THIS IS a gripping memoir by a man who spent his early life trying to be “the best little boy in the world.” It’s a quest that seems to be common for many gay boys growing up; it’s just that the path taken by Rich Merritt to be the best was a bit more extreme than the one that most boys, gay or straight, pursue. But so was his Christian fundamentalist education …
More… Although quite enjoyable, the books are a product of their time, and the reader is transported to the early 1970’s with references to hippies, love-ins, the fuzz (the police), phonograph records, bellbottom dungarees, young people whose motto was “never trust anybody over thirty,” and electric typewriters. …
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AS RESEARCH for Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger, author William J. Mann befriended the famed film director and became his documentarian during the last two years of Schlesinger’s life as a stroke patient in Palm Springs. As a result, there is a loose, conversational tone to the book that places it somewhere between biography and memoir. …
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IN CHOOSING to show some of his own skin for the cover of his essays now collected as Beneath the Skin, John Rechy remains the consummate rebel. He appears shirtless and sexy with a cigarette dangling from the lips. …
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THE SUBTITLE of this wonderful new glimpse into the lives of gay, lesbian, and bisexual writers and their friends is an accurate description of its contents. …
MoreThe fact that homosexual themes figured so prominently in the works of the greatest French writers had the dual effect of bringing these themes to the forefront of literary criticism and infusing the emergent queer culture with a peculiarly literary quality. In this remarkable little book, Lawrence R. Schehr, a professor of French at the University of Illinois, analyzes these effects through the writings of Gide, Proust, Cocteau, Willy, and others.
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Reviews of Straightforward: How to Mobilize Heterosexual Support for Gay Rights, Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort, and I Am a Red Dress.
MoreLaud Humphreys: Prophet of Homosexuality and Sociology by John F. Galliher, Wayne H. Brekhus, and David P. Keys University of Wisconsin Press. 214 pages, $18.95 LAUD HUMPHREYS was…More
THE FILMS of Derek Jarman are difficult to categorize. Ethereal, sensual, and for the most part without a clear narrative line, they reflect his varied creative talents and resonate with his ruling passions. In addition to his film work, Jarman was also an accomplished painter, designer, and poet. These interests all played a role in shaping his unique films, as did his interest in an arcane mix of subjects that included Jungian psychology and symbolism, the life and work of Renaissance magus John Dee, and the work of William Blake. …
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SIR PHILIP SIDNEY supposedly said, “Only a fool has never written a sonnet, and only a fool has written more than one sonnet.” But Sidney wrote scores of them, and Shakespeare penned over 150. Edmund Miller has surpassed both poets in sheer quantity. …
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