MARCEL PROUST, French novelist, born (d: 1922); As almost everyone who is aware of Proust knows, Proust suffered from chronic asthma and wrote – mostly at night – in a cork-walled room. His vast novel Remembrance of Things Past (Á la Recherche du Temps Perdu) recounts the life of his hero, tacitly Proust himself. It has no plot in the usual sense, but is closely woven together like a symphony by the recurrence of the same characters and the same themes.

Memory plays a large part in the construction, and remembered scenes from boyhood are the device by which the more usual chronological method is replaced. There are many length digressions, ranging from the metaphysical dissertations on the flight of time and the timelessness of sensation to beautiful passages on architecture and art. In 1912, when Proust sought to have his manuscript published, it was summarily rejected. The report of a publisher’s reader survives.

Ironically, the first third of the many-volume novel, so rich in aesthetic, scientific and philosophical learning, and today considered perhaps the most remarkable literary work produced in the first half of the 20th century, was rejected on the grounds that “one has no idea of what it’s all about…nothing happens in these 700 pages.”

One of Proust’s major themes, of course, is homosexuality, but the subject is confused because, as Andrè Gide was the first to point out, Proust made certain characters female when he really meant them to be male. Thus the character of Albertina, for example, is really based on Proust’s own chauffeur-love, Alfred Agostinelli, a daring young Italian so in love with speed of newly invented machines that he died (in 1914) while learning to pilot a primitive airplane.

In the past, English and American readers have undoubtededly wondered why so much fuss has been made about Proust, since his famous book seems at times to be insufferably boring. The reason is the Scott Moncrieff translation that is not only dated in its stilted language, but severely bowdlerized to protect the tender virtue of the Anglo-Saxon reader. Gratefully, the Terence Kilmartin translation is both modern and unexpurgated. Proust, at long last, is permitted to be Gay.

NICK ADAMS, American actor (d. 1968); born Nicholas Adamschock, Nick Adams was a diminutive, blond actor who usually played neurotic or aggressive types and sometimes comic sidekicks (as Andy Griffith’s bespectacled pal, Ben, in No Time For Sergeants). He has been noted for his supporting roles in successful films during the 1950s and 1960s along with his starring role in the ABC television series, The Rebel. His story is a virtual template of mid-century Hollywood closeted life. And in the classic Gay character movie of the time, Adams died by his own hand at age thirty-six in 1968.

Hollywood rumor had it that, since big things come in small packages. Adams was a successful hustler while he and his roommate, James Dean were trying to break into acting. (In some versions of the story, it was actually Dean himself out hustling as well.) It is uncertain whether James Dean and Adams met before his service in the US Coast Guard (1952-1955) and subsequent role in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). In his 1985 gossip book about Gay Hollywood, Conversations With My Elders, Boze Hadleigh claimed actor Sal Mineo told him in 1972, "I didn't hear it from Jimmy (James Dean), who was sort of awesome to me when we did Rebel. But Nick told me they had a big affair." John Gregory Dunne confirms that "James Dean was bisexual, as were Nick Adams and Sal Mineo."

In his book Elvis (1981) Albert Goldman wrote, "Nick Adams ingratiated himself with James Dean precisely as he would do a year or so later with Elvis. He offered himself to the shy, emotionally contorted and rebellious Dean, as a friend, a guide, a boon companion, a homosexual lover -- whatever role or service Dean required."

In 2005 Byron Raphael and Presley biographer Alanna Nash claim Adams may have "swung both ways" like "Adams’ good pal (and Elvis’ idol) James Dean. Tongues wagged that Elvis and Adams were getting it on."

Earl Greenwood, author and biographer David Bret, and Adams' former fan mail secretary Bill Dakota made similar statements. Following James Dean's 1955 death in an automobile accident, Adams overdubbed some of Dean's lines for the film Giant (these are in Jett Rink's speech at the hotel) and dated co-star Natalie Wood (sort of the equivalent to being "a good friend of Liz Taylor’s" or "marrying Liza Minnelli"). At the time of his death Nick Adams was the lover of a movie actor rumored to have been Robert Conrad.

New York Times television critic, JOHN J. O’CONNOR, was born (d: 2009); O’Connor joined The Times as a television critic in 1971 and retired in 1997. His tenure oversaw the sweeping changes in television from a time when it was ruled by three networks to the modern state of cable and broadcast television media with hundreds of cable outlets. He and his partner of 47 years, author and translator of children's books Seymour Barofsky, adopted a son who died of lymphoma at the age of seven.

NEIL TENNANT, British musician (Pet Shop Boys) born; English musician, singer and songwriter, who, with his colleague, Chris Lowe, make up the successful pop duo Pet Shop Boys. Although Tennant avoided the issue of sexuality in the 1980s, preferring his lyrics to be androgynous, shortly after the release of 1993's Very he publicly came out in Attitude, a UK gay magazine. According to the musician Tom Stephan, aka Superchumbo, they had a two-year romantic relationship. The Pet Shop Boys have an almost equally influential career as producers. Tennant was the executive producer for the Rufus Wainwright album Release the Stars.