WHEN PAUL CADMUS died … there was barely a ripple in the art world. It’s hard to recall that 65 years earlier he had been the enfant terribleof the art world when his painting of frolicking sailors, The Fleet’s In!, caused an epic scandal.
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Commander Uliah Levy’s 1842 trial concerned homosexual liaisons among members of his crew and the role of shame in the exposure of the male body.
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NINETEEN TWENTY-SIX proved a banner year for Joe Carstairs—yes, she called herself Joe, not Jo—marking her try as a champion speedboat racer and winning the Duke of York trophy, then the most prestigious in speed racing.
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The Fifties does vividly remind us that the brave activists chronicled in this book started out as preternaturally smart, motivated young people with a broad streak of wildcat in them.
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Eleven-Inch is ultimately about more than the dame aux camélias world of teenage gay prostitution. It’s also a scathing portrait of the West’s obsession with beauty, money, and the baubles—bling and boys—that money can buy.
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Manywhere brings to mind such classic short story collections as Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson, and Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find. However, Thomas delves deeper than loneliness and steers clear of grotesquerie, adding empathy to a narrative mix in which ordinary queer and trans persons work to build fulfilling lives in tough circumstances.
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Shields argues that Raisin in the Sun was so popular to audiences because it was an “old-fashioned” play that dealt with important social issues. Hansberry, however, felt frustrated that so many white critics and audiences missed the main point of the play, which was to challenge class oppression and capitalism. With mini-portraits of the figures and issues that shaped Hansberry’s thought, this biography sheds new light on a remarkable writer and intellectual.
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Secret City flips a light switch on, illuminating over six decades and eleven presidential administrations, from Roosevelt to Clinton. What’s shown is an epic story with a cast of thousands—well-known and forgotten, villains and victims. It’s a history of gay Washington, where the fear of blackmail and the rise of a vast national security apparatus during the Cold War years made being gay especially dangerous.
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The letters show only one side of the relationship (we don’t have Bosie’s replies), but several of them refer to letters that Wilde received from Bosie, among other items. Wilde avoids mentioning his wife and two sons, and even when he refers to “any of them”—other people he knew—there is an implication that Wilde sees his relationship with Bosie as something to be kept apart from the rest of their lives …
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Short reviews of the novels 148 Charles Street, The Other Man, and Young Mungo, and Volume 2 of Samuel Delany’s Occasional Views.
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