I'm very grateful to Michael North for sharing these photos related to John Rechy's City of Night, which we'll be discussing next Wednesday, May 1. Michael comments: "At the Library of Congress, I looked up our first edition of City of Night, which has its original dust jacket. I thought the portrait of the 'youngman' John Rechy on the back and some of the descriptions might be of interest. ... They add some interesting color and context to its publication." That they do, Michael--thanks!
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Honoring Lilli Vincenz
On April 17, 1969, the Mattachine Society of Washington held its first picket outside the White House. Today, on the 59th anniversary, the Rainbow History Project will re-enact the picket in honor of Dr. Lilli Vincenz, one of the organizers of the original demonstration (alongside Frank Kameny), who passed away last year at the age of 85. The event will take place on the White House sidewalk in Lafayette Park from 4:20-5:20 p.m., with RHP members carrying replicas of the 1969 signs and handing out literature explaining the purpose (both of the 1969 protest and the re-enactment). Paul Kuntzler, the last surviving participant of the original picket, will participate, carrying a replica of his original poster.
Serendipitously, tonight Bookmen will be discussing the second half of Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America, whose Chapter 12 ("The Picket") is full of details about Dr. Vincenz and the White House demonstration. (We read the first half back in January.)
Saturday, April 13, 2024
"Having a Coke with You"
In the latest installment in the New York Times' "Close Read" series, critic A.O. Scott explores Frank O'Hara's poem, "Having a Coke with You." As he point out, it is one of some 50 poems inspired by Vincent Warren, a dancer O'Hara met in 1959, during their nearly two-year love affair. Scott works into his commentary comparisons to Shakespeare, Walt Whitman and Rembrandt, to name just a few writers and artists, but my favorite part comes at the very end:
O'Hara "was just 40 when he died, in July 1966, after being hit by a jeep on Fire Island. You can't really have a Coke with him. Except that, somehow, you can, which is why I'm telling you about it."
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Visualizing book ban trends
Washington Post reporter and analyst Philip Bump recently put together an article illustrating the post-2020 surge in calls for banning books throughout the United States. Most BookMen are already familiar with this disturbing phenomenon, and I have posted other items about it on this blog. But Bump's graphic depiction of the trend, using data from the American Library Association, has even more impact.
Check out the QLL
News Is Out reports on the Queer Liberation Library, which it rightly calls "a new chapter in literary LGBTQ+ access and representation." Established last fall, the QLL is a free digital collection, which currently contains about 850 ebooks and audiobooks. Amber Dierking, one of its co-founders, notes: "We emphasize purchasing books from living authors and addressing demographic imbalances inherent in publishing. Our goal is broad representation, reflecting our community's diversity."
To borrow items from the QLL, one must first apply for free membership. Members can download the Libby app or request books and audio products on the website. (The website also invites visitors to suggest books for the collection.) Digital licenses cost money, of course, and members can help by donating to the library. "That's the most direct way to support us, allowing us to expand our collection and cover operational costs," says Kieran Hickey, the QLL's other co-founder. "Engaging with public libraries for faster access to materials also supports us indirectly by demonstrating demand for queer materials, aiding their acquisition efforts.
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Guess who's coming to dinner?
On March 21, 1924, exactly 100 years ago today, a dinner party helped launch the Harlem Renaissance. As Veronica Chambers and Michelle May-Curry recount in this fascinating New York Times article, the attendees included several LGBTQ authors whose books we've read or read about over the years: Langston Hughes, Alain Locke and Carl Van Vechten. Though the gathering was barely covered at the time, requiring Chambers and May-Curry to reconstruct that glittering night, they point out that "In the decade after the dinner, the writers who were associated with the Renaissance published more than 40 volumes of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. That body of work transformed a community as well as the landscape of American literature."
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Great American Novels
I can still recall when nearly every newspaper and magazine would periodically publish a list of "Great American Novels." Indeed, if you go back through the years of this blog, you'll find many such compilations. But such roundups seem rarer and rarer these days, so I was interested in The Atlantic's list, totaling 136 novels. I'm pleased to say that I've heard of nearly all of them, though I've read fewer than a quarter of them. But I was surprised that only 12 of the titles are by LGBTQ authors and/or have prominent gay/queer themes (under 10%). That said, James Baldwin is one of the few authors to have two titles on the list: Giovanni's Room (which BookMen has discussed) and Another Country (which we have not gotten to yet). Check it out!
