November-December 2007
… At a very early age I became aware of what I then considered my “deviant” sexuality. In my mind, it made sense that since people of such conflicting and deep ideological difference could seamlessly consider one another as kin, then wider acculturation of difference in sexuality should certainly follow. …
MoreWHEN BARRIE AND ROCKLIFF published Gerald Glaskin’s No End To The Way in 1965, it must have raised many eyebrows, not least in the British Home Office. This frank portrayal of a gay relationship between an Australian advertising executive (Ray) and a Dutch barman (Cor) was noteworthy for its absence of the “obligatory” tragic ending by death of the protagonist.
MoreDespite how trapped I was by the various ideologies of the academy, I was also claiming my gay identity for the first time, and I began to see that I could think for myself, if only a little. I started to feel that Mary Shelley’s epic possessed a better-and by far a gayer-grasp on the supernatural than that of her “superiors.”
MoreIN MAY OF 1928, Christopher Isherwood made his first trip to Germany. He went as a tourist on a brief visit to the port city of Bremen. Though unremarkable in many respects, this trip would prove to be amazingly generative. For the reading public, the visit was a catalyst that would eventually result in some of the most entertaining writing to come out of the 1930’s.
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Book review
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FRIENDS OF COLEMAN DOWELL must have endured more than most. Edmund White knew Dowell well and has done much to sponsor his writings since the novelist’s suicide in 1985. He provides a preface to Eugene Hayworth’s new book, Fever Vision, that illustrates just how bleak Dowell’s companionship could be.
MoreMatthew could have included the story of the centurion and his pais simply to illustrate that Jesus reached out to “outsiders.” Jews of first-century Palestine would have considered the centurion a detestable foreigner, regardless of his relationship with the pais. But the contextual and linguistic factors present the possibility of an intimate physical and emotional relationship between this Roman soldier and his “servant.”
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