Outrageous Misfits is also the story of Toronto’s gay scene from the 1970s to the present day. Brian Bradley, a Canadian journalist and writer for The Toronto Star, carried out extensive archival research, had access to journals and other primary sources, and inter- viewed key family members, friends, and associates. This leads to some repetition, but for the most part the narrative presses on relentlessly, from the highest highs to the lowest lows.
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Short reviews of Fiebre Tropical, Original Kink, and Tell Me about It 3: LGBTQ Secrets, Confessions, and Life Stories
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We Are Who We Are and Industry run parallel in many respects. Both cross the lines of the professional and the personal and offer further evidence of queer youth culture’s dismissal of sexual identities, as words like “gay,” “straight,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “trans” go unmentioned.
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[T]he Adrienne Rich who became a force in arts and letters before her emergent lesbian political identity was unknown to us. That circle has been completed by Hilary Holladay’s new biography, The Power of Adrienne Rich. Holladay reminds us to look beyond the familiar persona.
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Brief reviews of Stories to Sing in the Dark, and You Will Love What you Have Killed.
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Myles has been called “the rock star of modern poetry.” For their many fans, this book will readily confirm that badge. Others may find For Now bewildering, a labyrinthine ramble with no real payoff. Myles is aware of the risks they’re taking. Literature, they say, “is not a moral project except in this profound aspect of wasting time.” Those who choose to “waste time” with this book should be ready for some surprising, even profound, literary adventures.
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When Rhein shows Brown his portraits—sinewy young men, sometimes with pierced ears, nipples, and penises—he calls them by name: “William, Jeffery, John, Andrew, Joe, Russell.” Some were lovers, some friends. Some are living, some are dead. Self-portraits show Rhein sitting or lying nude on a primitive wooden bench. At other times, he appears next to his subjects, kissing them in a rumpled bed, or helping to insert an IV.
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Repackaged conference papers tend to make for dreadful books, readable only by specialists with magnifying glasses. Happily, Isherwood in Transit is much better than many collections and contains a number of chapters that will be of interest not only to gay readers but also to those interested in the milieux through which Isherwood passed, notably Germany and Japan.
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THESE FEVERED DAYS Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson by Martha Ackmann Norton. 278 pages, $26.95 IN THESE FEVERED DAYS, Martha Ackmann has hit…More
First, the homosexuality. Proust, Friedländer asserts [in Proustian Uncertainties], was openly gay, though one could argue that this was only true after his parents died, and then only among close friends, and not even all of them. In fact, when Proust’s first book, in Pleasures and Days, came out, he fought a duel with a journalist whose review implied that Proust was an “invert.” Of course, Proust had … and always knew that homosexuality would be one of the main subjects of his novel; he was even afraid that someone else would beat him to it.
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