“I wanted to interview gay men who belong to my generation, the generation that reached maturity before Stonewall.”
TRQ: George Stambolian, Born April 10, 1938
Scholar, professor and editor, George Stambolian was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He attended Dartmouth College and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1969. Although at Wellesley College he predominantly taught French literature for over twenty- five years, he also taught such courses as “The Art and Politics of the Nude” and “New Literatures: Lesbian and Gay Fiction in America.”
Stambolian wrote and edited academic works such as Marcel Proust and the Creative Encounter in 1972, Twentieth Century French Fiction: Essays for Germaine Brée in 1975, and Homosexualities and French Literature in 1979. However, he is best known as a champion of gay literature. He regarded gay literature to be capable of both carrying a primary focus on gayness while also meriting a legitimate genre status.
In 1977, Stambolian wrote “We are History: An Interview with Eric Bentley,” which was published in Christopher Street magazine, where a number of his interviews would appear. In 1983 he started an autobiographical column on gay life in New York Native, titled “First Person.” Stambolian published Male Fantasies/Gay Realities in 1984, based on his Christopher Street interviews, in which gay men discussed sexual fantasies and the realities of daily life.
In 1986 Stambolian released his first Men on Men: Best New Fiction anthology of gay fiction, published by New American Library. The first volume of Men on Men was greeted with such critical acclaim and reader popularity that he released another three afterwards. Stambolian’s anthologies have been key in bringing attention to such writers of gay fiction as Edmund White and Felice Picano. Men on Men 3 was awarded the 1990 Lambda Literary Award for the category of Gay Men’s Anthologies.
According to his partner Michael Hampton, Stambolian died on December 22, 1991 from AIDS complications. The fourth Men on Men volume was released just after his death. In 1992, gay writer Armistead Maupin, best known for his Tales of the City series, featured a character inspired by Stambolian in his book Maybe the Moon.
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