because of the atmosphere of secrecy and shame, little has been recorded about what it was like to be gay during this time, and Bannon unwittingly recorded history from her own visits to Greenwich Village.

Legacy

Bannon's characters in literature

References to Bannon's characters were used in later works by Joan Nestle, Kate Millett, and Audre Lorde in her 1983 book '', as the narrator wandered Greenwich Village wondering if she would run into Beebo Brinker. Lana Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane, in her 1988 autobiography ''Detour: A Hollywood Story'' described her experiences as a teenager coming across ''Odd Girl Out'' in a drug store and how she identified with Laura (Crane also considered using "Laura" as an alias when she didn't want to be recognized). Crane's grandmother eventually burned the book^[14].
Author Katherine V. Forrest claimed Bannon and her books, "are in a class by themselves," and described purchasing and reading ''Odd Girl Out'':

"Overwhelming need led me to walk a gauntlet of fear up to the cash register. Fear so intense that I remember nothing more, only that I stumbled out of the store in possession of what I knew I must have, a book as necessary to me as air... I found it when I was eighteen years old. It opened the door to my soul and told me who I was."

Forrest also credits Bannon, quite frankly, with saving her life. ^[15] Bannon's books are frequently on required reading lists for women's and gay/lesbian studies college courses.

Criticism and recognition

Bannon has received criticism for depicting lesbians and gays in her books as alcoholic, neurotic and self-destructive^[16]. Her depictions of rigid butch-femme relationships have also been criticized by feminists. Bannon addressed these criticisms in the new forewords to the Cleis Press editions, explaining that she simply depicted what she knew and felt at the time^[17]^[18]^[19].
Her books have, with the benefit of time, been described in vastly different terms, from "literary works" among pulp contemporaries^[20], to "libidinised trash".^[21] However disparate Bannon's books are described in feminist and lesbian literary retrospectives, almost every mention accedes the significance of ''The Beebo Brinker Chronicles''.
In 2000, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors awarded Bannon a Certificate of Honor "for breaking new ground with works like ''Odd Girl Out'' and ''Women in the Shadows''" and for "voic(ing) lesbian experiences at a time when explicit lesbian subject matter was silenced by government and communities."
In 2004, Bannon was elected into the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Hall of Fame.
Bannon received the Trailblazer Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society in 2005, and was honored by having an award named for her, the Ann Bannon GCLS Popular Choice Award. ^[22]
1990s Queercore band Team Dresch recorded a tribute "Song for Ann Bannon" [1]. A UK band named Venus Bogardus takes its name from a character in the last book in the series, ''Beebo Brinker''.

Ann Bannon today

Ann Bannon has since retired from teaching, but tours the country visiting paperback-collecting conventions and speaking at colleges and universities about her writings and experiences. Currently Bannon is a frequent guest of National Public Radio’s Peabody Award-winning talk show “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross. She is also featured in Gross’ recent book, ''All I Did Was Ask'', a collection of transcripts from the show. She also speaks at gay-themed events around the country.
In 2007, ''The Beebo Brinker Chronicles'' was adapted as a play by an off-Broadway group called The Hourglass Group. The play is set to debut September 27 and run through October 20.

References

1. http://www.cleispress.com/book_page.php?book_id=4
2. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v031/31.4nealon.html
3. Damon, Gene. The Lesbian Paperback." ''The Ladder''. 1969 vol. 13 issue 9/10:pp 18-23
4. http://www.annbannon.com/bp/oddgirltext.html
5. Bannon, Ann. "Secrets of the Gay Novel." ONE, Jul 1961, Vol. 9 Issue 7, p. 6-12.
6. Bannon, Ann. "The Nice Kid." ONE, Jan 1961, Vol. 9 Issue 1, p. 22.
7. Bannon, Ann. "Scene From: The Story of Beebo Brinker: Beebo and Paula." ONE, Apr62, Vol. 10 Issue 4, p. 14.
8. ''Forbidden Love: Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives''. Dir. Fernie, L., Weissman. Videocassette. Women Make Movies Home Video, 1994.
9. http://www.librarything.com/work/46207
10. Jeff Weinstein, "In Praise of Pulp: Bannon's Lusty Lesbians," Voice Literary Supplement, October 1983, 8-9
11. Stryker, Susan. Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback. Chronicle Books, 2001.
12. Lyon, Phyllis. "San Francisco Police Raid Reveals Lack of Knowledge of Citizens Rights" ''The Ladder''. 1956: vol 1, Issue 2: p. 5
13. Martin, Del. "The Gay Bar: Whose Problem Is It?" The Ladder, 1959 vol. 4 issue 3: pp 1-13, 24-25
14. Crane, Cheryl and Jahr, C. Detour: A Hollywood Story. Arbor House Publishing Co, 1988.
15. Forrest, Katherine. Introduction. ''Lesbian Pulp Fiction.''By Forrest. Cleis Press, 2005: pp. ix-xix.
16. Andrea Loewenstein, "Sad Stories: A Reflection on the Fiction of Ann Bannon," Gay Community News (7.43), 24 May 1980, 8-12;
17. http://www.annbannon.com/bp/imawomantext.html
18. http://www.annbannon.com/bp/womenshadowstext.html
19. http://www.annbannon.com/bp/journeytext.html
20. ''Feminist Review'': No. 42 Autumn, 1992
21. Weir, Angela, Wilson, E. "The Greyhound Bus Station in the Evolution of Lesbian Popular Culture." In ''New Lesbian Criticism''. Columbia University Press, 1992.
22. http://www.goldencrown.org/awards.html

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ANN BANNON

Writing career

The Beebo Brinker Chronicles

Rediscovery

Post 1960s

Second and third lives of the books

Longevity

Legacy

Bannon's characters in literature

Criticism and recognition

Ann Bannon today

Further Reading

References

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