Letters to the Editor
Author Questions Basis for Review To the Editor: I was disappointed in your review [Nov.-Dec. ’17] of my novel Our Time: San Francisco in the 70s. Your reviewer found my…More
Browsing: January-February 2018
January-February 2018
Blog Posts
Charles Shively, Pioneer Activist and Author
At the 1977 Boston Gay Pride march, Shively became infamous for burning pages from the Bible—as well as his Harvard diploma and a teaching contract—as a protest against oppressive institutions. This act of incendiary and effective political theater—it nearly caused a riot—later obscured his work as an organizer, scholar, poet, and publisher.
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B.T.W.
Three Photos in No Need of a Punchline They pretty much speak for themselves. They come from around the world, and all three involve matters of questionable taste as…More
On ‘Passing’ in the Transgender Community
I CAN REMEMBER every time I have used a men’s restroom since coming out as a man. The first time, I was walking through my university with a…More
Why We Remember Charles Henri Ford
IT’S QUITE POSSIBLE that only a few readers of this magazine will know who Charles Henri Ford was. Yet here we have a lengthy and heavily annotated book from Bloomsbury Press about his work—or, rather, about certain aspects of his work.
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Warhol Off the Wall
IT HAS BEEN three decades since Andy Warhol died at New York Hospital (on February 22, 1987) of complications from gall bladder surgery. In 2017, over a dozen books about Warhol or his art, ranging from the frivolous to the academic, were published. After Andy and 3D Warhol can be found at either end of that spectrum.
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The Child Is the Father of the Poet
I have never mentioned a book’s cover in a review, but this time I must. The leafy photo of a tender, teenage Ashbery picking cherries in the family orchards was taken by his father Chet, an accomplished photographer as well as a farmer. Its use as the entire cover, with a superimposed “postcard home” bearing the title, is a choice of genius, presumably by jacket designer Sarahmay Wilkinson.
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The Narrator Survives
WHEN MICHAEL AUSIELLO spotted Christopher “Kit” Cowan at a New York event for gay athletes, it was a match made in Manhattan, but there is no happy ending to this boy-meets-boy love story. To say so is not to ruin anything for the reader. The author reveals the unhappy ending to this memoir in its very title, Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies.
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How to Survive a World War
OVER A QUARTER CENTURY ago, Allan Bérubé’s groundbreaking book Coming Out Under Fire (1990) brought attention to the plight—and the heroism—of thousands of gay and lesbian Americans in the armed services during World War II. A monumental piece of scholarship, it justly deserved the awards and accolades it received.
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Freak Out!
The story of Studio 54 is that same paradox of chaos married to order, bohemians hobnobbing with establishment titans. The club’s very name, in contrast to London’s aspirational “Heaven,” mundanely announced its spot on the grid, 254 W. 54th Street.
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