Feb 17, 2006  |  By: KATHERINE VOLIN  | COMMENTS     

HOW DOES A straight grandmother end up writing a gay male love story? Not intentionally, in the case of Brenda Webster, a 69-year-old writer from Berkeley, Calif.

Prior to writing "The Beheading Game," Webster's biggest departure from non-fiction writing was a "basically autobiographical" novel, she says. In addition to that novel, Webster has also written two critical studies of poetry, a memoir and edited the journals of her mother, abstract expressionist painter Ethel Schwabacher.

"This is a real take-off in that there is no obvious connection to my life," Webster says.

Plenty more subtle connections exist, however. Moving from memoir-based writing to a gay love story may sound like a giant leap, but the concept evolved slowly from two stories of personal interest to Webster: the epic alliterative poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and her friend's struggle with lymphoma.

Her work with "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" became especially personal as a graduate student when Webster wrote a Freudian analysis of the 14th-century poem.

"None of the medievalists that I sent this paper to appreciated it," Webster says. "I still was obsessed with the story. I was upset, since I liked the story so much, that women had such a bad part in it."

Webster started writing "The Beheading Game" as a way to re-examine the poem from a female perspective. Her book, named after one of the plots in the poem, began as a story of Gawain's sister taking over his armor after his death.

"After about 150 pages, I saw that I was writing a feminist track, and it was humorless and didactic - in short, it was boring," Webster says. "So I threw it out."

In the meantime, one of Webster's closest female friends had been diagnosed with lymphoma and was considering a stem-cell transplant.

"The emotional strength of my involvement with her catalyzed something and made me realize I could … put the two things together," Webster says.

Put the two together she did. "The Beheading Game" tells the story of a New York theater director, Ren, who is in the midst of staging a production of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Ren is in love with Jack, a closeted younger man with a tyrant father, who falls ill with lymphoma.

As Ren struggles with caring for Jack while interacting with his father, he looks to the values of heroism and loyalty that he finds within "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" to guide him.

WRITING THE BOOK was part of the healing process for Webster and her friend, the author says.

"I was writing her trauma, and that made her feel better," Webster says.

Using a gay couple instead of a heterosexual couple allowed for a more even playing field, she says. "It's sort of also about sharing power," Webster says.

Although using a same-sex relationship as a literary device appealed to her, Webster says that a relationship between two women would have been too autobiographical.

"People asked why I didn't use two women and that would have been too close [to reality]," Webster says. " What I really needed was an androgynous person - not a man or woman, but someone who had elements of both. We're all androgynous in my opinion."

To research the gay characters, Webster, who has plenty of gay male friends, says that she read an assortment of gay books, including all of Edmund White's.

"I did a lot of reading and reading fiction gives you a very good idea of what's going on," Webster says. "I steered away from much sexual description, because that I don't know, but I can deal with love."