The Wedding March
Two anthologies put together before Trump’s nomination and published before his election encourage reflection on our recent history and its lessons. They also complement one another well and deserve to be read together.
MoreBrowsing: July-August 2017
July-August 2017
Blog Posts
Lovecraft Had to Have a Secret Life
The Night Ocean by Paul LaFarge Penguin Press. 389 pages, $27. HORROR WRITER H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) often used the word “queer” in his stories. Old architecture,…More
Short Reviews
Over the course of three summers, Mark Seliger photographed seventy transgender women and men, representing a range of ages, races, and gender expression. On Christopher Street is his celebration of their lives.
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Do-Over
The New Old Me is animated by humorous takes on L.A., like the obsession with exercise. Maran describes L.A. workouts as wildly more intense than those of the Bay Area. In her old Berkeley gym, “the first drop of sweat was my signal to stop, sit down, and have a cold drink,” …
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A Daughter’s Discovery
Making discoveries—sometimes unwanted ones—is the subject of McClintock’s memoir, My Father’s Closet. As McClintock, a psychologist specializing in family secrets and shame recovery, writes: “There’s such a fine line between intuitive knowing and actual knowing.” In retrospect, of course, all the clues about a father’s hidden sexuality may suddenly align, from separate bedrooms to annual solo trips to New York.
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Living the Nightmare
Toward the end of Jews Queers Germans, the description of the breakdown of government in the Weimar Republic, with the various political parties fighting for power, can sometimes be overwhelming.
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Bad Gringos
If you haven’t read [Trebor Healey’s] award-winning novels Through It Came Bright Colors and A Horse Named Sorrow, his new book Eros and Dust is a great introduction to his work.
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Those Liberation Blues
In keeping with its name, Gently Down the Stream proceeds at a leisurely pace, but Gabriel Ebert’s hyperactive Rufus keeps the emotional narrative percolating.
MoreWhat Makes a Queen a Queen?
SOME MONTHS AGO, an older gentleman at the center of a wide circle of friends his own age and younger died. A week after the funeral a text arrives from a fellow mourner: “I miss that queen.” So do I. But it occurred to me that had that message shown up on someone else’s phone, the digital equivalent of a wrong number, it would almost certainly have mystified the receiver.
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‘I’ll Go Forth Alone’
Sweet Bird of Youth, however, is how sexual it is. … Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to Sweet Bird of Youth to even a one-act like “At Liberty”—though in a play that I see two nights later, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, that life force is nearly spent.
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