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100 YEARS OF SUBTERFUGE The Gay& Lesbian Review WORLDWIDE

Nov.–Dec. 2017 $5.95 USA and Canada

Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim

ANDREW HOLLERAN A. E. Housman’s ‘Lads’ JEFFREY MEYERS Thomas Mann’s Secret Sharer DAVID LAFONTAINE Inside West Side Story SALMAN RUSHDIE ‘I Grew Up in Bombay, Home of the Hijra’

The Gay & Lesbian Re view November–December 2017 • VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER6 WORLDWIDE

The Gay & Lesbian Review ® WORLDWIDE PO Box 180300, Boston, MA 02118 CONTENTS

Editor-in-Chief and Founder 100 Years of Subterfuge RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. ______Literary Editor FEATURES MARTHA E. STONE “I grew up in Bombay, home of the Hijra.” 12 S ALMAN RUSHDIE Poetry Editor Frank Pizzoli talks with the author of The Golden House DAVID BERGMAN The Etymology of Lads 15 A NDREW HOLLERAN Associate Editors How A.E. Housman’s obsession with one lad became an archetype JIM FARLEY JEREMY FOX Thomas Mann’s Secret Sharer 19 J EFFREY MEYERS CHRISTOPHER HENNESSY It was his own son Klaus, a gay preteen with Tadzio possibilities MICHAEL SCHWARTZ Insi Contributing Writers de West Side Story 22 D AVID LAFONTAINE ROSEMARY BOOTH The four creators, all gay men, worked in a few winks and subtexts DANIEL BURR Picturing “The German V TEPHAN RICHARD CANNING ice” 26 S LIKOSKY COLIN CARMAN Postcards riffed on a national stereotype in a pre-WWI gay scandal ALFRED CORN ALLEN ELLENZWEIG A Priest’s Book Stirs the Faithful 30 D ONALD L. B OISVERT, CHRIS FREEMAN Two perspectives on James Martin, SJ’s Building a Bridge BRIAN BROMBERGER PHILIP GAMBONE MATTHEW HAYS ANDREW HOLLERAN REVIEWS CASSANDRA LANGER ANDREW LEAR John Lauritsen, ed. — Don Leon and Leon to Annabella: Lord Byron 33 ALAN CONTRERAS DAVID MASELLO Amin Ghaziani — Sex Cultures 34 VERNON ROSARIO JIM NAWROCKI Yakov Azriel — Closet Sonnets: The Life of G.S. Crown (1950-2021) 35 DAVID BERGMAN JAMES POLCHIN BRIEFS 36 JEAN ROBERTA VERNON ROSARIO Will Brooker — Forever Stardust: David Bowie Across the Universe 38 MATTHEW HAYS HEATHER SEGGEL Amy Adamczyk — Cross-National Public Opinion about Homosexuality 39 ROSEMARY BOOTH YOAV SIVAN Bill Alves and Brett Campbell — Lou Harrison 40 PHILIP GAMBONE Contributing Artist Kenny Fries — In the Province of the Gods 41 JOHN R. KILLACKY CHARLES HEFLING Marilyn R. Schuster — A Queer Love Story 42 MARGARET CRUIKSHANK Advertising Manager Ma-Nee Chacaby — A Two-Spirit Journey 43 JEAN ROBERTA STEPHEN HEMRICK Jonathan Lerner — Swords in the Hands of Children 43 ALLEN YOUNG Alistair McCartney — The Disintegrations 44 CHARLES GREEN Webmaster ERRI CHLICHENMEYER WWW.STRATEGYBEACH.COM Janet Mock — Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me 45 T S ______Paula Vogel, playwright; Rebecca Taichman, director — Indecent 50 ALLEN ELLENZWEIG Board of Directors STEWART CLIFFORD (CHAIRMAN) ART COHEN POEMS & DEPARTMENTS EDUARDO FEBLES ORRESPONDENCE DONALD GORTON (CLERK) C 5 DIANE HAMER IN MEMORIAM — Memories of John Ashbery (1927-2017) 7 ALFRED CORN TED HIGGINSON IN MEMORIAM — Two Friends Recall Mark Merlis (1950-2017) 8 RICHARD CANNING, ROBERT HARDMAN PAUL RUSSELL DAV I D LAFONTAINE ROBERT NICOSON BTW 10 RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. RICHARD SCHNEIDER, JR.(PRESIDENT) POEM — “little death, dissociative identity” 32 MARC FRAZIER MARTHA E. STONE CULTURAL CALENDAR 46 THOMAS YOUNGREN (TREASURER) ARTIST’S PROFILE — Steve Grand Is Not a Country Singer 47 STEPHEN HEMRICK WARREN GOLDFARB (SR. ADVISOR EMER.) ARTIST’S PROFILE — Joy Ladin Is Not a Nature Poet 48 SAMANTHA PIOUS

TheGay& Lesbian Review/WORLDWIDE® (formerly The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, 1994-1999) is published bimonthly (six times per year) by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc., a501(c)(3) educational corporation locatedinBoston, Mass. Subscriptions: Call 844-752-7829. Rates: U.S.: $35.70 per year (6 issues). Canada and Mexico: $45.70(US). All other countries: $55.70(US). All non-U.S. copies are sent via air mail. Backissuesavailable for $12 each. All correspondence is sent in a plain envelope marked “G&LR.” © 2017 by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. All rights reserved.

WEBSITE: www.GLReview.org•SUBSCRIPTIONS: 844-752-7829 • ADVERTISING: 617-421-0082 • SUBMISSIONS: [email protected] November–December 2017 3 FROM THE EDITOR Holiday Issue: 100 Years of Subterfuge E ARE endlessly fascinated by the century just before much is known. To what extent they smuggled gay elements into Stonewall, the period when there was a conscious- the play itself, such as the all-male opening dance number or the Wness of sexual variation but few ways to express it bond between Riff and Tony, is where the sleuthing comes in— openly. I base this observation on the sheer number of propos- carried out here by David LaFontaine. als I receive that concern an artist or writer or artistic movement Moving back in time, another case is provided by Thomas of this period, which begins, say, with the late-19th-century Ger- Mann and his son Klaus, both novelists with tendencies of a man sexologists, or with Oscar Wilde in England, or Walt Whit- certain kind. Klaus was surprisingly open about his homosex- man in the U.S. Notwithstanding these pioneers, the taboo on uality in Mephisto (1936); it is Thomas for whom the term “sub- talking about same-sex matters persisted for another century— terfuge” is reserved. We all know about Tadzio in Death in has it ever fully gone away?—forcing LGBT writers and artists Venice, but Jeffrey Meyers makes the case that Thomas viewed who wanted to convey same-sex notions to do so surreptitiously, the young Klaus with more than the usual fatherly interest. using coded language or imagery. Homosexual innuendo made it into popular culture in post- We’re fascinated, of course, because here we have a mys- cards that were widely distributed throughout Europe in the tery to be sleuthed, a hidden meaning to be rooted out. So many early 20th century. Here Stephan Likosky shows how a gay writers that we now think of as gay or bi—from Whitman to scandal in Germany spawned a cottage industry of cards that Henry James, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woof, Evelyn Waugh, or mocked the participants in the scandal along with “the German even Proust—were once regarded as straight arrows. Hidden vice” in general. meanings in their works have since been revealed (or insisted The poet A. E. Housman is best known for his lengthy poem upon). Of course, there is always a risk of over-interpreting these A Shropshire Lad, which was memorized by English youths and cryptic elements. Queer theorists object to using words like carried into the trenches of World War I. Yet the book contains “gay” that didn’t exist back then (but they don’t mind “queering” some fairly explicit references to the true object of the narrator’s artists of the past through new readings of old texts). affection, another young man, as Andrew Holleran discusses. Several cases in point are provided in this issue. To take the The fact that these passages were long overlooked or explained most recent historically, the creation of the musical West Side away testifies to the endless ability of humans to believe what- Story in 1957 was the work of four gay men (on the cover)—that ever they want to believe. RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. mnew fromassachusetts

