ALISON MILLS NEWMAN’S 1974 NOVEL FRANCISCO BEGINS and ends in a bed. In its opening scene, the unnamed narrator, a Black actress and poet, is with her eccentric lover Francisco, a filmmaker. They spend the morning “layin round, rollin round… huggin round,” acts they gleefully go on to repeat atop numerous mattresses and couches throughout the story. The narrator says that she and Francisco are just friends, but as the pair drift through parties, hangouts, movie screenings, and road trips in a state of romantic bliss, their relationship reveals itself to be intimate and devotional. By the time the novel ends, in a hotel room, the narrator has found another bed and another friend for “layin round, rollin round, tossin and turnin round,” but the callback is ambivalent. That “friend”…
