JOHN MARSH proposes something here that may cause many readers to shake a skeptical head, but hear him out. In Walt We Trust addresses our generally fixed beliefs about death, money, sex, and democracy, and proposes that the writings of Walt Whitman can serve as a guide on the path toward human connection and personal fulfillment.
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JAMIE BRICKHOUSE freely and blithely admits in his new memoir that he “had no business being a child.” Then again, he never was a child, really, as becomes evident…More
JUST AFTER World War I, in London, Frances Wray and her mother are living alone in a large and declining family home, located in an upper-middle-class neighborhood called Champion…More
While Long highlights Kameny’s accomplishments and his central role in the 1960s and early ’70s gay rights movement, Gay Is Good is not a hagiography-in-letters: Kameny’s importance is undeniable, and Long’s smart commentaries do not need to present Kameny as a saint.
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Reviews of Space Traveler by Benjamin S. Grossberg, Unions by Alfred Corn, and Nothing to Declare by Henri Cole.
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GREAT HERA, Wonder Woman lives! Noah Berlatsky, comic commentator and editor-blogger for the Hooded Utilitarian, takes the reader on an eye-opening exploration of the subtexts of the Wonder Woman comics from the series’ inception in 1941 to 1948. He focuses on the ideas of William Marston, Wonder Woman’s creator, and of Harry Peter, the series illustrator.
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The Disappearance Boy by Neil Bartlett Bloomsbury. 282 pages, $26. “ALL I’D SAY by way of a warning is that you need to remember that a magician is not…More
In the first chapter of The Sexuality of History—a play on Michel Foucault’s famous title, The History of Sexuality—Susan S. Lanser argues that the basic trappings of modern Western civilization, everything from eating with forks to the “rights of man,” first appeared in the 1600s and have been developing since then.
More“ARCTIC SUMMER,” the title of an unfinished novel by E. M. Forster, well suits this fictional biography of the English writer. It’s hard to imagine a writer further…More
Flanagan provides deft plot summaries and sensitive readings of Mishima’s fiction and deploys a wide array of Japanese sources currently unavailable in English, producing a rich portrait of this very strange and complicated man. As Flanagan tells it, Mishima’s life was one long, extreme, calculated performance, and that assessment seems apt. It’s a performance that, 45 years later, continues to reverberate in Japan, and beyond.
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