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4 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE Correspondence Lastly, to the point about Walt Whitman: scientists who are concerned about the fate ‘Queen’ Piece Deemed Unworthy if you have ever been privileged to watch as of all life, including our species, on this To the Editor: an actual celebrity enters a gay bar, you planet. Hidden away in the July-August issue might have observed how this event sets off One of the watchwords of our drive for with beautiful commentary on remarkably palpable waves of excitement. I’m not quite equality has been “diversity.” And certainly accomplished people—Lincoln Kirstein, old enough to have accompanied Walt Whit- we support the idea that all individuals, re- Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Gore man, a habitué, into Pfaff’s, but have no gardless of race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality Vidal—is a silly, degrading, mean-spirited trouble imagining his reception among the or gender history, have the potential to con- essay, “What Makes a Queen a Queen?” On tipsy opera queens who regularly gathered tribute to human progress, culture, and well- the one hand, I am dismayed by how many there. being, and that we are richer for cultivating kinds of queen the author knows—nap friendships with all sorts of people. How- queen, Christmas queen, control queen, Shallow Play Didn’t Deserve the Praise ever, in the field of biology, “diversity” has a chicken, leather, opera, sweater, dish, and To the Editor: more technical meaning, and it’s related to drag. He ends by unearthing, bemoaning, Allen Ellenzweig’s review of S. Asher one of the reasons that life has been able to real estate queens. Each kind is clumsily Gelman’s Afterglow (Sept.-Oct. 2017 issue) endure on planet earth. campy. is more than a bit too forgiving—and his The laws of chemistry and physics—the Two phrases are good as phrases: “polli- closing comment about the final exit of one laws that explain the birth of the universe, nation of invidious information” (dick of the play’s three characters somehow solar system, the planet, the history of our queen) and “a drag queen who’s no queen is being “shades of [Ibsen’s] Nora” is quite a planet and the presence of elements that a mere transvestite.” Note the “invidious” stretch. It would certainly be refreshing to made the beginning of life possible here—are and “mere.” Earlier he throws “acidulous” have plays in which the LGBT characters fairly immutable (despite occasional adjust- and “instability” around. were not victims, or on the verge of death, ments), and while these laws may lead to cat- It is vaguely interesting, I suppose, that or conflicted beyond repair. But Afterglow astrophic and unexpected events, they cause his malice is articulate, looking down upon is at best a (not very good) soap opera mar- very little that cannot be explained. inferiors. Note the altitude toward Whitman: ried to soft core porn. On the other hand, the reactions that “Leaves of grass! Who does she think she None of the three characters in Afterglow began life and continue it via the evolution is?” But for a more serious and respectful is fully developed, and none is at all sympa- of living things have apparently evolved to- study of gay slang, I would recommend thetic, not the least Josh, who breaks up his ward looser types of “laws” that include on- Bruce Rodgers’ Gay Talk: A (Sometimes marriage to Alex when he becomes fixated off switches, genetic imperfections and Outrageous) Dictionary of Gay Slang (1979) on the younger Darius because, at age thirty, errors that introduce chance and many other or Paul Baker’s Fantabulosa: A Dictionary Josh is having a mid-life crisis. That Josh is qualifiers. These complicated “laws,” which of Polari & Gay Slang (2003). inconsolable when Darius decides to move we are just beginning to tease out, introduce Paul Stacy, Bloomfield, CT back home is ludicrous, given that “back diversity into a population via new traits or home” is all the way across the Hudson, in abilities that may allow the survival of a Jim Cory Replies: New Jersey! As Ellenzweig does note, the species if a new predator should show up, Paul Stacy’s letter has the tone of a devout subplot about Josh and Alex having a child or a new disease, a change in the habitat, or churchgoer who arrives one Sunday morn- through surrogacy goes nowhere. But other the introduction of a new poison by hu- ing, expecting to commune with the issues are left unresolved or unexplored: mans. Diversity is evolution’s way of hedg- supreme, and is “dismayed” to discover a safer sex among the polyamorous; the ex- ing its bets. disturbance among the pews: someone is ploitation, emotional and otherwise, that Many of us had a feeling from early child- whispering too loudly; a baby is bawling. threesomes inevitably must confront; and the hood that we were somehow different, that This is a sad world, full of disappointments. financial realities of two people (one a grad- there was an unchangeable part of us that That the piece was “silly,” I plead guilty uate student) managing to live in New York would some day have to be dealt with. When as charged. One can never be too silly, if by with enough disposable income for Josh to we later realized what this difference was, silly one means “absurd and foolish.” Some- support Darius on the side, let alone for the most of us said to ourselves, “I’m a good thing like fun. Since just about any experi- both of them to support a child. person. I’ve never harmed anyone. I’m going ence can be processed either as tragedy or Kevin J. Harty, Philadelphia to keep this difference a secret for a while farce, the writer must make a choice when since it seems unchangeable, and I’ll see, as approaching material. Mine will always bend Agreed: Saving the Planet Is a Gay Cause life goes on, what accommodations or possi- toward farce—who knows why? To the Editor: bilities there may be.” The term “queen” is the product of gay I was overjoyed (and to be honest, thun- This genetically connected part of our- bars and carries a suitable payload of empa- derstruck) to read two excellent environmen- selves puts us in a new world: the world of thy, generosity, and mischief. My point is to tal pieces in The G&LR [Sept.-Oct. 2017], the minority, and many of us have taken up celebrate what the term is and does. It’s lin- Lewis Gannett’s on climate change and Eric the struggle for racial, gender, religious, and guistic Teflon, deflecting the straight world’s Robertson’s on saving our planet. Since ethnic equality in addition to our own. Now scorn. It turns derision into pride by means Stonewall and before, we gay people have we can add a new component: our bond with of solidarity. It’s an infinitely adaptable one- proudly claimed our divergent sexuality, in- all living things that, like us, are defined and, word poem that has all the genius of authen- sisting it is normal and must not disqualify in a sense, imprisoned by their genetic iden- tic folklore, since gay men have always us from any human rights enjoyed by the tity. All of us—people, animals, plants, bac- owned it. Alas, in an ever more homogenized majority. With the appearance of these teria—do the best we can with the cards we (monetized, sanitized, etc.) world, it seems pieces, new voices are being heard, encour- are dealt. to be going away. aging us to pledge solidarity with the many Jeff Panciera, Seattle

