What Friends Were For
The Friend by Alan Bray University of Chicago Press 380 pages, $40. THE FRIEND begins with the author’s dramatic discovery two decades ago at Christ’s College, Cambridge,…More
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Darwin’s Dead Ends
The Gilded Age Construction of Modern American Homophobia by Jay Hatheway Palgrave Macmillan 232 pages, $45. Jay Hatheway’s The Gilded Age Construction of Modern American Homophobia traces the…More
Everybody knows that the Bird is the Word
Language and Sexuality by Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick Cambridge University Press 176 pages, $21. (paper) “WHAT IS SEX?” Language and Sexuality opens with a question that was…More
Not for Every Coffee Table
Art—A Sex Book John Waters and Bruce Hainley Thames & Hudson 208 pages, $29.95 (paper) The comedies of John Waters are practical exercises in æsthetic philosophy. This theme…More
Loving Him Madly
The Concrete Sky is a bona fide page-turner, one of those stories that could go in just about any direction and ultimately does. Despite the sometimes implausible plot turns, Moore makes you care about his boys on the run and offers satisfaction that two mismatched people can find each other despite the chaos in their lives.
MoreDid Being Gay Matter?
Rick Whitaker introduces the essays in his new book, The First Time I Met Frank O’Hara: Reading Gay American Writers, by suggesting that a writer’s sexuality may influence not only what he writes, but also how he writes. While this is nothing new in the realm of literary inquiries, it’s a worthy question and will snag the attention of many readers.
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Short Reviews
Reviews of The Strange Case Of Edward Gorey, The Sharon Kowalski Case: Lesbian and Gay Rights on Trial, Contemporary Dynamic Approaches, and Natural Trouble.
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Hunks in the Hollow
War Against the Animals by Paul Russell St. Martin’s Press. 358 pages, $24.95 THE PREMISE of Paul Russell’s fifth novel, War Against the Animals, quickly unspools to reveal…More
Going Native
Margaret Mead (1901-1978) is a fixture in the American imagination: a superhero of anthropology; intrepid explorer; a woman leaps and bounds ahead of her time. Mead’s bisexuality and her lifelong relationship with like-minded anthropologist and writer Ruth Benedict, which Lois W. Banner explores thoroughly in Intertwined Lives, is not an entirely new thesis.
MoreA Connoisseur of Other People’s Business
Of all the famous people that Beaton wrote about, Hepburn received his most extreme wrath. He found her lacking in feminine grace and manners and accused her of being miserly and a bully.
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