Melville House Books

E. Lynn Harris (1955-2009)

E. Lynn Harris, “whose novels about successful and glamorous black men with sexual identity conflicts (and the women and men who love them) made him one of the nation’s most popular writers,” died of unknown causes in Los Angeles on Thursday at age 54.

As a New York Times obituary by Bruce Weber notes, the story of Harris’ climb to fame is a moving one. Coming from a hard-scrabble background, he was a computer salesman in his mid-30s when he self-published his first book, Invisible Life, and worked hard to sell it himself “out of his car, on black college campuses, in barbershops in black neighborhoods.” He was picked up by Doubleday and went on to publish 11 more books, 10 of which made the New York Times bestseller list.

As Weber notes, “Harris clearly tapped a rich vein of reader interest with his racy and sometimes graphic tales of affluent, ambitious, powerful black men — athletes, businessmen, lawyers and the like — who nonetheless struggled with their attraction to both men and women. His books married the superficial glamour of jet-setting potboilers with an emotional candor that shed light on a segment of society that had received little attention: black men on the down low — that is, men who are publicly heterosexual but secretly have sex with men.”

Harris’ agent, John Hawkins, tells the Times that Harris was sensitive to the fact that “He wasn’t considered a literary writer. He always said he’d like to learn someday to be a good writer, and the people around him all said, ‘Keep still.’ Because his writing touched people.â€

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.