November–December 2017 5 FRIENDS OF THE REVIEW* Mosaic of the Dark Lisa Dordal's Mosaic of the Dark is actually a book of LEADERSHIP CIRCLE Poems by Lisa Dordal Henry van Ameringen Eric Anderson & Roger Beck light. Dordal means to illu- James Hess minate the quotidian until it BENEFACTORS is as luminescent as any Stewart Clifford Ed Lemay spiritual experience: "I Bill Cohen Robert Nicoson Seth Grosshandler & Kim Wainwright Blaine Pennington dream of flight. A sun/that Robert Hardman Robert Roehm can hold a million Ted Higginson Louis Wiley Jr. David LaFontaine Philip Willkie earths/and a mouth that SPONSORS swallows its fire." This is Anonymous Bob Hellwig & Gordon Whitaker Anonymous James Hendrick the eye of a poet looking to Michael Barrett John Hudson her work for redemption Bjorn Bjorklund Michael Jarvis Robert K. Black Gary W. Jung and grace. Mosaic of the Samuel D. Brown Rob Kvidt Dark is a beautiful book. Peter Cannon Dick Land Victor Carlson Robert Lobou –JERICHO BROWN Michael Carson John Longres Robert Christie & Kevin Ceckowski Gregory Manifold Robert Cloud John Manola Mosaic of the Dark is a Art Cohen Michael Matthews portrait of a young woman Michael Denneny Joel Michael John Desmarteau MD Mark Mullin emerging from the constric- Joe Tansey & Frank Devito Donald Ott tions of family and cultural Robert Dockendorff Larry Palmer Gary Domann Bertram Parker expectations into her own Martin Duberman Daniel A. Pavsek, PhD authentic self. While well- Bradley Paul Edin John Pence Irv Englander Falxa and Plute rooted in personal experi- David Fertik Doug Sadownick ence, the poems branch out Steve Frasheur Jan Schoenhaus John Frybort Ron Seidle & Fred Vega with an empathetic and pre- David & Gary Furland-Werchak Laurence Senelick cisely observant heart to Thomas Gerber Nicolas Shumway Chris Geschwantner Richard C. Snider give us a glimpse of the A portion of the proceeds from orders Robert Giron Dennis P. Stradford mysterious world that John P Gooding John Swaner placed by Dec. 31 will go to the Ten- Bill Gorodner Morris Thompson nessee Equality Project. threads through us all. Patrick Gourley Kenneth R. Trapp Peter Gray Ralph Virkler –ELLEN BASS SUPPORTERS Order online: www.blacklawrence.com Richard Alther Dennis Gilligan James Moore Richard Ammon Daniel Goggin David Mungello Jon Anderson David Golovner Anthony Napoli Donald Anderson Danny Goodson Aaron Neil Ronald Anderson Thomas J. Gormly Ronald Nelson Anonymous James Gother Maury Newburger Randall Arndt Garth Greenwell Walt Odets 200 Michael Averdick George Griffin Michael G. O’Connell III Frank B. Wing Michela Griffo Chester Page Bruce Babski Paul Grzella Dean Papademetriou Don Bachardy James Haas Rhonda Parish & Celia Kudro Henry Baird Ambern Hague Don Patterson Jeffrey Benevedes Joseph Hall Allan Phillips Laurence Best Diane Hamer Ted Pietras D. A. Blackford, MD James Harmon Frank Pizzoli Duane Bodin Stephen Harvey Charles Popper Christopher Bohnert Richard Hay James Pusch Steven Bold Scot Hedrick Bruce Eric Richards William Bonsal Alfonso Hernandez Marion Ridley & Mark Lundy Hendrik Booraem TK Herrin Gordon Robinson Rosemary Booth Robert Heylmun Irwin Rosen TwoTTg to go. Kenneth Borelli Curtis Hinckley Robert Roth James Brogan Stephen Hoffman Stephen Russell David Lloyd Brown James-Henry Holland John & Richard Sande-Connolly Steve Buresh Jill Hollander Sam Sanders Marc Butler Larry Iannotti Howard Schmuck Daniel Campbell Helen Irwin Steven Schreibman James Carnelia Peter Jarman Don Schroeder Jim Cassaro John Johnson George Seeber Christopher Cochran Kent Johnson PhD Doug Serafin Donald Cornelius Brian Kelly John Shaffner Frederick Cowan Leonard Keyes Dr. E. C. Sheeley Raymond Deangelo Chris Kilbourne Kenneth Sherrill

Louis Dellaguzzo Jon Kimbell Eric Slater riiees iioon Se mmppaannni iikkkuu Co Angelo Diretto Clay King Charles Smires hhee Haai James Diskant John Knepper Donald Milton Smith T Martin Donaldson Alan Kristal Dennis Sondker Suzanne Dreyfus Gary Krivy Jim & Peter Stepp-Zimmer Heyward Drummond Barry Kropf Glenn Stover G. Dryvynsyde William Lacivita Ron Suleski & Jonghyun Lee

Alfred D. Duhamel Don Lamb Mark Summa e c Patrick Dunne Robert Landau Jerl Surratt i

u Ronald Durnford Stewart Landers Steve Susoyev s j n’ e Edward E. Eliot Gura Lashlee John Tederstrom ste r Au p HaHappyHap yoy forffor allll herh r matermmaat rnanal d “ “ e “ an an Thomas Ethington Leonardo Leon Robert Teller J (1,0 e 37 Sy id llab r u les Douglas Evans Alan Lessik Andrew Thompson p aik !) ffeelingseeeellinn s waswaeassth the daydaaay ononnw whichwwh chh Robert Fernie Maurice Levenbach Bill Thompson & Walker Harper W. am “ H James David Ferris Malia Lewis Andy Tracy GGaynoryn MMrMrs.rrs. Bennetet gotgog ot ridd of fh hherr twow Charles Fishburn Ronald Lonesome Glenn Underwood Dennis Flood & Carl Duyck Karl Mann George Van Pelt mmomostosostost deservinges rvvinvngn g daughteau hhtteereers.rss Jeff Fox Bennett Marks & Kim Harris Anthony Volponi Frederick J. Fox, MD Charles Marlow Thomas Von Foerster William Fry & Darryl Sanchez Alberto Martin Andrew Wentink Michael Fuller Claude Martin James West PRIDE AND PREJUDICE Frank Gagliardi Peter Maxson & Jack Taylor Eric Wilson JJAane Auusten's Michael Galligan Bill McCarter George Wolf Tom Genson Richard Meiss Larry Wolf in 61 Haiku (1,037 Syllables!) Sterling Giles & Rudy Kikel Mark Meltzer James Zebroski www.jameswgaynor.com JAMESW.GGAYNOOR * “Friends of The Review” are people making an annual donation to The Gay & Lesbian Review of (#HaikuJim) A new book by poet $120 or more. The G&LR is a 501(c)(3) educational corporation. All gifts are fully tax-deductible.

