Current Issue

Book review

Included [here] are numerous portraits of Diaghilev; photographs of friends, family, artists, nobility, and philanthropists; contemporary caricatures; drawings of Leon Bakst’s costumes (including his design for Nijinsky in the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, the ballet that scandalized audiences); photos of Igor Stravinsky (who composed the music for The Firebird and Le Sacre du Printemps)More

WHAT HAPPENS when a seventeen-year-old gay boy from Missouri, high on Proust, arrives at Harvard, in 1941, on a quest for love, sex, and greatness? One man’s answer is revealed in rich, exasperating, and touching detail in The Journal of Claude Fredericks.

Bigger than Life reads like a work of journalism about the rise and development of a hugely successful industry that feeds the fantasies of gay men, whose growth spurts and mutations over time have aligned with social and technological forces.

... the ever adventurous Field put his fears aside and embarked on a trip that produced Kabuli Days: Travels in Old Afghanistan, one of the most interesting travel diaries I’ve read.

  Allah Made Us: Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African City by Rudolf Pell Gaudio Wiley-Blackwell. 256 pages, $29.95   IN 2002, a film company based in the northern Nigerian city of Kano released the comedy Ibro Dan Daudu. Featuring popular actors from that West African country portraying men behaving in “womanlike” ways, swinging theirMore

THIS INSIGHTFUL BOOK is an illuminating study of London in the early to mid-19th century. Charles Upchurch, assistant professor of history at Florida State University, examines the court documents and newspaper accounts of criminal cases of men accused of homosexual acts.

JUDY SHEPARD was used to middle-of-the-night calls because her son Matt either couldn’t figure out the time zone difference or didn’t care. He lived in Wyoming, she lived in Saudi Arabia, and his early evening was her 2 AM. In the new book The Meaning of Matthew, she tells of the one call she’ll neverMore

In The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture, Warren Hoffman explores the idea of queer Jewish identity as expressed in drama, literature, and film. Hoffman interrogates and deconstructs many well-known Jewish cultural works, including Sholem Asch’s controversial play 1907 God of Vengeance, the 1936 film Yidl Mitn Fidl, which starred a cross-dressing Molly Picon, andMore

NOT UNLIKE his other novels, William Mann’s latest centers on gay midlife. The protagonist, Danny Fortunato, grapples with the usual concerns of the male midlife crisis with the requisite questioning of life, love, and work. However, in Object of Desire, Mann mirrors this conflict with a haunting concern from the protagonist’s past, and the resultMore

IN SEVERAL DECADES of books published with bisexual themes, there has only been one to my knowledge for and about teenagers or young adults. This year, there were three in the first six months alone. All three present bisexuality in a positive light, even though it may cause confusion for the protagonist until she getsMore

Reviews of the novel, Inferno Heights, by John Mitzel, and the movie, Taking Woodstock.

... White’s diligent research reveals that, in addition to publishing a magazine, ONE, Inc. also held an annual institute for 25 years in which volunteer faculty taught courses, sometimes to only three or four students, that were the precursors of queer studies. ...

IN 1972, the Rho-Delta Press of Los Angeles published Tamotsu Yato’s book Otoko: Photo-Studies of the Young Japanese Male. The book has long been out of print, and it usually commands a hefty price from rare book dealers. But the story of its origins and eventual publication is notable-and ultimately poignant-because it intersects with theMore

PHOTOGRAPHER, artist, and designer Andrew J. Epstein has had behind-the-scenes access to some of the most important and influential gay artists of the last forty years, and fortunately he has had his camera in hand to record much of it. In the 1970’s, living in New York City’s West Village, he met artist Tom ofMore

ONE of the freshest documentaries of 2009 was Kirby Dick’s Outrage, which brings to light how some of the most homophobic politicians in the U.S. are themselves deeply closeted gay men. Politicians such as Idaho senator Larry Craig, Florida governor Charlie Crist, former New York mayor Ed Koch, and others have done their damnedest toMore

News of the queer and quirky

Letters from readers

The theme of Maurice can be described as essentially the search for a compatible social construct by which the protagonist can understand himself and go on to self-actualization.

HAUTE COUTURE took a distinct “downtown” turn in the 1980’s with the emergence of Stephen Sprouse, who set the fashion world on fire as the first designer to successfully merge street culture, punk, and high fashion in edgy clothing designs incorporating graffiti, vibrant and at times even garish colors, plus a fine arts sensibility.

“LINCOLN’S SOUL MATE and the love of his life was a man named Joshua Speed,” John Stauffer writes in his dual biography of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Stauffer refers to carnal love, not to one of those asexual “romantic friendships” in vogue with certain scholars. He chairs the History of American Civilization Department atMore

CONSERVATIVE FORCES in the U.S. have succeeded in shifting the debate about same-sex unions from a question of equal protection under the law to one about protecting the meaning of the word “marriage.” The phrase “defense of marriage” emerged as a touchstone in the conflict after passage of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, orMore

THE MOST DEVOTED FANS of a given city are perhaps the people who’ve come to it from the farthest away. Hailing from the Leave-It-to-Beaver suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio, Edmund White arrived in New York in the 1960’s and reveled in the intellectual ozone and garrulous open-mindedness of its denizens. Meanwhile, his newly unleashed libido madeMore

WHEN Lisa Diamond’s book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire (Harvard University Press, 2008) was published last year, it was poised to become a fresh, new psychological study about women’s sexuality today. But Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, didn’t expect it to become a controversialMore

TOGETHER, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers form the Indigo Girls, the Grammy-winning folk-rock act whose new album, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug, marks the pair’s return to an independent label-their own, in fact, which they dubbed IG Records-after releasing eleven, major-label studio albums since their debut in 1987 (with Strange Fire). The homecoming must haveMore

THE DAY AFTER the first night of rioting at the Stonewall Inn in late June, 1969, the police barricades were taken away from the city streets. But the intensity of the previous night’s disturbance-where about 500 had gathered in protest outside the Inn, some shoving or throwing bottles, others lighting small fires-was still palpable. EllenMore

FOLLOWING THE PASSAGE of Proposition 8 in California last November, the battleground for marriage equality has now shifted to the nation’s capital as efforts are under way to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (or DOMA), which precludes the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage even in states where it is legal. One group thatMore