Out Comes Melville
Melville’s letter, in its entirety, forms the conclusion of The Whale, a novel based on the brief, intense relationship between the first truly great writers of fiction in America.
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Reassessing a 19th-century Novelist
IF WRITER Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894) is remembered today, it is usually for her close friendship and literary rivalry with Henry James. Both writers had made a pact early in their friendship to burn their correspondence, and much of their relationship remains wreathed in mystery.
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Eccentrics Abroad
The Glamour of Strangeness presents more-or-less chronological biographical sketches of six artists who attempted to leave behind both their homeland and their cultural identity in order to become part of a radically different culture, one that allowed them to rework their sense of self.
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The Definitive ‘Miss Bette Davis’
KIRK FREDERICK’S biography of “male actress” Charles Pierce (1926-1999), Write That Down, greets the eye with an iconic photograph of Pierce impersonating Bette Davis, his signature role.
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No Modifier Required
Although [Terrence] McNally’s gay bona fides are beyond question, he resists being labeled a “gay playwright.”
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Am Anfang*
As Whisnant points out, the identity and cultural politics he examines resonate with recent American queer history. Even without that relevance, his work is approachable and engaging.
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Lewd
THINGS I WAS surprised to learn in William E. Jones’ biography of the legendary pornographer … Boyd McDonald: first, that he got the idea for his magazine Straight to Hell after reading a passage in Myra Breckinridge lambasting circumcision; second …
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More Than a Sanskrit Sex Manual
Doniger translated from the original Sanskrit text, while Kakar translated the Hindi commentary. Their translation was widely praised as more accurate than the original 1883 English translation by Sir Richard Francis Burton.
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The Mind of the Millennial (Poet)
Bernstein’s poetry derives from a culture of ceaseless contact, but tenuous closeness. It is filled with psychoanalytic lingo and sexual explicitness.
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How to Be Gay in 1861
Cecil Dreeme is remarkable, compelling, and utterly unclassifiable.
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