Those Sexy, Scary ’70s
BRUCE SPANG’S latest novel, River Crossed, is a long and somewhat convoluted coming-out story set in the mid- to late 1970s in West Virginia.
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An Outsider Looks Inward
Walk Like a Girl is an unflinchingly honest account of a life lived precariously, never accepted fully in any circle he moves in. His acknowledgement that even fashion design is political, his clear-sighted awareness of his own complicity in some systems of oppression, and his conscious attempts to challenge those systems makes this a memoir that may earn an important place in the history of fashion.
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Sex and Exceptionalism
THE SUBTITLE of Fierce Desiresannounces an ambitious agenda: “A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America,” hinting at a challenge to John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman’s influential book Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, first published in 1988 (with subsequent editions in 1998 and 2012), which conceptualizes American sexuality as the historical development of privacy, moving from the primacy of the family toward greater individualism.
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If They Could See Me Now
When Ford picked up stakes and went to New York or Paris for months at a time, he brought Indra with him. When he moved into another house in Chania, Crete, he brought Indra, who again took over as houseman and companion—though never as lover. This was in the mid-1970s, and both Paris and Manhattan were enjoying what may have been the last artistic flowering of bohemia.
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A ‘Quantum Biography’ of Audre Lorde
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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Beautiful Corpses
A SINEWY MAN stands erect with a serene gaze. He has a massive book propped against his muscular left thigh and he appears to have a toga draped around his body. As I approach this statue (standing in a corner of the chapel of the University of Milan), I realize that he is not just well-defined. Those are actually his muscles and that’s his own skin he’s bearing.
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A Pioneer’s Progress
The crises faced by Cather’s characters seem remarkably similar to those of our own times. If all you know of her work is the novels you read in high school, these essays might motivate you to read the rest of her œuvre. Rereading her novels, I’m struck by how relevant they remain, and how women like Lena, Ántonia, Thea, Lucy, and Alexandra face many of the same struggles as do women today.
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When Gorey Really Got Creative
Best known as a writer and illustrator, Edward Gorey (1925–2000) was also a theater enthusiast. He designed the sets and costumes for Broadway’s Dracula, winning the 1978 Tony Award for Best Costume Design.
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Beyond Identity Politics
Vaid writes incisively and critically about identity-based movements and the need to form coalitions and find common purpose with other minorities that society has left and continues to leave behind. Without such coalition-building, she argues, identity-based politics “does not lead to liberatory outcomes.”
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He Never Forgets a Face, or a Body
IT HAS BEEN SAID that the three stages of sex are feel, squeal, and congeal. All are abundantly present in Edmund White’s new collection of mini-memoirs. The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir rises to the challenge of its subtitle by being both an enjoyable memoir and a lively book about sex, which the author discusses in a clear, open way that’s refreshing, and necessary, in a society as puritanical as our own.
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