Life of the “Marvellous Party” Book Review
The Letters of Noël Coward Edited by Barry Day Knopf. 780 pages, $37.50 NOT MANY PEOPLE write real letters now, so those of us who like to read them—for their informal tone, their jokes, their opinions, their gossip—have to go to collections like this one. It’s an omnium-gatherum of hundreds of letters (andMore
Here at the GCN Book Review
GCN, whose scope and influence extended nationally—founded in 1973, it was arguably the nation’s first gay weekly—was organized as a collective, with gay men and lesbians working together in (relative) harmony.
How Pulp Fiction Fueled Gay Rights Book Review
... what caught my attention was the cover illustration of a handsome young man, lean, muscular, arms akimbo, staring boldly at the viewer, and not just shirtless but naked, his golden torso daringly visible from his crotch upward. This cover is included in Ian Young’s wonderfully informative Out in Paperback: A Visual History of GayMore
The Puzzling Return of a Vitriolic Rant Book Review
Since Lawrence R. Schehr, the author and editor of this first English translation of The Third Sex, a book published under that penname in 1927, assures us that “one is safe to assume that Willy did not write the book,” ...
Discordia in Florida Book Review
WHILE THE PLOT of Pat MacEnulty’s latest novel does recount events chronologically over a six-month period from May to December, the title simply doesn’t do the book justice.
Slut for a Soul on Ice Book Review
STAND-UP COMEDIANS, because their success usually relies on being able to think in short, epigrammatic bursts, rarely venture into the realm of more extended prose writing. In doing so, Bob Smith has followed the example of comics such as Stephen Fry and Steve Martin by writing a full-length-indeed quite hefty-novel, and a hilarious and smartlyMore
Darwin and Difference Book Review
IT’S TOO BAD that Kenny Fries new book isn’t longer. The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory is so lyrical, economically crafted, and engagingly peripatetic that one wants to keep traveling with its author even after he ends his meditation.
Takes on TV’s Treatment Book Review
... the aim of Media Queered: Visibility and its Discontents, a new collection of essays that explore the tensions and contradictions of queer people’s changing relationship to mass media and popular culture. ...
Way Down on Bourbon St. Book Review
FROM THE START of The Dust of Wonderland, whose tone is established in the introduction’s stalking scene, this tale is nothing if not unsettling. The reader is made to feel the main character’s despair and horror, his frustration at not being able to solve a near homicide.
Sons and Lovers Book Review
EVAN FALLENBERG’S Light Fell is a slight, disarming novel about a gay man’s effort to reconcile with his five sons on his fiftieth birthday. Told episodically and in flashbacks, the story introduces Joseph Licht, a man who met and fell in love with Rabbi Yoel Rosenzweig and left his family to go live with hisMore
Short Reviews Book Review, Briefs
Reviews of the novels: The Sixth Form and At the Bottom of the Sky.
The Men of the 50’s, Naked and In-Depth Art, Book Review
THIS NEW BOOK of photographs is remarkable in a number of ways. ... [and] comes with a pair of plastic glasses that produce the 3-D effect and magnify the image as well. ...
I was fifteen or sixteen, a sophomore in high school, and a full-flowered cretin in every subject but art and English, so it must have been my English teacher who had mentioned Leaves of Grass in passing.
An Open Letter to Tom Brokaw on Boom! Cultural History, Guest Opinion
Franklin Kameny is an activist who helped initiate gay militancy in the early 60’s. He coined the slogan “Gay is Good” in 1968 and is widely regarded as one of the “founding fathers” of the GLBT rights movement.
The Marlowe in Edward II Essays
AMONG THE GREAT "GAY" QUOTES is one attributed to the English dramatist-poet-spy, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), but it is probably apocryphal: "All they that love not tobacco and boys are fools." Yet to stress the quotation's unreliability-it was given in testimony by a government informer-is to miss the more important queer textual evidence in Marlowe's remarkableMore
The Horseman in King James I Essays
FROM 1615 TO 1625, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham was the favorite and “sweet wife” of King James I. Villiers parlayed his homosexuality-not to mention his other talents, including a standout gift for horsemanship-into vast wealth and political power.
The Lure of the ‘Sotadic Zone’ Essays, Excerpt
The following is excerpted from Gay Tourism: Culture and Context, published by Haworth Press, 2006. Reprinted with permission.
... Male homosexuality-which traditionally in Cuba means sexually passive homosexuality-and cross-gender behavior are not only tolerated in santería but form an essential part of its mythology, philosophy, and practice. As paradoxical as it may sound, religion provides a unique space for homosexual identity and expression in a society with no official “gay scene” and withMore
... Strict followers of the tenets of Michel Foucault-if fewer and less adamant of late-argue that prior to the articulation of modern notions of homosexuality (one which used contemporary terms such as “the homosexual,” for instance), neither “homosexuality” nor “the [male] homosexual” can be said to have existed. ...
Fifty Years Ago, A Supreme Court Victory Guest Opinion
This year marks a very important milestone in GLBT history. Fifty years ago, on January 13, 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its first ever pro-gay ruling in ONE, Inc. v. Olesen, a landmark decision that allowed a magazine for gays and lesbians to be sent through the U.S. mail.
... Following Desert of the Heart, Rule wrote a handful of novels, several collections of short stories and essays, and hundreds of uncollected articles and commentaries. Lesbian Images (1975) was one of the first collections of serious, somewhat didactic, yet entirely readable essays about lesbian writers, including ...
Islamic War Zones I Have Visited International
THE INITIAL IDEA begins with a spark, a curiosity. Sometimes it comes from deep inside, from a secret longing for strange lands I read about as a child in the art and archeology books my parents had stacked in collapsing piles in our living room...
The World: Courtesy of Hanns Ebensten International
FROM his first trip down the Nile at age six, when he sat on the knee of the famous Aga Khan, Hanns Ebensten was captured by a wanderlust that carried him through his long life. His love of adventure and intrepid spirit led him to remote islands, desert oases, mountaintop villages, and faraway lands thatMore
Desire Is Back in China Interview
... Rofel sees China moving toward a cosmopolitan consumer culture that mixes various cultural elements both East and West. But along with the desire for goods, other desires begin to find expression in public spaces, including sexual ones. Thus there has been a general loosening of attitudes on sexual activity in general and homosexuality inMore