THE CBGB CONSPIRACY: A Novel
by Gabriel Rotello
Koehler Books. 344 pages, $20.95
It’s always intriguing to see how writers famous for their nonfiction fare when they make the plunge into fiction. Gabriel Rotello, a former columnist for The Advocate and author of Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men, doesn’t disappoint with The CBGB Conspiracy, in which he mines his exhaustive knowledge of Manhattan’s underground ’70s scene. The novel fuses fictional characters who are trying to solve a murder mystery with such real-life luminaries as William S. Burroughs, Holly Woodlawn, Bella Abzug, and Allen Ginsberg, all moving in and around the legendary music club.
In summer 1977 a young poet is found dead of a heroin overdose, and the police dismiss it as an accident. But his friends suspect foul play and decide to investigate. Rotello keeps the plot twists—and celebrity cameos—rolling as New York City itself emerges as a character. The book is awash with uneasy nostalgia; Rotello is frank about the multiple crises New York was mired in at the time (almost bankrupt, crime-ridden), while he simultaneously longs for the punk-infused creativity and authenticity that the city once hosted.
The suspense kept me keenly tuned in, and there’s a cinematic quality to Rotello’s writing, so much so that I started speculating on which actors might play various roles. Anyone with an interest in one of New York’s most exhilarating decades will get a buzz from The CBGB Conspiracy.
Matthew Hays
BEFORE GENDER
Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950
by Eli Erlick
Beacon Press. 272 pages, $28.
While anti-trans bigots frequently argue that transgender identity is a 21st-century phenomenon, scholar and activist Eli Erlick has set out to show that gender-nonconforming people have been among us throughout history, even prior to the word “gender” coming into common use in the 1950s. Before Gender contains more than two dozen case studies on 19th- and early 20th-century trans people split into four sections: “The Kids,” “The Activists,” “The Workers,” and “The Athletes.”
Erlick includes the tale of Mark and David Ferrow, English brothers who were celebrated in the late 1930s for “becoming among the first men in England to medically transition”; the story of Sally-Tom, a formerly enslaved Black trans woman who was one of the first in the U.S. to have their gender identity legally recognized; and the saga of Elsie Marks, a six-foot-three Indian immigrant who worked as a “bearded lady” in a circus and later as a snake charmer, leading to a fatal bite. Many figures in the book lived difficult lives on the margins of society, but others found acceptance in times and places where one wouldn’t expect it.
Erlick has dug deep into the archives to locate stories that are untold or forgotten, but she acknowledges that the telling is often possible only when trans people made headlines or appeared in court records, and that such documentation is biased in favor of white trans women and sensational tales. She attempts to balance these mini-biographies as much as possible, and she writes with respect for her subjects’ identities, omitting deadnames and using their preferred pronouns whenever they are known.
Jeremy C. Fox
MARYVILLE
by Joelle Taylor
Clemson Univ. Press. 128 pages, $24.95
Joelle Taylor is among those rare writers who are very good at a lot of things. She started as a prizewinning performance poet (many examples can be found on YouTube), then moved on to readers who prefer books over live shows. Here too she reached heights of acclaim, winning the prestigious T. S. Eliot Prize, remarkable not just for a performance poet, but because author photos revealed her to be one of the butch lesbians who populate the verse of C+nto and Othered Poems, that prizewinning volume.
Maryville, brings back some of those lesbians and shows their lives and deaths over five decades in the context of the eponymous lesbian bar. Taylor describes the book as “a poetry collection in the shape of a television series, using the language of film to steer a way into each poem, to focus, and pull out into the wide-angle narrative.” Not only does each mise-en-scène poem have lighting instructions; it also carries a soundtrack—gay anthems from the specific times written about. Taylor suggests: “Play them as you read. Step into the scene.”
I love the mixed-genre form of this story; it offers a complete context for the engaging tale of these five butch lives and the dyke bar. Despite—or perhaps because of—the currently diminishing numbers of lesbian bars, it may be either nostalgic or informative to readers, depending on their ages. But no matter who ventures into Maryville, they will be seduced by Taylor’s love of butchness and the brilliant poetry with which she offers it: “All hail the non-conformist daughter/ all hail ugly, all hail disobedient/ & women who identify as freedom &/ justice, as hope for fuck’s sake, in the face/ of those who would bury the rainbow.”
Judith Barrington
CARAVAGGIO: 1571-1610
by Rossella Vodret
Silvana Editoriale. 368 pages, $65.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a libertine, a hothead, a brawler, a killer, and, according to Italian art historian Rossella Vodret, “one of the greatest, if not the greatest genius of painting from the Italian seicento and beyond.” Caravaggio is ranked among the most influential artists not only for his mastery of composition and chiaroscuro but for his unprecedented realism at a time when art sought to idealize. “Caravaggio completely overturns this academic approach,” Vodret writes, “and chooses to depict the real fact as it presents itself to him, with its harshness and imperfections, without any idealization.”
In her lavishly illustrated coffee-table book, Vodret, who endearingly refers to Caravaggio as “our Michelangelo,” includes extensive historical and artistic context for his life and work, as well as the latest scientific and scholarly discoveries. She addresses the longstanding question of whether this painter known for his homoerotic nudes was gay or a pederast in an appendix titled “Women and Loves of Caravaggio,” which focuses on a handful of female sex workers. Under the heading “Was Caravaggio Homosexual?” Vodret briefly reviews several pieces of evidence supporting that conclusion and waves away each in turn. She confesses, though, that she believes the adolescent nude Amor Vincit Omnia—thought by some to depict his lover and apprentice Francesco Boneri—is where “Caravaggio expressed his sexual empathy to the fullest.”
Jeremy C. Fox
KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
Directed by Bill Condon
Lionsgate Films
“Homosexuals usually die in Hollywood movies,” says Molina (played by the outstanding Tonatiuh) in the new Kiss of the Spider Woman, the first big-screen version of the stage musical as opposed to the play. Based upon Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, Kiss of the Spider Woman has had numerous afterlives: a 1983 stage play, the 1985 film version starring the late greats Raúl Juliá and William Hurt, and the Broadway musical version, from 1992, in which Chita Rivera originated the role of the arachnid diva. But after this new rendition, Kiss may finally have reached its expiration date.
“She’s the climax of your technicolor woman!” Molina gushes to Valentin (Diego Luna), a cellmate whom he mistakes for a castmate in his own gay fantasia. Due to the virulently anti-trans climate of the U.S. under Trump, this Kiss debuted in January 2025 but had its theatrical release delayed until year’s end, the run-up to awards season. Sadly, it was dead on arrival, recouping only $2 million of its $30 million budget. Aside from the Wicked franchise, the musical form is historically hard to translate to screen, not to mention unpopular with mainstream audiences, and this film, as a vehicle for Jennifer Lopez, turns everything into her wallpaper. Keep your eyes on Tonatiuh though. Kisses come in many varieties, from the deeply French to the airily superficial, but this one misses the mouth completely.
Colin Carman
