Truman's Finest Hour?

Precisely 50 years ago today, on Nov. 28, 1966, Truman Capote threw his (in)famous Black & White Ball, an event several of our recent selections have referenced, directly or indirectly, as a cultural turning point.

The Style section of today's Washington Post marks that anniversary with a fascinating article that explores Capote's close relationship with Katharine Graham. It notes that she was one of the very few prominent people to remain his friend even after the Unanswered Prayers debacle.

[Editor's Note: Truman
   punching above his weight
    dancing above his height
with Katharine's daughter Lally.]

Trigger Warning: "Delectable Negro"

Multiple appearances of the N-word (though obviously not in the title). For those who may be traumatized by more than words, I add the subtitle:

  Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within U.S. Slave Culture

See you on the Seventh!

Lorca's Duende

This is the Lorca I mentioned. Merriam Webster defines Duende as: "The power to attract through personal magnetism and charm."
On the back cover: The notion of "duende" became a cornerstone of Federico Garcia Lorca's poetics over the course of his career.  In his lecture "Play and Theory of the Duende," he says, "there are no maps nor disciplines to help us find the duende.  We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned..."  The duende is portrayed by Lorca as a demonic earth spirit embodying irrationality, earthiness, and a heightened awareness of death.  In Search of Duende gathers Lorca's writings about the duende and about three art forms most susceptible to it: dance, music, and the bullfight.  A full bilingual sampling of Lorca's poetry is also included, with special attention to poems arising from traditional Spanish verse forms.  The result is an excellent introduction to Lorca's poetry and prose for American readers.

Munkacsi's "Liberia"

[Be sure to click on the image!]

"This picture is music!"
"I held it out from the collection for you and I want you to have it … I am only going to charge you what I paid for it."

Dragged Mass Displacement

Books, Forthcoming (2017)

FICTION
Song of the Loon  by Richard Amory
What Belongs to You  by Garth Greenwell
Guapa  by Saleem Haddad
Memoirs of Hadrian  by Marguerite Yourcenar

NON-FICTION
Gay Directors, Gay Films?  by Emanuel Levy
A Little Gay History  by R.B. Parkinson
Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men  by Jane Ward
A History of Gay Literature  by Gregory Woods

MEMOIR
On the Move  by Oliver Sacks
The Best Little Boy in the World  by "John Reid" (i.e. Andrew Tobias)

DRAMA
Sons of the Prophet  by Stephen Karam
The Green Bay Tree  by Mordaunt Shairp

POETRY
In the Empire of the Air  by Donald Britton
My Alexandria  by Mark Doty

ANTHOLOGIES
Hidden: The Intimate Lives of Gay Men Past and Present  by Clinton Elliott
Gay Travels in the Muslim World  ed. by Michael Luongo

The Least Photographed Boy in the World

Everyone last night found Arthur Vanderbilt's book unsatisfactory in one way or another. We all complained about the lack of photographs, which can be expensive. But what's extraordinary (it occurs to me today) is that the only photograph in the book (on the cover) appears with neither comment nor commentary (such as when it was taken, by whom, under what circumstances etc). One should probably excuse the author but it's no credit to publisher Riverdale Avenue nor its "imprint" Magnus [sic] Books. One can rummage about in Google Images and find all manner of junk. This however

may be a Platt Lynes' photograph of the twenty year old Fouts. It certainly makes more credible his legendary allure.