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May '06
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Man-Made
By: Michael Bronski
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There's been a revival of interest in the 1950s, particularly the gay 1950s. |
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Apr '06
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Clever in High Heels
By: Michael Bronski
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One of the best films of 2002 was David Weissman and Bill Weber's
The Cockettes, a funny, moving, and vital documentary about the San Francisco-based gender-fuck theater troupe
of the 1970s. Fueled by acid and speed, and costumed in stolen clothes, remnants from the trash, and lots of glitter, The Cockettes revolutionized both theater and gay culture by
bringing a sharp political edge to the well-worn homosexual sensibility of camp, and bringing the primary message of gay liberation be yourself, fuck propriety to nonpolitical audiences. |
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Mar '06
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Pinkdollartalks
By: Michael Bronski
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It's no surprise that gay life and politics these days is driven by gay consumerism. Gay TV, gay magazines, gay vacations, gay movies, gay books, gay jewelry, gay cruises, gay vodka...
well, gay whatever-you-want, not to mention rainbow this and rainbow that. In the late 1960s gay was good. Now gay is good for business. |
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Feb '06
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Deceitful Above All Things
By: Michael Bronski
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Well, the truth is out. Not that most careful readers didn't know it anyway because the facts were all there and unmistakable for years. JT LeRoy-- the abused gay teenager and author
of the cult novel Sarah (2000), the collection of stories
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2001) and
Harold's End (2004) an illustrated novella-- doesn't exist. |
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Jan '06
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Like I Sees 'Em
By: Michael Bronski
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Center-centric and irredeemably biased, the mainstream media has long required the relief the gay press provides. Often at the forefront of not only breaking stories but re-figuring how to report them, the gay press has always been an exciting place to work. |
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Dec '05
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Macho Musical
By: Michael Bronski
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It's no secret that-- at least historically-- the Broadway, and perhaps especially the Hollywood musical is a staple of a camp sensibility. Whatever Broadway could do on stage, Hollywood could do better, bigger, and gaudier-- even if usually with less panache. |
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Dec '05
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Choirboys' Bite
By: Bill Andriette
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The return to print of a 70s gay masterpiece about
one sort of wound from Cupid's arrow |
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Nov '05
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Decoded
By: Michael Bronski
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An early review of Tab Hunter
Confidential-- the new autobiography by the eponymous film star-- noted that Hunter's homosexuality was one of the big secrets of the 1950s. |
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Oct '05
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Sense & Sensibility
By: Michael Bronski
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Manhattan gay life and its Jane Austin |
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Sep '05
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Prime real estate
By: Michael Bronski
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Kevin Scott's The Boys in the
Brownstone (Harrington Park Press, $22.95, 261
pages) is essentially a pulp novel-- and in the best sense. Highly readable
and compulsively page-turning, it's is a cross between Ethan Morden's "Buddies" cycle and an older-guy's version of "Queer As Folk." |
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Sep '05
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Across a Line
By: Michael Bronski
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Martin Moran's The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall From Trespass into
Grace (Beacon Press, $23.95, 285 pages) is both seriously unnerving and
curiously satisfying. Critics have been quick to call it a memoir about abuse, which is at best a superficial, even wrong-headed reading. At heart, the book centers on a love relationship that
was doomed from the start and goes terribly wrong. |
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Aug '05
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Juicy & Pulpy
By: Michael Bronski
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Good news for everyone: Katherine V. Forrest-- known, primarily for her wonderful novels, such as
Curious Wine, as well as for her Kate Delefield mystery series-- has edited a
fabulous collection Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels
1950-1965. |
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Jul '05
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Cool to the Touch
By: Michael Bronski
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It is hard to imagine a more elusive American writer than Paul Bowles. By one measure, this elusiveness is predicated on his hardly being American at all: in
his early 20s he decided to spend the bulk of his adult life self-exiled in Tangier, and yet-- even as many of his stories and novels are set there-- his themes of
the struggle for personal integrity and isolation are profoundly American. |
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Jun '05
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American Howl
By: Michael Bronski
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The reality of the Beat revolution has become distorted. One of the most salient misconceptions is that the "beats"-- really, a quite small group of innovative thinkers, writers, and
artists-- were identical to that large amorphous group known as "beatniks." |
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May '05
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Ask, Tell, Destroy
By: Michael Bronski
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Many Americans are aware of the anti-communist "red scare" of the 1950s, taking shape in McCarthyism and the blacklist that cost so many their livelihoods. But few also realize that, at the same time, the Federal government launched an all-out attack on homosexuals in
many branches of government. David K. Johnson's superlative
The Lavender Scare readably recovers this history and is a terrific contribution to queer history. |
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Apr '05
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A Pretty Face
By: Michael Bronski
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American popular culture has been obsessed with body-building-- and by extension, the open, erotic display of unclothed males-- since the turn of the century.
