The Case of Nietzsche
THIRTEEN YEARS after its initial publication in 1989, the great Nietzsche biography Zarathustras Geheimnis, by Joachim Köhler, appeared in an English translation. While I praised the original German edition…More
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When Is a Gang Not a ‘Gang’?
[It] was with a sense of wry nostalgia that I anticipated reading Vanessa Panfil’s The Gang’s All Queer: The Lives of Gay Gang Members. Unless inner-city gay youth are vastly different in Columbus, Ohio, from those in Los Angeles, I expected to hear some familiar stories.
MoreChoral Singing as Personal and Political
SOCIAL CHANGE does not come easily. We can pass laws, win court battles, and even gain greater social recognition, but for every gain there is an anti-LGBT backlash from…More
For the Love of Billy Budd
BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S OPERA Billy Budd is based on a famous, sexually ambiguous novella by Herman Melville (written in 1891 but not published until 1924). The opera focuses on the…More
Proust’s Sources
Caroline Weber’s new book, Proust’s Duchess, is about the three real women who were the models for the Duchess of Guermantes.
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How to Be a Porn Star
It is impossible to read A Pornographer without being aware of the era in which it
was written: the Me Decade. Gay liberation was underway, there was no such thing as AIDS, and homosexuals in cities like New York were aware that they were creating new forms of affective linkage—couples who allowed each other secondary boyfriends, people who could have sex with strangers with no consequences, having learned famously to separate “sex and sentiment.”
Squaring the Disability
For everyone, life itself is full of complexity. For LGBT people who are disabled, that complexity is multiplied. For most people, enjoying their sexuality is vital to happiness, so it is vital that therapeutic workers, and society at large, adequately address the special needs, including the sexual ones, of LGBT people.
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Belated Vindication for John Boswell
IN HIS 1995 BOOK The Marriage of Likeness: Same-sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe, John Boswell argued that in medieval Europe unions between same-sex couples were acceptable under certain circumstances…More
Of Maine, Men, and Marsden Hartley
ONE OF THE BEST-KNOWN images of Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) comes to us through the lens of the great gay photographer George Platt Lynes in a photograph from 1943, shortly before Hartley’s death. Hartley slumps in a chair, his body casting massive shadows under the influence of Lynes’ harsh lighting.
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A Certain Gorgeous Bleakness
The influence of Bonnard can also be seen in Steers’ color palette, in the intermixing and soft suffusion of pale yellow, green, and violet tones on the windowsill, tub, and tiled floor. Yet there is a key difference. Bonnard’s female figures blend in with the walls and the other objects in the picture, as seen in Large Nude, while in Steers’ Bath Curtain, the harsh, hot, orange-red and brown flesh tones of the bent figure’s back are in opposition to the low-key colors of the surroundings.
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