Bleak is Beautiful 
What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell Farrar, Straus and Giroux 208 pages, $23. GARTH GREENWELL is a poet and beginning novelist whose critically acclaimed novella Mitko came…More
Browsing: January-February 2016
January-February 2016
Blog Posts
Bleak is Beautiful
On First Looking into Sedgwick’s Epistemology
MARKING the 25th anniversary of the publication of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s strange and difficult book The Epistemology of the Closet (1990) is a tough job, but somebody has to…More
Pop Goes the Sexual Revolution
THE FIRST exhibition ever to consider Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe together—their careers overlapped from the late 1960s to the late ’80s—this show is filled with both lovely surprises and a few letdowns.
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The Madoffs at Brideshead
Those People Directed by Joey Kuhn Little Big Horn Films INDIE FILMS work as a rule because they probe a single theme: a slice of one person’s life;…More
What Is ‘Compersion’?
Love’s Refraction: Jealousy and Compersion in Queer Women’s Polyamorous Relationships by Jillian Deri University of Toronto Press. 168 pages, $21.95 JILLIAN DERI introduces this book by explaining that “for…More
The James Sister
Judith Hooper’s Alice in Bed is a fictionalized account of Alice James’ life, and much of the focus is her relationship with William and Henry James, as well as the brothers’ attitudes toward each other.
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A Pioneer’s Other Discoveries
The Obelisk and the Englishman: The Pioneering Discoveries of Egyptologist William Bankes by Dorothy U. Seyler Prometheus Books. 304 pages, $26. BY THE TIME I finished this book I…More
Oliver Sacks’ Swan-Song Revelation
The most startling revelation in On the Moveis that Oliver Sacks was gay. … Nothing about this burly, bearded man, who appeared shy and reserved, hinted at his sexuality.
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The Woman Who Was ‘Orlando’
As with most larger-than-life personalities, Vita lived her life to suit herself and, in the bargain, became something of a lesbian icon. Her affair with Violet Keppel, which is described by her son, Nigel Nicolson, in Portrait of a Marriage (1973), had a significant impact on her life. Violet too was larger than life—witty, flirtatious, fun-loving—a woman who entertained luxuriously and knew all of high society.
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The Radicalization of Langston Hughes
Selected Letters has assembled a finely textured account of this beloved, productive writer who stayed connected with everyone but kept his own counsel and, in the face of daunting obstacles, endured.
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