Casual Outings

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Casual Outings
Great Faces from the Annals of The G&LR
Illustrations by Charles Hefling

A retrospective on the art of Charles Hefling
In celebration of the 150th Issue of The G&LR
The Gay & Lesbian Review / Worldwide

Contents

The Art of Charles Hefling, by Richard Schneider Jr. 6

THE OCCASION for this book is the publication of the 150th issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review, which sets up something of a cosmic joke. Since the book is essentially replacing the issue that’s being celebrated, that very issue does not in fact exist! Instead, this book of art and text is offered as a look back over the last 27 years as told by our Contributing Artist for most of that time, Charles Hefling, whose illustrations are featured along with a précis about each writer or artist from the annals of The G&LR.

The selection of illustrations was guided by a privately published collection of Hefling’s work titled No Straight Faces, which included many of the artist’s “A List” caricatures from the magazine (plus a few more). These were offered without text, usually two to a (horizontal) page, arranged according to the artist’s inimitable æsthetic. As an editor, my first instinct was to look for a narrative structure by which to organize these many faces. For starters, I confess I found the pairing of high culture and popular culture—Marcel Proust sharing a page with Lou Reed—slightly jarring, so this was the first line of demarcation. This book contains only those in the “high culture” category. (Stand by for a possible sequel.) Read more.

NOVELISTS
Marcel Proust, by Edmund White 8
E. M. Forster, by Andrew Holleran 10
Radclyffe Hall, by Diana Souhami 12
Franz Kafka, by Yoav Sivan 14
Vita Sackville-West, by Alistair Williamson 16
John Cheever, by Raymond-Jean Frontain 18
Iris Murdoch, by Cassandra Langer 20

ARTISTS
Michelangelo, by James M. Saslow 22
Grant Wood, by Alfred Lees 24
Frida Kahlo, by Cassandra Langer 26
David Wojnarowicz, by Steven F. Dansky 28

DRAMATISTS
Friedrich Nietzsche, by Charles Stone 30
Oscar Wilde, by Michael Hattersley 32
Tennessee Williams, by Raymond-Jean Frontain 34
Yukio Mishima, by Jim Nawrocki 36
Edward Albee, by Michael Ehrhardt 38
Lorraine Hansberry, by Martha E. Stone 40

COMPOSERS
Franz Schubert, by Philip Gambone 42
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, by Simon Karlinsky 44
John Cage, by John Killacky 46
Benjamin Britten, by Richard Canning 48
Leonard Bernstein, by David LaFontaine 50

POETS
Walt Whitman, by Arnie Kantrowitz 52
Amy Lowell, by Diane Hamer 54
Federico García Lorca, by Andrea Weiss 56
Langston Hughes, by Rosemary Booth 58
W. H. Auden, by Martin Duberman 60

Authors’ Biographies 62

Acknowledgments 64

Contributors

Rosemary Booth, a regular contributor to The G&LR, is a writer and photographer who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Richard Canning is a professorial research fellow at the University of Buckingham, UK, and author or editor of ten books.

Steven F. Dansky is the founder of “Outspoken: Oral History from Lgbtq Pioneers” and the author of Protest!: Photographs of Social Justice in the 21st Century.

Martin Duberman, longtime professor of history at Lehman College, is the author of Stonewall (1994), The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (2007), and Luminous Traitor: The Just and Daring Life of Roger Casement (2018), among many other books.

Michael Ehrhardt (1949–2014), who was a travel writer for Condé Nast for thirty years, conducted many interviews and reviewed many books for The G&LR.

Raymond–Jean Frontain, professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas, is editor of the academic quarterly ANQ and author of The Theater of Terrence McNally: Something about Grace (2019).

Philip Gambone, a regular contributor to The G&LR, is the author of the recently published memoir As Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father in World War II (Rattling Good Yarns Press).

Diane Hamer, a writer based in the Boston area, is a longtime contributor to The G&LR as well as a former Board member.

Michael Hattersley (1947–2011), who taught writing at Harvard Business School, was the author of Socrates and Jesus: The Argument That Shaped Western Civilization (2009) and Cape Cod Light (1998), a book of poems.

Andrew Holleran, who has contributed to nearly every issue of The G&LR since its inception, is the author of the novels Dancer from the Dance (1978), Nights in Aruba (1983), The Beauty of Men (1996), and Grief (2006).

Arnie Kantrowitz, a longtime gay activist and founding member of the Gay Activists Alliance in 1970, is the author of Under the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay (1977) and Walt Whitman (“Gay and Lesbian Writers” series, 2005).

Simon Karlinsky (1924–2009), longtime professor of Slavic languages and literature at Berkeley, wrote authoritative books on Nikolai Gogol, Vladimir Nabokov, and Anton Chekhov, and was an expert on homosexuality in pre-Soviet culture.

John R. Killacky, a frequent contributor to The G&LR, is currently serving in his second term as an elected legislator in the Vermont House of Representatives.

David LaFontaine, a professor in the English Dept. at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts, has written several articles on musical topics for The G&LR.

Cassandra Langer, a New York-based freelance writer and frequent contributor to The G&LR, is the author of Romaine Brooks: A Life (2015).

Alfred Lees worked in the publishing business for 35 years, finishing up as managing editor of Popular Science before retiring. He lives in New York City.

Jim Nawrocki (1964–2019), poet and writer, was a regular contributor to The G&LR for many years and also wrote for The Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco, the bimonthly New Art Examiner, and other periodicals.

James M. Saslow, professor emeritus of art history at Queens College, CUNY, is the author of A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art (2013) and Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Arts (1999).

Yoav Sivan is a journalist who has written for Israeli, European, and American publications and currently works out of New York City.

Diana Souhami is a biographer and fiction writer whose many books include The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (1998), Gwendolen: A Novel (2014), and No Modernism Without Lesbians (2020).

Charles Stone is an independent scholar of German history and philosophy and a Nietzsche specialist living in München, Germany.

Martha E. Stone, literary editor of The G&LR since its founding in 1994, has contributed to virtually all of its 150 issues.

Andrea Weiss, a documentary filmmaker and writer, is the author of In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story (2010) and Paris Was a Woman: Portraits of the Left Bank (2013).

Edmund White is the author of the novels A Boy’s Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988), and The Farewell Symphony (1997), among many others, along with several memoirs and biographies of Marcel Proust and Jean Genet.

Alistair Williamson (1919-1962), who was co-literary editor for The G&LR in its early days and a frequent contributor, wrote the first LGBT case review for The Harvard Business Review.