6 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE IN MEMORIAM Memories of John Ashbery (1927–2017)

ALFRED CORN T’S THE SUMMER of 1973. I’m enjoying a weekend with David Kalstone and Edmund White at James Merrill’s house Iin Stonington, CT. In those years Jimmy spent his summers in Greece, and David would stay in the Connecticut house. He was among Jimmy’s closest friends. He also knew John Ash- bery well—in fact, they lived just opposite each other on W. 22nd Street in Manhattan. After dinner on Saturday night, David announced he’d received a long poem from John and wanted to know if he should read it to us. We said, “Sure, absolutely.” The poem he read was “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” After he’d concluded with the final lines, “Here and there, in cold pockets/ Of remembrance, whispers out of time,” we sat silently, blink- John Ashbery. Giovanni Giovannetti photo. ing at each other. We’d never heard anything like it. If you can enormous help to John in all the subsequent years. I remember think of one of those moments in your life when you first en- spending an evening with David and John at the 22nd Street countered some masterwork of art, music or poetry and sum- apartment, drinking and listening to tapes John had of the old mon up what you felt at that moment, that’s how we felt. Bob and Ray radio program. It was a comfortable living space, Three years earlier I’d begun getting acquainted with John’s with items old and modern in it. You could choose between a poetry after reading Richard Howard’s essay about it in his book new sofa upholstered in mattress ticking or the Victorian equiv- Alone with America. Ed had introduced me to John at a gallery alent in tufted red velvet. Of course there were modern paint- opening in 1972, or maybe it was early in 1973. He was soft-spo- ings on the walls, notably an early work by Jane Freilicher, who ken and rather shy, with mobile eyes and restrained body lan- was perhaps his closest friend. guage. I liked him immediately but certainly didn’t presume to In later years he spent more time in Hudson, New York, think we were friends merely because of that meeting. Things where he’d bought a Queen Anne Victorian house, complete began to change when David decided to give a “birthday party with turret and stained-glass windows. I lived in Hudson myself for Leos” at his apartment. (He and John shared a late July birth- for two years and sometimes saw him on his way to the Episco- day and mine came in mid-August.) David also invited another pal church across the square from his house, or indeed when he Leo, the painter Darragh Park, who knew John and who also came to lunch at the place on Warren Street where Philip Alvaré lived on West 22nd. I hadn’t met Darragh before, but we soon and I lived. It was in Hudson that I last saw John, in April of became friends, and a painting of his was used for the cover of 2008, just before I moved away. John and David took me up to my second book. the second level, where we sat for a while over coffee, indulging Let me stop at this point, just in case it isn’t obvious: All the in low-key conversation. At that point, John had mobility diffi- people I’ve mentioned so far were gay. If there was such a thing culties, but when I stood to go, so did he, a little unsteadily, and as a “Homintern,” then I guess we belonged to it. Case in point: waved when I turned back at the top of the stairs. I tried several we were all susceptible to camp humor. I remember that both times to see David and him again, but it never proved possible, David and John at some point got on a Firbank kick, rereading something I regret. In many ways I’ve had a lucky life, and all his novels, and this copycat quickly followed suit. On one friendship with John has been a part of that. I could sum it up as occasion John jokingly called David “Kalpurnia,” provoking a “pockets of remembrance,” in this case warm ones. His going is laugh from us all. We knew that old friends of John’s had nick- just one facet of his still being here. named him “Ashes,” but that name didn’t seem fitting to me, ______given his sense of humor and mostly unflappable serenity. Alfred Corn’s latest book of poetry is titled The West Door. Though he liked to drink (too much, truth to tell) John did- n’t frequent gay bars. People came to him. In Paris he was part- nered with the poet Pierre Martory for several years and later Sculpture by Douglas White provided translations of a volume of his poems. Also, I remem- Angel of Despised Love ber that one of his devotees was Roberto Echavarren, a hand- — for the victims of Orlando some Uruguayan working on his doctorate at NYU. Roberto Ángel del Amor Despreciado later wrote about John and translated a selection of his poems — para las víctimas de Orlando into Spanish. By the late 1970s, John was definitely an interna- Bronze. Exhibited in Chartres. tional figure, and his work was recognized with every prize you can think of except for the Nobel, which almost never goes to Priced at cost with a donation to gay writers. It wasn’t until David Kermani, scion of an exiled onePULSE Foundation. Persian family, came into his life that John settled down with Contact: [email protected] one person. David was smart and good-looking and, I think, an www.westhuronsculptors.com/douglas-white/

November–December 2017 7 IN MEMORIAM Two Friends Recall Mark Merlis (1950-2017)

RICHARD CANNING flects on his adolescent affair with his closeted college tutor, Tom Slater, who killed himself during the McCarthy witch HE AUTHOR of four groundbreaking novels, Mark hunts, and draws comparisons between their lives. Beautifully Merlis died at age 67 on August 15, 2017, in Philadel- styled and structured, the novel announced the broad theme that Tphia’s Pennsylvania Hospital. The cause of death was I think is common to all of Merlis’ work: the relationship be- pneumonia, related to ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, which he tween recent or contemporary American gay lives and values had been diagnosed with just a year ago. Merlis is survived by and those of preceding generations. Merlis himself said in an in- his life partner—and since 2014 husband—Robert Ashe, and terview he saw his work as all about “the conflation or confusion two brothers. of sex and power. All the books try to get at something about Born in 1950, Mark Merlis was raised in Baltimore by his gay sensibility that doesn’t directly have to do with sexual ac- Jewish father, a doctor, and his Catholic mother. He earned a tivity; a search for some ineffable thing which is other than sex- B.A. in English from Wesleyan in 1971 and an M.A. in Amer- ual, and which I can’t articulate.” He went on to cite Walt ican Studies from Brown in 1976. Along with writing fiction, he Whitman, America’s national poet, whose concept of male-to- had a long career in health policy consultancy that began in male adhesiveness “was about something other than fucking.” Maryland’s health department. Merlis moved on to the Library American Studies won the Los Angeles Times’ Seidenbaum of Congress (1987–1995) and to the Institute for Health Policy Award for first fiction and the Ferro-Grumley Award for dis- Solutions (1996–2001). While he later referred to “tumbling tinction in gay writing. into the bureaucratic life that ensnared me for the next 35 Merlis’ second novel, An Arrow’s Flight (1998), was his years,” he continued working freelance until he retired in 2012. most elaborate and ambitious. It updated Sophocles’Trojan War- He rose early, writing his fiction for two hours regularly every era tragedy Philoctetes, relocating it partly in 1980s gay urban day, from 5:30 to 7:30 a.m. He wrote four unpublished novels America. Widely regarded, and admired, as an AIDS novel, before the appearance of American Studies in 1994, when he Merlis himself argued that it was “only really obliquely an AIDS was in his mid-forties. book. One is expected to conclude that something like AIDS is American Studies opens with the aged narrator Reeve bed- going on. It’s really a ‘before’ novel without the ‘after.’” bound in the hospital after a hustler has beaten him up. He re- Man about Town (2003), novel number three, was Merlis’

