When the late radical-left political journalist Doug Ireland used to write to me, usually to praise a book I’d just published (if only that happened more often), the salutation was always “Comrade Don” or “Brother Don,” no matter that we’d never met and only admired each other’s work from afar. We did, however, admire many of the same writers, the two most discussed in our emails being his friends Gore Vidal and historian Martin Duberman, whom Doug called “an unwavering beacon of light and my personal candidate for sainthood.” Having spent the past six months working side by side with Marty, I can attest to the fact that Doug was on to something.
Not long before his death in 2013, Doug asked me whether I’d consider a book of his writings for publication. It was to be his first book in some 40 years as a journalist. He said that Marty had been “on his case” to start the project, but Doug wasn’t sure if he “had the force” to undertake the project, due to his poor health. Still, he added, “When Marty tells me it’s important to do something, I listen.”
I followed Doug’s reporting in Gay City News each week in the months thereafter, as he addressed human-rights abuses around the world, and I was certain the book would be as outspoken and inimitable as Doug himself. Then it was announced, in late October 2013, that Doug had died following a long illness, and I felt bereaved. I mourned his death the way you would any writer/provocateur/truth teller—one who you know can’t quite be replaced—but I also mourned the fact that Doug’s book would never see print, and, in time, his articles would be forgotten.
It was therefore a real pleasure and a genuine surprise when, about a year later, I received an email from Marty, whom I had met but didn’t know much better than I knew Doug, saying that he’d amassed a collection of Doug’s work titled The Emperor Has No Clothes: Doug Ireland’s Radical Voice, in a gesture of friendship to Doug and a tribute to his memory, the likes of which I’ve seldom seen. (All of this was done, incidentally, while Marty was completing his own latest manuscript.) When I told Marty that I wasn’t in a position to acquire the book, he asked if I would instead help him see the book through the self-publication process. Marty, it turned out, was unaware of my conversations with Doug about the book, and his coming to me was pure coincidence. I’d like to think Doug had a hand in this somehow, and in that spirit I gladly joined Marty as his publishing advisor.
Combing through decades of journalism, much of it from obscure and defunct publications both in print and online, had to have been an awesome undertaking for Marty. But there it all was, the best of Doug’s writing, on issues ranging from presidential politics (a far leftist, Doug wrote withering critiques of Republicans and Democrats alike) to gay rights, AIDS, international politics, and issues concerning people of color at home and abroad. To say that Doug is my kind of writer is an understatement of the first order. Or, as Doug’s friend, the author John Berendt, put it: “Doug was the moral lodestar of the embattled left.” Marty would agree, and this undoubtedly inspired his unwavering commitment to a labor-intensive and at times exhausting project—a project that, despite the enormous amount of work involved, was enormously rewarding to Marty and me, and hopefully to readers too, now that the book is completed.
With publication just a month away, you might say that Doug’s friends and colleagues are celebrating his return, as if someone of Doug’s caliber, accomplishments, strong opinions, and ironclad faith in friends could ever truly leave us. To quote Doug as he signed off in one of his last emails to me, “Keep on keepin’ on.” With publication of The Emperor Has No Clothes, the work of Doug is keepin’ on, as it honors the writing career of this remarkable man.
Don Weise has been a publisher and editor specializing in LGBTQ literature for almost 20 years. His most recent book, with Devon W. Carbado, is The Long Walk to Freedom: Runaway Slave Narratives (Beacon).
