Book Review	Book Reviews Archive

Take the Young Stranger by the hand: Same Sex Relations and the YMCA
John Donald Gustav-Wrathall
Chicago University Press
How to order Poet be Like God
Lewis Ellingham, Kevin Killian
Wesleyan University Press
How to order

Celebrated in pop song, the image of the YMCA has been central to two, decidedly different American myths. The first is its position as a stabilizing moral force for young men alone in the city, adrift from hearth and home. The second is its reputation for housing unregulated homosexual activity by those self-same young men. Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA (Chicago University Press, cloth, 246 pages, $29.95) is a fascinating and entertaining analysis of this venerable social institution. Author John Donald Gustav-Wrathall shows how these two functions of the "Y" are historically and socially so inextricably intertwined as to be inevitable. Founded in the mid-19th century, the YMCA saw as its mission the fostering of close, spiritually sustaining relationships between young men. By the century's end, the "Y" had implemented a wide-scale program of physical exercise and sex education-- in part to combat the increasingly visible specter of physical intimacy between men. But this emphasis on the perfected male body only increased the institution's reputation as a haven for homosexuality.

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And no wonder. Drawing upon diverse sources, Gustav-Wrathall explicates not only the hidden sexual subtexts of the Y's social history, but examines how changing attitudes about eros, male friendship, gender, marriage, and privacy all contributed to shaping the nature and purposes of the organization. The book shows how easily the YMCA's incipient homoeroticism dovetailed with the develo pment of ideas about American manhood. Ironically, a "Christian" ideal of sexual purity-- in a totally heterosexual context-- quickly predicated male-male homoeroticism. Take the Young Stranger by the Hand is highly readable and impressively researched. Not least, it's a reminder that the Village People were right.

Unsung Beat

From the time it emerged as a renegade voice in the early 1950s, Beat writing changed the American social literary scene. Poets such as Allen Gisnberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti transformed the sound of American poetry, and Jack Kerouac's be-bop chant-- particularly in his classic On the Road-- literally changed how Americans spoke. The fame of these new outlaws became so great so quickly that their critics charged hypocrisy. Not so Jack Spicer-- one of the great, unheralded poets and free spirits of the Beat movement. While Ginsberg and Kerouac were busy promoting their work, Spicer-- whose original lyric voice and gay content still resonates today-- disdained the publishing world's spotlight and made lots of enemies.

In Poet be Like God (Wesleyan University Press, cloth, $24.95, 427 pages), journalist Lewis Ellingham and novelist Kevin Killian (Little Men; Arctic Summer) paint a portrait of Spicer in the context of a complexly woven historical and literary tapestry. Spicer emerges here as a man brilliant, difficult, and largely unlikable. His talent for writing matched an inability to function in the world. Ellingham and Killian also explicate the San Francisco cultural Renaissance and chart the emergence of North Beach as a gay neighborhood.

One of the book's themes is the enormous influence that gay men and a homosexual sensibility had on what we now consider the classic literature of the 1950s. Poet Be Like God rediscovers Jack Spicer for a new generation of readers and presents a unique look at gay and literary history.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com