There could be any number of reasons for us to display this cover of The New York Review of Books from May 9, 2024, one of which is slightly sentimental. The NYRB has been a role model for this magazine from the start, something to aspire to: a relentlessly intelligent biweekly that reaches a readership of the literate and the curious, reassuring us all that such a readership exists. And yet, it could also be said that this love affair with the NYRB has been somewhat unrequited: For all its coverage of every topic known to humans, matters of particular interest to LGBT readers have not always been front-and-center. That’s why this cover came as such a shock (and the illustration inside was way more explicit, though no frontal nudity). One strains to recall a past cover that even hinted at male hotness in this way, and by an icon of gay male sexuality, Tom of Finland, whose works are recognizable to virtually every gay man in America above a certain age (fifty?). One suspects this is not the case for the bulk of the NYRB’s readers, for whom the article provided a helpful tutorial on Tom’s men and the things they do, in language that allowed for references to “beautiful buttocks” and “the sailor’s dick”—not to mention a brilliant analysis of Finland’s art, with observations like “it’s so hypermasculine that it bends toward high femme” and “the scenario … incorporates our position as voyeurs mirroring” those in the picture itself.
