HARDLY FIND a more diverse group of books than this: one by a pioneering Jewish lesbian poet originally from Poland; one by a French surrealist; and a third by a gay man living in Dallas. All are propelled by completely singular impulses, and all have something wonderful to offer.
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Reaching Ninety, is a summing up of a long and remarkable life as [Martin Duberman] reaches his ninetieth birthday. In it, he covers some familiar ground, but more than in previous memoirs, he’s willing to speak out about matters that he was reluctant to speak of before. At ninety, one imagines, he doesn’t really care if he offends anyone or if someone disapproves.
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Reviews of Love Leda: A Novel by Mark Hyatt, Aubrey Beardsley: 150 Years Young by Margaret D. Stetz, Confidence: A Novel by Rafael Frumkin, and Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust by W. Jake Newsome.
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In the preface to On Christopher Street, Denneny muses on the reasons for assembling writings that often reflect immediate concerns, largely forgotten by his own generation and ancient history to younger readers. He acknowledges that contemporary readers might find some of the book irrelevant, but his aim is “to show what the unfolding of gay liberation was like for one person, in specific situations and over time.”
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YIDDISH has entered the American language so extensively by now that most people have probably heard the word “shiksa”—especially if they’ve read Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. It’s the Yiddish word for a gentile woman. Robert Hofler’s new book on the making of the Barbra Streisand-Robert Redford movie The Way We Were (1973) is about its masculine equivalent, the much less euphonic “shegetz.”
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Henry James Framed is a beautifully produced book. The illustrations are first-rate, and the design allows for easy access to footnotes. Many readers skip footnotes, but Michael Anesko, a professor at Penn State, writes with such wit and clarity, it would be a mistake not to dig further into the delights he has served up in this book.
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YOU’VE NEVER heard of Alfred Chester? Well, you’re surely not alone. Chester died in 1971 at the age of 43 of a heart attack caused by drugs and drinking. His closest friend and staunchest supporter, Edward Field, considers it a suicide. All of Alfred Chester’s books are out of print, and he published only five in his lifetime.
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Schwabe probably carried his secrets to the grave when he was killed in 1915 by a German officer who, convinced that Schwabe was a traitor because he spoke perfect German, summarily executed him for treason. When Schwabe enlisted, he changed his German name to the more English-sounding Shaw, but he could not convince a German officer that he was English—an irony that Wilde the dramatist would have relished.
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Libretto is filled with dramatic complexity, but Wadsworth steers the story to resolution, clarifying subplots with brief recaps. Her dialogue comes across as direct and sophisticated, reflecting careful observation of how people talk, with curiosity and brisk ripostes. Like the narrator in Light, Coming Back, Ally comes to understand “old perceptions of love and loss” and to imagine new possibilities for her vagabond writing life.
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Guibert is clearly interested in the master-servant dynamic: What role does each perform? Who enslaves whom? What binds the two into a relationship? What, indeed, is the attraction, keen among some homosexuals, of a uniform? “I’ve always been fascinated, almost erotically so, by the outfits that minions of all sorts wear,” the master says. He has adopted an almost masochistic position vis-à-vis his manservant, who, in turn, indulges in ever more sadistic behavior toward his employer.
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