La plus ca Change
A decade ago, Edouard Louis published his first memoir, The End of Eddy, which we discussed in 2017. (We discussed his fourth book, Who Killed My Father, last year.) His latest book, Change: A Novel, has just been published in a translation by John Lambert. Here are reviews from the Washington Post, New York Times and The Guardian, along with an interview of the author in the Los Angeles Review of Books. It sure sounds like a contender for our next reading list!
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
A hopeful note from Africa
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Dueling Oscars
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
With Ru my heart is laden...
Thursday, February 29, 2024
James Baldwin's best books
Although he never won any major literary prizes, James Baldwin (who would be turning 100 on Aug. 2 were he still with us) has become and more influential since his death in 1987. His appearance in the most recent episode of Ryan Murphy's "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans" on FX, as portrayed by Chris Chalk, shows us why. If watching that piques your curiosity about his books, check out this New York Times article, "The Best of James Baldwin." As it happens, our merry band has read two of his novels (Giovanni's Room and Just Above My Head), but not the other selections the article recommends. Perhaps that is a gap we can begin to fill in next year's reading list?
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Gay love in the 1950s
Lee Levine was kind enough to draw my attention to this review in The Guardian of The Gallopers, a brand-new novel by Jon Ransom. It tells the intertwined stories of three gay men in England from 1953 into the 1980s (roughly the same timespan that the recent TV adaptation of Thomas Mallon's Fellow Travelers depicted). John Self concludes his review thus: "At its best, The Gallopers offers a surprising and quietly devastating account of three men, and their troubled relationship with themselves and the world they live in." I'm sold!
"This Arab Is Queer"
Dorian Gray on stage
As we prepare for next week's discussion of Matthew Sturgis' monumental biography of Oscar Wilde, I found this TheaterMania review of Sarah Snook's performance in a solo show based on The Picture of Dorian Gray timely indeed. With a flock of video screens floating above her, Snook (whom many of us know as Shiv Roy from "Succession") plays every single character in Wilde's text--from Dorian, to his hedonistic mentor Lord Henry Wotton, and tortured artist Basil Hallward. It sounds amazing; here's hoping it transfers from London to this side of the pond! (This just in: The Economist's reviewer is also wildly enthusiastic about the play.)
Monday, January 15, 2024
Some not-so-secret gay D.C. history
Later this year, we'll discuss James Kirchick's Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. On Dec. 26, Kirchick published an op-ed in the Washington Post that was ostensibly about an eight-second video showing two men (one a U.S. Senate staffer who was immediately fired) having anal sex in a Hart Building hearing room. But that tawdry story was just a convenient hook to market his book. That's his right, of course, but I found his article's thesis less than persuasive:
"Aside from a handful of far-right outlets, Washington's chattering class has shrugged its shoulders at the scandal's gay aspect, and one gathers that the city would be just as titillated if the copulating couple were straight. Fortunately, the denizens of Gay Washington no longer live in secret, and our exhibitionist former Senate staffer is being judged not from whom he loved, but for how he behaved." Seriously?
New Year's reading resolutions
Happy MLK Day!
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Two Queer tidbits
I am most grateful to Lee Levine for informing me that William S. Burroughs' 1985 novel Queer, which we discussed on Jan. 3, has been filmed and is now in post-production. None other than Daniel Craig (yes, the former James Bond) plays Lee, and Drew Starkey plays Allerton; Luka Guadagnino (who directed "Call Me by Your Name") directs. Leslie Manville, Jason Schwartzman and Henry Zaga are also in the cast. No word yet on a release date, but hopefully soon!
During that same discussion, Denton Welch's name came up as a major influence on Burroughs. Robert Muir kindly shares the following bio of the author, courtesy of Wikipedia:
"William S. Burroughs cited Welch as the writer who most influenced his own work, and dedicated his 1983 novel The Place of Dead Roads to him. In 1951 the English composer Howard Ferguson set five of Welch's poems (included in A Last Sheaf) as a song-cycle for voice and piano, titled "Discovery." Others who have named Welch as an influence include filmmaker John Waters, artist Barbara Hanrahan and the writers Beryl Bainbridge and Barbara Pym."