RED HOT + BLUE (33 1/3)
by John Garrison
Bloomsbury Academic. 139 pages, $14.95
33 1/3 is a long-running series of short books focused on albums by popular artists. In the 185th volume in the series, author John Garrison discusses Red Hot + Blue, a 1990 album that raised money for organizations fighting AIDS such as ACT UP. The album was the brainstorm of New York City writer John Carlin, who—with help from filmmaker Leigh Blake and Talking Heads front man David Byrne—recruited twenty musical artists to lend their talents and fame to the cause, including U2, Annie Lennox, Erasure, and Sinéad O’Connor. Rather than perform their own music, each artist was asked to perform a song written by Cole Porter, the prolific gay American composer.
Taking its title from Porter’s 1936 Broadway musical of the same name, which starred Ethel Merman and Bob Hope, Red Hot + Blue was a commercial and critical success, selling over one million copies. It was accompanied by a television special, airing in the U.S. on World AIDS Day, December 1, 1990, which featured music videos by prominent directors, including Jim Jarmusch, Jonathan Demme, and Wim Wenders.
Garrison looks at each song and video, examining how they fit into the cultural context of the 1990s. For example, U2’s performance of “Night and Day” was the biggest hit from the album and also introduced audiences to the new, industrial sound that the band would feature on future albums like Achtung Baby and Zooropa. Annie Lennox’ version of “Every Time We Say Goodbye” appeared on soundtracks for two films, Derek Jarman’s Edward II and Norman René’s Prelude to a Kiss. Sadly, both directors died of AIDS. Garrison also weaves in memories from his own experience as a young gay man coming out at the time, and highlights from Cole Porter’s life to create an evocative blend of memory, history, and cultural commentary.
Peter Muise
THE VERY HEART OF IT
New York Diaries, 1983–1994
by Thomas Mallon
Knopf. 592 pages, $40.
Thomas Mallon, a distinguished literary critic and author of several well-received novels, has now published the personal diary he kept from the early 1980s to the early ’90s. Written by a gay man seeking sex and love in New York City at the height of the AIDS epidemic, the diary documents what every gay man who lived through that period will remember—the intense anxiety, the shifting information about the virus, the guilt over sex of any kind, the mounting body count.
Mallon struggles to understand what kind of relationships he’s seeking and how to navigate his needs, and those passages are well-written and sometimes quite moving. The diary also documents Mallon’s development as a serious writer, his struggle to earn enough money to survive, his love of the city and its culture, and the politics of the day. What’s unusual here is that Mallon was—certainly compared to most gay men at the time in New York—relatively conservative in his politics, and there is a whiff of country-club snobbery here and there that will strike a discordant note for some readers. Moreover, weighing in at nearly 600 pages, the diary could have used some serious editing; there are too many passages documenting conversations or meals with people the reader knows nothing about.
Future historians will be able to use the text to create a list of Manhattan’s restaurants and bars, though occasionally the names of Mallon’s companions ring familiar (the writer Mary McCarthy, for example). Still, the book is a useful addition to the literature documenting an extraordinary, excruciatingly difficult time for gay men as well as the sensibilities of a serious literary talent. Those who lived through the time will find a mirror; those who did not will find an often compelling, if sprawling, introduction to an era.
H N Hirsch
NONBINARY JANE AUSTEN
by Chris Washington
Univ. of Minnesota Press. 99 pages, $10.
Reading queer literary theory is often a difficult task, primarily because much of critical queer thought is unapproachable on even the most basic conceptual levels. On its face, it defies common logic, sense, and decency, sometimes to great effect, sometimes not. The other issue is finding an audience patient and pliable enough to sit with these ideas to the extent of changing their own minds.
Nonbinary Jane Austen, despite the transcendental implications of its argument, is likely to suffer on both accounts, at least initially. This latest book from Professor Chris Washington is a new addition to the University of Minnesota Press’ Forerunners series, a project that aims to produce “short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead.” Nonbinary Jane Austen exemplifies this ethos, arguing in a brief but dense 95 pages for a radical rereading of Austen as a gender abolitionist. In Washington’s reading, Austen’s world is rife with deception, irony, and double entendre, all of which conceal the goal of undermining the binary, heteronormative institutions on which her stories are ostensibly constructed.
Washington’s arguments are lively and lofty, though the intensity of his reasoning can be at times overwhelming, jumping from literary theory to trans studies to theoretical physics. In addition, Washington’s vocabulary and citation choices erect significant barriers to entry, suggesting that the intended audience for this book is largely academicians. However, despite these difficult elements, the boldness with which Washington theorizes will resonate not only with academics but with anyone interested in queer literary critique, the ever-evolving field of trans studies, or the interdisciplinary implications of his ideas.
Casper Byrne
CLEAN SLATE
Created by Laverne Cox, Dan Ewen, and George Wallace
Prime Video
Norman Lear, that ur-creator of the primetime curmudgeon, left behind one more before he left us at the age of 101 in 2023. Clean Slate is a homecoming story with a trans twist. Lear liked to shake up social conventions, with a career that spanned Maude and All in the Family to The Jeffersons and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. This time around, the lovable old fogey is an update of Archie Bunker in the person of Harry Slate, played by George Wallace, the recliner-loving patriarch around whom the times are rapidly changing.
Harry gets a rude awakening when he opens the front door, hoping to hug the young man he raised as “Desmond.” Knock, knock: Desiree Slate calling! After decades of estrangement, Harry seems more incensed that Desiree (played by Laverne Cox of Orange Is the New Black) now identifies as a vegetarian than by her name-change. Watching a white-robed Desiree re-baptized in Harry’s carwash while a church choir performs Lady Gaga’s “Rain on Me” a capella is about the gayest thing imaginable. But Clean Slate is looking for laughs, not a sermon. Happy that she helped another local gay guy named Louis (D.K. Ozoukwu) come out in an achingly small Alabama town (also Cox’ native state), Harry beams: “Desiree, you have that new car shine!”
Like Midcentury Modern (Hulu), an update of The Golden Girls but with gay besties front and center, Clean Slate is another reminder that wherever gay people go, we are forced to explain ourselves and educate even the most open-minded people, sometimes our closest friends and family. One can only hope that some day soon every queer person won’t have to leave the house and distribute an explanatory pamphlet.
Colin Carman