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8 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE most clearly autobiographical novel. Protagonist Joel, an advi- Arrow’s Flight, certainly one of the most original novels of the sor in healthcare on Capitol Hill, finds himself abandoned by last half-century, two tiny marks left on Philoctetes’ ankle by a his long-term lover and is made newly aware of the callous- snakebite change everything, even the fate of the most beautiful ness, self-interest, and corruption in America’s political infra- city on earth. American Studies, whose title could stand for the structure. As a midlife crisis descends, Joel reverts to a whole of Merlis’ fictional project, is downright claustrophobic childhood obsession with a seductive beachwear model, deter- in its mise-en-scène: two strangers, an older gay man and a young mining to locate the former object of desire. Man about Town straight man, occupy adjacent hospital beds for the duration of was well-reviewed, though its author would later dismiss it as the novel— and yet by the end, when a door clicks shut and the “the novel nobody liked.” portal of the Invincible City closes with exquisite gentleness, the Perhaps this disappointment explains the long gap before a narrative has scrutinized the whole history of the American fever fourth novel appeared. When JD (for “juvenile delinquent”) dream as well as conjuring the attendant carnage along the way. came out in 2015, it revealed again that Merlis was incapable of Merlis understood that America is about violence, that com- recycling anything. JD is “double-narrated.” One narrator is pulsory heterosexuality is about violence, that we are all con- Martha, the widow of 1960s countercultural hero Jonathan As- scripts in the war machine. But at the same time, what shines cher. When approached by a would-be biographer of her hus- through his work is the almost old-fashioned but still radical be- band, Martha delves into his private papers. Ascher’s lief that being gay is, or at least might be, an alternative to all that journals—which comprise the second narration—reveal her hus- madness, a political and spiritual rebuke to the world as it is. At band’s bisexual past in lurid detail. The two storylines comple- heart a visionary, Merlis knew what paradise looked like and ment each other, building a devastating portrait of marital even had a pretty good idea of how we might get there, but at the dysfunction and deceit. The Wall Street Journal review de- same time the clear-eyed realist in him knew how nearly im- scribed JD as “beautifully controlled and heart-wrenching.” possible that journey might be. In the doubled reality of An He could be artistically conservative, and I don’t mean this Arrow’s Flight, at once Homeric Greece and AIDS-era Amer- in a negative way. He simply revered strong composition, craft, ica, the narrator praises the “Eronauts,” those heroes of love who attention to detail, and an awareness of tradition. New kids on in that mythic decade after Stonewall “sailed west without a the block and momentary fads didn’t interest him. Moreover, his chart,” exuberantly living out their long-repressed desires and literary lodestars were often not in fiction. He argued when I in- fantasies for the sake of everyone who had come before as well terviewed him in 1997 that “the really strong gay literary tradi- as everyone who would come after. Then, in the midst of this tion is the poetic one,” by which he meant Whitman, Hopkins, rapturous passage, the narrator’s tone turns elegiac, as it so often Housman, and Auden rather than anything recent. His “ideal fic- does in Merlis: tion writer” was George Eliot: “I don’t have her scope, but I’d Now the sea lanes they charted have closed behind them. All love to write something like Middlemarch.” they discovered, that had waited since the dawn of time to be After this interview, I always sought Mark out when in the found, swallowed up. No one will ever go that way again, not U.S. He was the wittiest dinner companion, always happy to turn even if the cure is found. Partly because we will never own our bodies again, as they did. We are vectors now, or vessels, himself into the joke. I said, desperately, in the interview: “It sources of transmission; our bodies belong to the unseen. Well, sounds as if you engage very closely with your reviews.” He it has always been so, we have always belonged to the Fates. deadpanned: “There were so few reviews [of American Studies] We just never thought the Fates were so tiny. that it is easy to remember them all.” ______William Blake praised the ability to see a world in a grain Richard Canning’s most recent book is an edition of English novelist of sand. For Mark Merlis, the most seemingly insignificant in- Ronald Firbank’s Vainglory (Penguin Classics). cident might likewise suggest a whole history-haunted universe, ______rich and dark and troubled, full of tender, unrequited, unre- quitable love. PAUL RUSSELL ______ERHAPS the most immediately impressive of Mark Paul Russell is a novelist whose books include The Coming Storm Merlis’ considerable achievements in his four novels is (1999) and, his latest, Immaculate Blue (2015). Pthe sheer range of his subject matter—from the Trojan War thrillingly reimagined in An Arrow’s Flight to the red and My roommate and I were forced by the lavender scares of 1950s America in American Studies to the Phillips Exeter Academy in 1962 to un- cultural tumult of the 1960s in Man About Town. Merlis’ work dergo psychiatric treatment to be cured of is a panoramic meditation on who we are as a culture and a our homosexuality, with the result that he committed suicide and I became a schiz- melancholy rumination on what holds us in thrall, whether it’s ophrenic. Another schizophrenic, the Ger- the complex legacy bequeathed by the ancient Greeks or our man theologian Paul Tillich, thought that own first crush in high school on “the baseball player, maybe, I was the Second Coming of Christ. just stepping into the locker room, joking with his teammates, Rejecting this label, I told my first lover, Mark Frechette, that he was the real now so casually unbuttoning his shirt.” Christ. After Mark starred in Antonioni’s Merlis’ novels tend to start small and then swell to a terrible film Zabriskie Point, he was crucified in grandeur. In Man About Town, an innocent swimsuit ad initiates prison in 1975 at the age of 27. Joel Lingeman into a lifetime of wonder and longing. In An www.barnesandnoble.com

November–December 2017 9 memorate the event—or ongoing relationship, as the use of the continuous verb suggests. So says archæologist Andreas Vla- chopoulos, who discovered the carving and remarked on its BTW monumentality: “They were what I would call triumphant in- scriptions. They claimed their own space in large letters that not only expressed Face It, Dude Being a straight guy has never been harder, what sexual desire but with all the temptations of the non-straight world, i.e., every- talked about the thing other than team sports. So men have taken to Twitter and act of sex itself.” other social media to air their insecurities and receive reassur- He reminds us that ance from their cyber buddies. An example would be: “Fellas, is same-sex love was it gay that I really enjoy the show Glee? (I seem to have one of not frowned upon these questions weekly.)” So a “meme” has popped up on Twit- by the Greeks and ter to “make fun of scared straight boys” through parodies such was clearly cele- as these: “fellas, is it gay to make money? i mean you’re just brated by some. Classicist and G&LR friend Andrew Lear noted collecting pictures of other men”; “Fellas is it gay to pee? You’re that graffiti on the island of Thera expresses similar sentiments literally holding a dick”; “fellas... is it gay to look in the mirror? using the same verb, which implies sexual penetration. Or was I mean you literally checkin a man out”; and “fellas... is it gay such graffiti only meant as a taunt, a put-down, as some schol- to exist?” An overarching theme is that if you’re a fella, you’re ars have insisted? If that’s their way of denying the literal (gay) stuck with a fella’s body, which you can’t help but touch, look meaning, the presence of the two phalluses carved in stone for at, play with... And, admit it: you love your penis. You can never all time would seem to put that equivocation to rest. be quite as straight as a gay guy can be gay. Out from under the Sheets If any satisfaction could be found Still Together The Greeks never disappoint. The latest find is in the wake of the neo-fascist rally in Charlottesville last Au- a 2,500-year-old bit of graffiti on the remote Aegean island of gust, it was that many of the young men who participated were Astypalaia with an inscription carved in stone that reads “Nik- photographed, seen on TV or on-line, and promptly fired from asitimos was here mounting Timiona” (Νικασίτιμος οἶφε their jobs or ostracized by friends. One participant became the Τιμίονα). Plus, there’s a carving of two giant phalluses to com- poster boy for these guys, a 36-year-old neo-Nazi and virulent

