May-June 2012
PRESIDENT OBAMA has come under fire from conservatives who are outraged over his decision to stop defending the constitutionally suspect Defense of Marriage Act in court. It was, however, the right decision. …
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… Eminent Outlaws sets out to document the postwar history of American gay male literature in biographical and therefore also generational terms. Although the claim that Bram is the first to tell this story is exaggerated, it is true that nobody to date has written about gay men’s writing from the U.S. exclusively, …
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… It’s just a few minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve at the Black Cat, and the Rhythm Queens, a trio of black women singers hired for the night, are getting ready for their big number. Suddenly, the jukebox cuts off, and for a brief moment all that can be heard is the tinkle of champagne glasses. …
More… Julie Salamon’s biography of Wasserstein reveals the playwright’s unhappiness with the lack of resolution in her own life, coupled with her paradoxical refusal to make the compromises without which any such resolution would be impossible. …
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AS THE 2013 CENTENARY of William Inge’s birth approaches, his plays continue to be produced even as some critics consider his work creaky, dated, and beyond resuscitation. …
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IF ANYONE, anywhere, doubted that John Waters was a great talker, this new anthology of interviews will put these doubts to rest. In John Waters: Interviews, editor James Egan has done an admirable job of collecting interviews that span the length of the filmmaker’s delightfully otherworldly career.
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PERHAPS no American icon has had more speculation raised (and dismissed) about his sexual orientation than Alexander Hamilton. This controversial Founding Father left behind an abundance of questions after dying a premature death following an ill-fated duel with political rival Aaron Burr. Hamilton’s story is one that cries out for re-examination and that may be ripe for revision. …
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Reviews of Beatitude by Larry Closs, History of a Pleasure Seeker by Richard Mason, and In the Company of Strangers: Family and Narrative in Dickens, Conan Doyle, Joyce, and Proust by Barry McCrea.
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