element of puckishness and mischief-making that his “Sweeties”—his close friends—knew so well. For example, he showed this writer how to get into top Broadway shows and first-run films without paying, declaring: “I’m a critic. I never pay.” The concluding section is called “a paradise” in lower-case letters, and it’s a summation of what is really the best book about Fire Island to date: its inhabitants, some of its standout personalities, and possibly what it once meant and still can mean to us all today. Few of the Cherry Grove and Pines regular “characters” are discussed at length, and perhaps that’s another book. These communities have changed, of course, but they are still there, hanging on like the sandbar itself, as hurricanes and the rising Atlantic Ocean chip away at their dunes. ASECOND BOOK by Parlett, The Poetics of Cruising, also published this year, is about a mode of behavior that is primarily visual. This book is aimed at an entirely different audience: a scholarly one, preferably readers invested in Queer Theory. At any rate, Parlett pays constant homage to that readership, as revealed in his choice of words and phrases: “imbrication,” “programs of apprehension,” “intersectional,” “luminal perception,” and so on. I suspect this was a doctoral thesis expanded into a book. Similar to the other book under review, in this one Parlett uses poems and poets to illustrate his theory that cruising is a valid gay literary trope. Of course, for him cruising is much more than just one person looking at another. It seems the implications of cruising go far deeper than that: “It turns snatches of remembered glances into the sensible material of art, which pertains not just to aesthetic form but to its execution as song and celebration, and apostrophizes the democratic potential of ‘manly attachment.’” Gee, and I thought it was just guys looking for a good time. September–October 2022 29 The Morning Party, Fire Island Pines, 1992. an vy Highly recommended. —Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review A gripping read from beginning I yst ry League murder m e ’ W to end. —Priscilla Long, author of The riter s Portable Mentor [An] entertaining and ($'()!%&" l nove . —C. Robert Jones, author of The Mystery of &!"))$' &%($ www.p Pisgah Press, LLC h isgahpress.co pisga press@gmail m .com
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