LORCA AFTER LIFE
by Noël Valis
Yale Univ. Press. 456 pages, $65.
THE SPANISH POET and playwright Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) is an icon of 20th-century gay history. His legacy is complex, as much about his personality as about his work, perhaps because most of his literary output is not discernably about gay subjects, though he lived a rather “out” life for conservative Spain in his era. Perceived as somewhat feminine, Lorca nonetheless did not like what he saw as flamboyance among gay friends or writers he knew. Noël Valis’ book provides considerable detail about how the semi-closeted but sexually active Lorca fit into the social and artistic community of his time, both as a creative person and as a gay man.
Alan Contreras is a writer and higher education consultant who lives in Eugene, Oregon.
