THERE REALLY IS no point in trying to separate Christopher Isherwood’s writing from the details of his life. His prolific use of those details has led critics to classify his works as examples of “autofiction.”
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GAY POET Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) has been called the greatest Greek poet of the 20th century, a serious statement about a nation that produced Yiannis Ritsos and Nobel laureates Odysseus Elytis and George Seferis. Cavafy did not actually visit Greece until his late thirties …
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WHEN YOUNG Jimmy Schuyler told his mother that he was gay, she responded: “Just because you like Oscar Wilde, it doesn’t mean you have to do all those things.” He began doing “all those things” as soon as he could, starting at about age seventeen. While serving on a destroyer in World War II, he went AWOL and was then medically disqualified owing to his acknowledged homosexuality. With A Day Like Any Other, Nathan Kernan has produced a splendid biography of James Schuyler (1923–1991), a Pulitzer-prize-winning poet who occupied a prominent place in the New York School in the postwar era.
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A photograph of Lorde in front of a blackboard on which is written “Women are powerful and dangerous” has become a familiar, widely shared image. In response to attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and women’s and LGBT rights, the words of the self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” have lately gone viral, turning her into an online superstar.
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Isherwood’s early life resembles a Masterpiece Theatre period drama.
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Maya Cantu’s meticulously researched biography, Greasepaint Puritan: Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes, reveals the extent to which Ropes based his backstage novels on his own Broadway experiences.
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Esther Pressoir is both an engrossing biography, with its roots in serious research, and a beautifully illustrated art book. It showcases the many modes in which Pressoir worked: lithography, etchings, linocuts, scratchboard, watercolors, oils, and more.
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Interest in Rustin’s life and work has been growing. Previous works of note include John D’Emilio’s 2003 biography, which probed the impact of Rustin’s work and his struggles to maintain a public leadership role, and a collection of Rustin’s impassioned correspondence titled I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, edited by Michael G. Long and published in 2012. Long has now edited a collection of essays by a range of Rustin scholars titled Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics.
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THE AMERICAN classical music composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981) grew up in wealthy suburban Philadelphia, part of a music-loving family that included his aunt, Metropolitan Opera star contralto Louise Homer, and her husband Sydney, a minor composer. As a result, young Sam was able to meet and move in the world of the major figures in the East Coast classical music scene at an age when most music students would have just been looking on in awe from afar.
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LONNEKE GEERLINGS opens her biography of Rosey E. Pool, I Lay This Body Down, by depicting her subject getting off a cattle car destined for Auschwitz. Convincing the authorities that she was a guard who had lost her identifying armband, combined with her fluent German, served to win her a temporary reprieve. In any event, this quick-witted evasion both saved her life and forever marked her with survivor’s guilt.
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