“Davis challenges readers to consider why binary ”True Sex exploresthevariedhistoriesof American sex identity categories are used so pervasively transmenlongbeforethatdesignationevenexisted. in our everyday lives, and whether such routine Reviewing newspapers and the literature of the categorization is needed . . . The author, a field then known as “sexology,” as well as census transgender man of color, approaches this topic data,courtrecords,andtrialtranscripts,Skidmore asbothanexpertscholarandanindividualwhose weaves a tale of American gender that’s far more own identity has been subject to hostile scrutiny.” complex than many might think, one that reveals that [gender] has never been a fixed reality.” —Starred Publishers Weekly —Timeline.com

“If marriage is the much-exhausted metric of morality in our times, Katherine Franke’s “A riveting look at identity construction, the Wedlocked turns razor-sharp insight to the qualities of ‘real’ men, boundary maintenance tangled genealogy of its often-incoherent power (the things we do to present ourselves as we’d in the American context. Franke aligns struggles truly like to be seen), and so many other nuanced for gay marriage rights with African Americans’ components of the gay criminal lifestyle. If the firstaccesstotherighttomarry,smartlyexposing highest praise is reserved for books that cause the malleable line between intimacy and the ustoquestiondeeplyheldbeliefs,thisbookranks untouchable.” among the best.” —Patricia J. Williams, author of the column —Foreword Reviews “Diary of a Mad Law Professor” for The Nation NYUPRESS.ORG aNYUPRESS

10 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE homophobe named Christopher Cant- well, who appeared on YouTube sob- bing uncontrollably as he told his tale of woe: Sure he was at the rally, but now “I have been told there’s a war- rant out for my arrest. With everything that’s happening, I don’t think it’s very wise for me to go anywhere. There’s a state of emergency. The Na- tional Guard is here!” What’s interesting is that he seems genuinely surprised that he’s being hounded; he thought he was doing the right thing. Indeed it’s almost as if someone gave him permission to go out and shout these things, and so he did, only to discover that it’s still against the law to threaten people with violence—including “faggots,” against whom Mr. Cantwell harbors a special animus. But while before he expressed it in the dark corners of the Internet, he now feels emboldened to proclaim it in the public square, albeit bawling like a babe when facing the consequences.

Object of Interest It all began at a Food Fair in New Jersey when a customer was accused of shoplifting by a security guard. “I need to see what’s in your pants,” said the guard, noticing something irregular down there. The customer replied that he was transgender and wore a prosthetic penis. But still he was forced to show his junk, proving that he hadn’t lied; and now he’s suing the store for intimidation and false imprisonment. Not to minimize the victim’s humiliation, but it seems that statisti- cally this sort of thing is going to happen once in a while. Shoplifters have been stuffing stuff into their crotches for cen- turies, so guards are naturally on the lookout for implausible bulges and occasionally flag someone for questioning. Every so often, they must find something that actually belongs there, such as a prosthetic penis—or a real one, for that matter. At this point—unless the stolen object happens to be a dildo—someone is going to be pretty red in the face.

Counterclockwise One thing that was predictable about Hur- ricane Harvey was that Bible-thumping demagogues would soon find a way to blame it on LGBT people. But what was the connection? A desperate Ann Coulter blamed the city of Hous- ton for electing a lesbian mayor, Annise Parker—but that was way back in 2010. By the time Irma hit Florida, where nothing gay has happened in years, they’d given up on causality and merely ranted. But a question arises here: why is it always gay people rather than, say, adulterers, and why hurricanes in particular? “What’s up with the homosexual tendencies of hurricanes?” asked one headline. Meanwhile, sane people looked at historical weather patterns and proposed that the severity of these storms just might be due to global warming. Had they wanted to get biblical, they could have pointed out that Hous- ton is the epicenter of the U.S. petroleum industry, while Florida has been throwing up high-rise condos on swamps and sand bars. Of course, the people who are most likely to deny climate change are precisely those who tend to blame hurricanes on gay people—which is to say that their retreat from the Enlighten- ment and return to medieval thinking is officially complete.

November–December 2017 11 INTERVIEW

Frank Pizzoli talks with the author of The Golden House ‘I grew up in Bombay, home of theHijra.’

SALMAN RUSHDIE ALMAN RUSHDIE’S twelfth novel is titled The FP: So that was your use of realism with references to film, the Golden House (Random House). Set in New York arts and literature? City, the story opens on the day of Barack Obama’s SR: Yes, I was trying to make a portrait of a particular moment inauguration, when the enigmatic, foreign billionaire in American life, the last eight years or so. Particularly New York Nero Golden takes up residence in “the Gardens,” a City, just trying to smell what’s in the air and respond to it. That storied gated community in Greenwich Village. With was one part. The other part is a story about this crazy family Shis three sons, Golden ceremoniously arrives to re-establish him- which I’ve probably had in my head for a while before they’d self in the U.S. come to New York. I just brought the two together. Significantly for readers of this magazine, one of Golden’s sons struggles with his gender identity and wrestles with the ex- FP: Is Nero Golden a composite? istential choices it implies. The 400-page book, which has been SR: He comes from the particular background of the Indian super- described as part The Great Gatsby and part Bonfire of the Van- rich. I know some of those people. Nero is not based on anybody ities, tells the story of the American zeitgeist over the past decade: in particular, but he is also not a composite. I don’t think it would the birther movement, the Tea Party, the superhero movie, and be right to say he is a composite. He’s pretty much himself. the insurgence of ruthlessly ambitious, media-savvy villains who wear makeup and have colored hair. FP: All great cultures have their madmen—Rome, Germany, BorninIndiain1947,Sir now the U.S. Is this our post-Cold War dark age? Salman Rushdie was educated at SR: It has certainly darkened very fast in the last six months or Cambridge University and came so. I’d actually thought the previous eight years, a lot of them, of age in England—indeed he is were a time of considerable optimism. And the changing of that a knight of the realm—but has optimism of 2008 to its antithesis in the present is what I was try- lived in New York City for much ing to capture [in The Golden House]. of his adult life. It was his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, that FP: Your storytelling sense of humor comes through in The provoked a fatwa on his life, is- Golden House and has made me laugh out loud. sued by Iran’sAyatollah Khome- SR: I’m glad to hear it. I’ve been trying to persuade people that ini in 1989. The pronouncement this novel—my novels—are funny. People have somehow for- placed Rushdie in mortal danger gotten there is a comic dimension to my writing. for the next decade, and the book’s publication was met with demonstrations around the FP: Are you expecting blowback on this book? Did you intend to world. But Rushdie survived; the book went on to become an in- make the point that the U.S. and our enemies are equally absurd? ternational bestseller; and many more would follow. Even before SR: I don’t know about blowback, though I’ve had blowback in Satanic Verses, Rushdie had won the Booker Prize, in 1981, for my time. I don’t frankly give much thought to it. I just try to do Midnight’s Children. Subsequent books have included novels the thing I have in front of me and hope that people respond to it such as The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) and The En- in the right way. chantress of Florence (2008) and several collections of essays. This exclusive interview was conducted by telephone in August. FP: Does your sense of humor help you survive? —FRANK PIZZOLI SR: No question. A sense of the absurd and the ridiculous is a great asset in dark times. That certainly has been true in my Frank Pizzoli: What did you hope to achieve with The Golden own dark times. On a daily basis, I’m grateful for the comedi- House? ans who respond to the situation in the U.S. If it weren’t for Salman Rushdie: I wanted to tell a good story that people would Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and Samantha Bee, our days enjoy reading. My previous novel was kind of a fairy tale deal, would be a lot bleaker. and I thought I would try to write an opposite novel with a large, panoramic view, a social realist novel. That was my starting point. FP: A quote about Nero Golden: “This was a powerful man; no, more than that – a man really in love with the idea of himself as Frank Pizzoli has published interviews with many noted writers. He is powerful.” Trump? the founding editor and publisher of Central Voice. SR: I wasn’t only thinking of Trump. That’s a statement that

