July-August 2023
ALLEN FRAME is an artist whose interests and curiosity motivate him to create psychologically driven photographic narratives. His photos are images that not only contain clues about his subject’s inner lives but are also reflections of his associations with these images. Similarly, the viewer is asked to free-associate with the presented imagery. His technique encourages us to question what lies beneath the surface image.
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A recurring motif in Red Closet is the Russian scorn for unmanly men. As far back as Anna Karenina, one finds a scene in which the virile Vronsky, on the day of his disastrous horse race, runs into two effeminate fellow soldiers back at the officers’ club. Even Tolstoy, apparently, found queens repellent.
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THE AMERICAN classical music composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981) grew up in wealthy suburban Philadelphia, part of a music-loving family that included his aunt, Metropolitan Opera star contralto Louise Homer, and her husband Sydney, a minor composer. As a result, young Sam was able to meet and move in the world of the major figures in the East Coast classical music scene at an age when most music students would have just been looking on in awe from afar.
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The title of this collection hints at the author’s general approach to his subject matter. He expresses himself as a humble guest at every “feast” he attends, not the host or the guest of honor. In the title essay, the reader is given a tour of Enniscorthy, the town where Tóibín was born in 1955, and where Irish history seems to be embodied in the land itself.
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Along the way, the novel recounts the poet’s early life as the daughter of the founder of the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, a credential that would become a liability after the Bolshevik Revolution, her mother’s death, and the poet’s marriage at nineteen to Sergei Efron, who would later enlist in the White Army during the Russian Civil War.
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The plot, if Hugs and Cuddles may be said to have a plot, concerns the narrator’s obsession with the “engineer,” a childhood friend with whom he innocently used to wrestle, “working surreptitiously so our true intentions could remain unnoticed.” “Our dicks,” the narrator notes, “were ahead of our maturity.”
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Best Minds follows the poet through his rise to countercultural stardom in the 1960s and after. It touches on Ginsberg’s close relationship with Orlovsky, who was addicted to drugs—a complicated bond that warrants more attention than it receives in the book. Weine acknowledges that Ginsberg was no saint (as the poet’s defiant membership in the North American Man/ Boy Love Association makes clear), but his faith in his mentor remains steadfast.
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The Humble Lover is White’s thirty-first published book. With an œuvre as vast as this, it feels a little beside the point to be disappointed by this new novel.
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Ramadan deftly captures what it means to be a homosexual in a deeply religious culture racked with political violence, where nearly every aspect of life is dictated by tradition and the Koran, which in turn is driven by the patriarchal and the masculine.
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In Memoriam captures the atmosphere of elite public schools at the time, especially the rampant, barely concealed homoeroticism, often mixed with violence.
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