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Contact Us Table of Contents Search Site Google listing of all pages on this website Site Map Toby Johnson's Facebook page Toby Johnson's YouTube channel Toby Johnson on Wikipedia Toby Johnson Amazon Author Page  Secure site at https://tobyjohnson.com  Also on this website: As an Amazon Associate
I earn from qualifying purchases. Toby Johnson's books: Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc. FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned
from Joseph Campbell: The
Myth
of the
Great Secret
III GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe
SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:
A
Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods
THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil  TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams  CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers
THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell
IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey
Books on Gay Spirituality: White Crane Gay Spirituality Series
Articles and Excerpts:
Review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco" About Liberty Books, the Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996 The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality Why gay people should NOT Marry The Scriptural Basis for Same Sex Marriage
Gay ConsciousnessQ&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness What Jesus said about Gay Rights Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"? Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality What the Bible Says about Homosexuality Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men Waves of Gay Liberation Activity Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian? The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium Easton Mountain Retreat Center Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey
Enlightenment
Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara You're Not A WaveJoseph Campbell Talks about Aging What is Enlightenment? What is reincarnation? How many lifetimes in an ego? Emptiness & Religious Ideas Experiencing experiencing experiencing Going into the Light Meditations for a Funeral Meditation Practice The way to get to heaven Buddha's father was right What Anatman means Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal The Danda Nata & goddess Kalika Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva John Boswell was Immanuel Kant Cutting edge realization The Myth of the Wanderer Change: Source of Suffering & of Bliss World Navel What the Vows Really Mean Manifesting from the Subtle Realms The Three-layer Cake & the Multiverse The est Training and Personal Intention Effective Dreaming in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven Gay
Spirituality
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And a Little History about White Crane Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman Lethe Press trade paperback, 208 pages, $13.00 March 2008 978-1590210536 Available from Amazon.com in hard and soft cover and for Kindle Vintage: A Ghost Story   This
review appeared in White Crane Journal #74, Fall 2006
 Steve Berman, author of Vintage, has become an integral member of the White Crane family in the past year. In addition to being a writer, Berman is also an activist in gay genre publishing and a very competent editor. My own writing has benefited significantly from his literary astuteness and advice. In order to publish a collection of his own short stories, Trysts: A Triskaidecollection of Queer and Weird Stories, in 2000, riding the wave of the Internet and state-of-the-art desktop publishing, Berman established Lethe Press out of his discovery of how desktop publishing has created a new kind of publishing industry, one built on literary experimentation through print-on-demand technology, not big-money investing in blockbuster pop hits. Berman also saw a mission in keeping gay classics in print and available to gay booksellers and the internet connected public. Because my book GAY SPIRITUALITY was one of the first such books Lethe selected to save from oblivion when Alyson, though a gay-owned company, declared it “out-of-print” in spite of its winning a Lammy, I forged a connection with Steve Berman. Gay spirituality titles were especially likely to be declared O.P. after a short life because they appeal to a limited audience. And, of course, part of the whole enterprise of the Gay Spirituality Movement is to keep alive gay wisdom in order to validate and redeem our hidden history. So Lethe Press’s mission made great sense. And Steve Berman’s facility with state-of-the-art publishing made him a logical partner. He knew how to do it and he had established business relationships with distributors and booksellers across the country. White Crane’s current editors, Bo Young and Dan Vera, have now concretized that connection in forming White Crane Books as an imprint of Lethe Press. In every issue of White Crane Journal now readers will likely find a full page ad for White Crane Books and Lethe Press titles. This past year has been pretty successful for Berman. Together with the White Crane staff he’s brought out several new White Crane Books titles, including the Lammy-nominated Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling which he and I co-edited, ALL: A James Broughton Reader, and, as a Lethe Press title, my collaboration with Walter L. Williams about Native American conceptions of homosexuality, Two Spirits: A Story of Life With the Navajo. AND Steve Berman had his own supernatural thriller Vintage published by Harrington Park Press [and then since republished by Lethe]. Vintage is “a smart and stylish work of contemporary gay fantasy with a gothic twist,” the back cover advertises. As the subtitle reveals, it is a ghost story. In some ways, the novel follows the accepted conventions of the ghost story: an unhappy soul haunts a section of highway not realizing that he is dead and so causes problems for the living, the plot of the novel is how the ghost is allowed to rest. But Berman’s added a neat twist—actually two twists. The first is that the main characters who experience the haunting and then try to do something to help the ghost are modern day goth teenagers with a penchant for dressing outlandishly in black (with maybe a little mascara for effect), drinking and drugging with reckless abandon, and driving their parents crazy. The novel is told in the first person of one of these teenagers; Berman has got the jargon and voice down pat to introduce the reader to this goth Holden Caufield with a cellphone and taste for ecstasy and peppermint schnapps. The second twist is that the main character is gay; he’s living with a liberal-minded aunt because his uptight parents told him to leave when his homosexuality was made embarrassingly public. He’s got a job working in a retro fashions and used clothing store and made friends with several teenage girls, including a young lesbian couple, who frequent the store looking for goth costumery. And the ghost that’s haunting the highway on the outskirts of town was himself a teenager of the 1950s who died mysteriously after his own homosexuality was made embarrassingly public—maybe he was murdered; maybe by the guy he was in love with; maybe in an act of homophobia. There are twists and turns in the plot. The resolution is delightfully satisfying. Even the ghost is happy by the end and can go to his rest. And the teenagers turn their goth fascinations toward adulthood. The most interesting and well-written section of the story revolves around the protagonist’s infatuation with the ghost—and the ghost’s with him. It’s not giving away too much to reveal that the ghost died longing for love and conflicted about his sexuality and so when the goth teenager shows up dealing with the same issues, a strange relationship develops. The description of their lovemaking is both arousing and exciting and creepy and, literally, chilling. For the ghost’s affections turn out to suck the life and warmth out of the living boy and he has to struggle against his own conflicts with growing up gay to avoid following the ghost into icy death. Vintage: A Ghost Story isn’t exactly a White Crane Book of gay wisdom. But it certainly plays on the gay interest with consciousness on the margins. It’s a fast read, entertaining, and just delightfully chilling. The reader too will be happy, warmed up, and satisfied when the steaming hot peppermint-flavored cocoa is served at the end—and gay love saves the day. Reviewed by Toby Johnson, author of Gay Spirituality: Gay Identity and the Transformation of Human Consciousness, The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell and other novels and books |
Toby Johnson, PhD is author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of his teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.
Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.
His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.
FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth
of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the
real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual
qualities of gay male consciousness.
Two
Spirits is available as an
audiobook narrated by Arthur Raymond. 