12 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE could be made about many people who are corrupted by power. As the old saying goes: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. NEW.NOW. FP: The same can be said of anyone puffed up about himself? SR: Over the years I’ve met quite a few extremely powerful peo- IN THE PROVINCE ple, and the love of power is something I always found extremely OF THE GODS unattractive. The most impressive powerful people I’ve met gen- KENNY FRIES uinely see themselves as public servants. They’re not obsessed “KennyFries writes outofthe pure hot emergency with the idea of themselves as powerful. So, I think there’s both of a mortalbeingtryingtokeephimselfalive. So kinds of people. Some people respond in a very ethical way to much iis atstakehere—health, affection, culture, having power. They don’t see it as a tool or as an indication of trauma,language—butitsgreatestsurprise is what their own glory. thrives inthe midstofsuffering.Abeautiffuulbook. One of the key elements of Golden is for me to ask if it’s pos- —Paul Lisickyy,,authorofTheNNaarrrow Door sible for a man to be simultaneously evil and good. That was the kind of character I was trying to build and explore—somebody THE OFF SEASON who was, in one part of his being, guilty of much that is repre- ANNooveell hensible or even criminal, and in another part of his being, capa- AMY HOFFMAN ble of love and caring, even virtue. But I wanted to see how those “TheeOOffffSeason is righton!Asparklingnovel about qualities co-exist, play out at the same time. the floraandfa faunaand florid dramaoflesbiansliving in Provincetown for one memorable seaason.” FP: Did Stalin love Svetlana, his daughter? —Kate Clinton SR: Well, different kind of animal, but yes. Can you think of somebody who was a good person but who wasn’t also capable THE DISINTEGRATIONS of things that were extremely bad? To try to show a person who ANNoovelel was morally “double” in some way. I wanted to see how I could ALISTAIR McCARTNEY do that. That was my starting point for Golden’s character. “TTaaakkes possessionofyourightfromthe opening andw ill not let you go.Challengingand gripping, FP: Good men do evil. Evil men do good. aruminationondeathand memorythatspeaakks SR: For sure. There’s a very funny novella, The Cloven Viscount, eloquently tooursense of loss, bothpersonaland by Italo Calvino, in which the prodigal character is dissected by communal.Thewritingisexquisite.” Barrraacuddaa a sword on the battlefield. The two halves get sown up individu- —Christos TTssiolkaas,au authorof ally and survive. One half ends up being incredibly evil and one half ends up being incredibly saintly. And they both do equal SELF-MADE WOMAN AMMeemoir amounts of damage. Two halves of the same man. All the virtue DENISE CHANTERELLE DUBOIS ends up in one half and all the bad ends up in the other half, and both are catastrophic. “Denise’scs olorffuullife hascovereditallinsspades: sex,drugs, and a journeyofself-discoverythattakes FP: Regarding the LGBT community in majority-Muslim coun- heraround the world.Buckle upupforawwild ride!” —Andrea James, filmmaakkerand transgender tries, do gay people represent the “decadent West” who are to be rightsactivist thrown from buildings, stoned, or “honor killed” by family? SR: There is quite a substantial gay population in the Islamic THE POX LOVER world. I think there’s a lot of prejudice. People in the gay com- An Acttiivist’s Decaddee in NNeew YYoorrkk munity, and certainly in the transgender community, face real ob- and PPaaris stacles. Not only in Islamic countries but even here. ANNE-CHRISTINE D’ADESKY I grew up in Bombay, which has always been home to quite Reminiscentofthe lusciouslesbianliteratureof a substantial transgender community, the Hijra. I’ve spent time “ the Parisianpast, butpropelledintothe eraofAIDS, in that community listening to their stories and hearing the con- ACT UP,and the LesbianAAvvengers.D’’AAdesky’s victions of their lives. That was for me one of the starting points memoiralso reveals herffaamily’srole inFrench in writing about an increasingly central subject of gender identity colonialism, raisingcompellingquestionsabout these days. Here in New York, I’ve had a couple of friends who privilege, survival,homophobia,and dislocation.” have transitioned. One in each direction, male to female and fe- — SarahSchulmanan,a uthorofTheCCoosmooppolitansa male to male. Yes, these are people I care about who’ve gone through this process. That’s been another starting point for me. Taking those personal elements, I tried to learn as much as I could, to explore as thoroughly as I could. When writing a contemporary novel which tries to take on the present moment, you really have to respond to the stuff that’s in the air. LGBT rights pres s are very much in the air. I wanted to respond to that. In India, this terrible thing happened. Under a previous gov- UWPRESS. WISC. EDU