American Adonis is a terrific, beautifully illustrated book that examines the life and influence of one of the
first proponents of bodybuilding-- or physical culture, as it was called at the start. |
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Mar '05
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Wilde Gaye Activiste
By: Michael Bronski
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Oscar Wilde would have loved it-- being reinvented that is. In his short life-- he lived from 1856 to 1900-- Wilde was a self-declared genius at self-invention. He was poet, journalist, social reformer, socialist, playwright, wit, essayist, and-- in his most notorious self-invention--
public homosexual. So public, in fact, that at the height of his fame (just after the huge success of
The Importance of Being Earnest) Wilde was arrested and convicted for "gross indecency," sentenced to two years in prison, and then went into exile where he died three years later. |
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Feb '05
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Who's Out?
By: Michael Bronski
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The publication of C.A. Tripp's long awaited psycho-biography,
The Intimate Life of Abraham Lincoln, has garnered a flurry of mainstream media notices that both pro and con display a long-standing cultural obsession: who's queer and how can we know? |
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Jan '05
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Fashion Slaves
By: Michael Bronski
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First of all: what a great title. While the sauciness of
Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch is not completely indicative of the tone or scope of the essays in this collection, it's representative of Dwight McBride's incisive contribution to how we think about race, sex, and gay culture.
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Dec '04
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On a Mission
By: Michael Bronski
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The republication of three of Victor Banis's classic pulp camp
classics from his 1960s "Man from C.A.M.P" series is a cause for endless delight. |
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Nov '04
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Life in Dallas
By: Bill Andriette
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The Moralist begins on a very
Death-in-Venice note-- with its main protagonist in the bathroom smearing on the minoxidol to salvage a thinning scalp. |
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Oct '04
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Pornollectual
By: Michael Bronski
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The intersection of hard-core porn and postmodern critical theory sounds like the perfect place for a car wreck. While the pleasures of the body and the pleasures of the mind do-- as often as not-- meet in some harmony, the academy (since Plato, anyway) is not the usual
trysting place. |
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Sep '04
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Shipshape
By: Michael Bronski
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As Allan Berube discusses in his great book Coming Out Under
Fire, the huge geographic, social, and psychological shifts that occurred during and after World War II formed the foundation of gay and lesbian communities-- and politics-- in the post-war years. |
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Aug '04
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Puppy-Dog Tails
By: Michael Bronski
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Boys, as they say, will be boys. But how do they get to be that way?
Making American Boys is a compelling, erudite-- but very readable-- analysis of how the idea of the "boy" emerged in America over the past century-and-a-half. |
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Jul '04
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Pulp Lezzie Shocker!
By: Michael Bronski
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It's a treat to have Vin Packer's Spring
Fire back in print after its original publication more then 50 years ago. Generally conceded to be the first "lesbian pulp,"
Spring Fire was written by Marijane Meaker under the very butch-- and gender-neutral-- pen-name Vin Packer. |
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Jun '04
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Better Dead Than Wed
By: Michael Bronski
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With the juggernaut of same-sex marriage rolling along, we're faced with a mini-deluge of books that overwhelmingly laud this small revolution in social relations as an enormous change
for the better. |
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May '04
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Still Topsy-Turvy
By: Michael Bronski
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Pity poor Alice. What a queer story and what a queer book. Not
only did she fall down the rabbit hole into topsy-turvy Wonderland,
but since she first came onto the literary scene-- first
with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 and then in 1871
in a sequel
Through the Looking-Glass-- Alice has been subject to cultural
transformations that make her mysterious growings and shrinkings in
Wonderland look like kids' play. |
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Apr '04
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Technicolor Victorians
By: Michael Bronski
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Quick question. Who said: "This sin is now so frequent that no-one blushes for it anymore, and many indulge in it while perceiving its gravity." It was St. Anslem in 1102 CE. Apparently
even in the early 12th century, queer-eye-on-the-straight guy was boringly prevalent. |
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Mar '04
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Sex Monsters
By: Michael Bronski
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Americans are notorious for their short, scant historical memories. So it's no surprise that "news stories" often break big, hit the headlines, spread like wildfire, and then die out quickly
only to go into history's trash bin-- no matter how much damage they caused along the way. |
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Feb '04
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Wit of Lit
By: Michael Bronski
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The cult of Oscar Wilde has grown, without hesitation, since the man himself instigated it in the late 1880s. Wit, poet, editor, essayist, novelist, playwright, sodomite, and martyr-- Wilde provided modern culture not only an endless stream of great one-liners, but his life is a prism through which is viewed contemporary culture, literature, mores, and morals. |
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