The Sparsholt Affair could be said to resemble his second novel, The Folding Star, in being about artists, both real and fictional. The new book can be said to be about the effect of World War II on English society, for good and ill, just as The Stranger’s Child was about the effects of World War I.
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[Nicholas] Frankel describes Wilde’s later life as “entirely unapologetic and uncompromising.” He claims that the narcissistic and aristocratic Bosie showed neither “lack of love” nor “failure of sympathy.” He asserts that Wilde continued a prolific, more authentic artistic life after prison.
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SINCE THE EARLY 1970s, the British writer Alan Bennett has kept “a sporadic diary,” extracts from which have been annually published in the London Review of Books. The diaries are yet another winner among the many books, plays, and screenplays that the enormously talented Bennett …
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Short book reviews of Conversations with Edmund White, and Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker, 1974–1989.
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Klawitter has done everyone a favor by taking a nuanced approach to a colorful subject and giving the reader an opportunity to consider the full range of plausible views of a given situation. But make no mistake: this is ultimately a volume for specialists, a detailed library tour through the world of 17th-century poetry built around Marvell and a few of his contemporaries.
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The Rest of It is a lively book; it forces readers to engage with the difficult, often contentious personality of a brilliantly accomplished gay man wrestling with his demons.
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IN THE FALL OF 1980, two sixteen-year-old boys in Verona, Indiana, fall in love, are outed and abused in a bigoted community, and commit suicide on the same day, despite the desperate efforts of their few friends. Their fictional story, in Mark A. Roeder’s young adult (YA) novel, The Soccer Field Is Empty
MoreTHE OUSTING of Robert Mugabe as president of Zimbabwe in November 2017 was a cause for jubilation for many people, including members of the LGBT community. The hope and expectation was that the end of Mugabe’s thirty-year dictatorship would usher in a new era with brighter futures for ordinary citizens. Some LGBT folks shared in the euphoria, as their community has long borne the brunt of so much intolerance fueled by our leaders.
MoreAFTER DISCOVERING the writings of Boston- and San Francisco-based poet John Wieners (1939– 2002), I was left with a sense of literary regret: Where have you been all my life?
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