WHEN Spanish poet Federico García Lorca and American student Philip Cummings first met and became lovers in Madrid in July 1928, they had no idea that their brief liaison would evolve into an intimate relationship that spanned two continents and almost three years. Despite their disparate backgrounds and ages (Lorca was thirty, Cummings 21), they had much in common: …
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What follows is the first English translation (by Mark Oshima) of a piece by the great Japanese novelist, poet, and playwright Yukio Mishima (1925–1970), which appeared in the September 1966 issue of Higeki Kigeki(“Tragedy and Comedy”).
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS and Yukio Mishima talked about their work and work routines in 1959. The conversation was lightly moderated by Williams’ life partner Frank Merlo, whom Mishima refers to as Williams’ “secretary.” Also present was Williams’ friend Donald Richie, who chimes in near the end.
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For Gorey aficionados, this oddly titled doorstopper, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey, by Mark Dery, which includes a bibliography, endnotes, and an index, will be welcome. The title is odd if the author means to imply that Gorey was only known posthumously, which is anything but the case.
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Currently, what passes for camp in popular culture is sadly lacking in this innovative critique. In brief, camp has gone mainstream, and there’s no better example than the current mega-exhibition titled Camp: Notes on Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, mounted by its Costume Institute, which attempts to piggy- back on camp’s gay legacy during the Stonewall 50 anniversary.
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Rise Up is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, but one thing you take away from it is that New York was hardly the origin of the gay rights movement. It really began in Los Angeles and then spread to Washington, D.C.
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What remains is the problem of reconciling Rand’s professed disgust for homosexuality with her apparent fascination with it in The Fountainhead. Let’s start with the premise that Rand herself was powerfully attracted to men. When entering into the minds of some of her male characters, she may have unconsciously written her own attraction to men into their psyches, finding this a more natural writing task than describing an attraction to women.
MoreMost people know Andrea Dworkin as the radical feminist who launched a campaign against pornography in the 1980s and ’90s, but this is only one slice of a fascinating life of activism. I’ve recently completed a full-scale biography of Andrea Dworkin that will be published by the New Press in 2020. It’s based on her remarkably rich (and previously closed) archive at Schlesinger Library at Harvard.
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The Journalist of Castro Street is the result of copious research and interviewing, though Stoner does not use the narrative style that makes some biographies read like novels. It’s a book by a professor of communication studies about a journalist. It looks at the ethical choice Shilts faced between objectivity and advocacy.
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We are currently digesting abundant information about the networks of men the police called ‘sodomites’ before 1750 and ‘pederasts’ after that year.
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