November–December 2017 13 ernment [in 2009], homosexuality was legalized, decriminal- creative for the reader. There’s a bit of me that wants to do the ized. Many gay people came out and they lived normal lives at spadework of a journalist. I want to immerse myself in a subject last. And now this new government came in, and the Indian high and know that I know it. court has effectively recriminalized homosexuality [by not rec- ognizing the 2009 decriminalization decision]. So that now ho- FP: How do you think the LGBT community will fare under mosexuality is, once again, illegal in India. Now all those people President Trump? who came out are, in theory, at risk. That’s a very bad situation. SR: It’s a very resilient community and it will fight back, but I Writers have had conversations about and have written about think it is one of the many [minorities] that will have to fight their own sexual orientation. Now they are now asking: can I under this administration. If indeed the administration lasts for expect a knock on the door because I am openly gay? I think it’s four years, which I find difficult to believe—and then I wonder pretty difficult. if that’s wishful thinking. Like many people, I’m anxious to see what the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller brings FP: Even if a family or friend privately wants to be accepting, the up. Also, the rate at which the administration is melting down. larger culture may impede that gesture. It’s hard to believe this will go on for four years. Today on social SR: One of things that I found when doing this work with the media is a picture of people around President Trump. There’s transgender community in Bombay is that some of them had fam- Priebus, Spicer, Flynn. All of them are gone in six months. The ilies that were accepting. Some had families that were very re- only senior member of his staff who is still in the picture is Pence. jectionist. Some of them had come to Bombay, leaving their You begin to wonder if it’s the President or Vice President who families behind, not having their acceptance. Others would go will go next. home to their family. As we might expect, there is some of one, some of the other. FP: It’s like a reality show in real time. SR: Unfortunately, that’s exactly what it’s like. Watching Amer- FP: Sarah Schulman has made popular the work of Jasbir K. Puar, ica turn into Celebrity Apprentice. namely her ideas about homo-nationalism and “pinkwashing.” SR: Yes, I know who Sarah Schulman is. I tried to pick up all FP: What are your immediate fears as an individual? the plot dimensions I could. What I was trying to do is make a SR: I’m not particularly afraid of much. You were talking about portrait of a character who had a strong sense that maybe his gen- journalists as well as fiction writers. I do think the attack on the der identity either needed re-assigning or had shifted, but who press is a very dangerous thing in a democracy. One of the things was agonized about it. I wanted somebody for whom it was re- we can stand up for in America is a free press. When the most ally difficult to consider that he might need to change his identity. powerful voices in the land set out to undermine the free press Really, what I was trying to do is to get into that pain, to talk and to shake people’s confidence in what’s presented as the truth, about the pain of people for whom there is no support, for whom that is historically the first step towards authoritarianism that has there are very contradictory feelings and who are not clear about been taken by dictators around the world. First you devalue the who they are. They feel there’s something wrong with the way in truth. Then persuade people that they can only get the truth from which they present [themselves], but they actually are not clear your mouth. Then you can say anything you want. I worry very about who they are and where they wish to go. It was that con- much about attacks on the press, on free expression generally, fusion I wanted to enter into. that we have witnessed in the last six months.

FP: That would be the richest way to portray all the elements of FP: What are your immediate fears for the world? that situation. SR: I hope we’ll still be here in six months. A friend said to me SR: I hope so. I didn’t want to be judgmental or have some kind the other day after only six months of Trump we have people in of lazy attitude. I think literature at its best is not judgmental. It the streets in America and we’re on the brink of nuclear war. I’d doesn’t tell the reader what to think about what’s being por- like the world to survive. I have children and want them to have trayed. Literature at its best creates a world that readers enter, in a proper life in this world. Having had a long period when it ap- which they can be challenged or provoked but in which they peared the threat of nuclear war was receding, it seems we’re make up their minds about the world they were shown around. going in the opposite direction. Having been through a long pe- That’s what I wanted in a novel that deals with aspects of gen- riod of wanting to save the planet, we now see a regression of der identity. that, in this country, at any rate. All of that is of great concern.

FP: That’s one way we might say that literature and journalism FP: In honor of your sense of humor, your optimism, what are intersect. your immediate hopes as an individual? SR: Yes, I don’t really make a big distinction between fiction and SR: My short-term hope is that Trump won’t last, but I know that nonfiction anymore, because I think some of the work I most ad- only means we get Pence. But, you know, I’ll take one asshole at mire is nonfictional. I’m teaching a graduate seminar at NYU on a time. I do place a lot of optimism in the younger generation in the theme of creative nonfiction. I do think the best writing done this country and around the world. They are much more idealis- in the last fifty or sixty years has been highly creative nonfiction, tic, a more environmentally concerned generation, one with a real starting with the New Journalism all the way up to Svetlana Alex- sense of social justice. They also have energy to stand up to it, to ievich, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature. I have great protest, to mobilize, to be activists. It may be that we have to be admiration for the way journalists make a subject imaginatively saved by our children.

14 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE ESSAY The Etymology of Lads

ANDREW HOLLERAN F EVER there were a book that cried out for photo- A Shropshire Lad contains poems that many of us memo- graphs, it’s Peter Parker’s new study of the poet A. E. rized in school: “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now,” “When I Housman and the influence of A Shropshire Lad; but, was one-and-twenty,” “With rue my heart is laden,” “Is my Team alas, there are none. If you want to see a photo of Moses Ploughing?,” and “To an Athlete Dying Young.” There are 63 in Jackson, the athlete with whom Housman fell in love all (though Housman published more in Last Poems, a collection when they were students at Oxford, you’ll have to he assembled when he learned Jackson was dying). Poetry, IGoogle him. Jackson was a handsome, irredeemably straight Housman said in a Cambridge lecture, should produce “that college oarsman and science major. Housman was a bookish thrilling utterance which pierces the heart and brings tears to the homosexual translator of Latin and Greek literature. They met eyes.” The best of his still do. They’re poems that scan, rhyme, during their first year at university, but it was not until they and are easily memorized. They were frequently set to music by roomed together after graduation in London that Housman English composers between the wars. And they were published probably declared his love to Jackson, and Jackson assured him at his urging in cheap editions, so that “the few young men here that he had no interest in that sort of thing. (The poem goes: and there” for whom he wrote them could carry them in their “Because I liked you better/ Than suits a man to say,/ It irked pockets. They are different when you read them again after many you, and I promised/ To throw the thought away.”) years. Some may seem predictable, even formulaic, but they still When Jackson left to run a school in India, Housman remind you of what poetry can do in a way that the hermetic, recorded his slow progress and the increasing distance between solipsistic poems you find, say, in The New Yorker cannot. them in his diary, with entries like “arrives at Bombay this morn- The strangely timeless quality of Housman’s work surely ing,” and “He gets to Karachi at ‘8 o’clock.’” Thirty years later comes from his immersion in Latin literature—especially Ho- Jackson lost his post in India and emigrated to Canada to be- race—which may also explain his indifference to both the Deca- come a farmer, and that was where he died at dent movement and what succeeded it: the age of 63. By then Housman was a lauded modernism. His primary theme is mortality. poet, the author of A Shropshire Lad and Through the magic of art, But it’s not the witty lament over life’s tran- Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge Housman was able to sience that we encounter in the Elizabethans; University. Yet, so great was his love that he transmute his ache for a it’s a deeply stoic melancholy that is, Parker confessed in a letter to the dying Jackson: “I particular student at argues, peculiarly English (though not, he would much rather have followed you round Oxford into a general says mysteriously, “to be confused with the world and blacked your boots.” gloom”). It’s a quality that led Froissart, a his- That last line gives you a sense of it. It lament for the English ‘lad.’ torian of chivalry whom Shakespeare read, to wasn’t just that Housman was in love with observe that “the English take their pleasures Jackson; he felt in some profound way that Jackson was a bet- sadly.” It’s no surprise to learn that Housman admired Matthew ter man than he. Part of this had to do with Jackson being het- Arnold and was a pallbearer at Thomas Hardy’s funeral. erosexual and Housman not. Ten years after Jackson went to The woe in Housman’s poetry, however, was not just Eng- India, Oscar Wilde was put on trial on charges of “gross inde- lish; it was homosexual—like the work of the great pastoral cency.” Housman was living on Hampstead Heath at the time, poet Thomas Gray, whose “Elegy Written in a Country Church- and it was there on his long walks that he composed almost all yard” had a deep influence on Housman. (The most intense ex- of the poems that make up A Shropshire Lad. pression of homosexual isolation that I’ve ever read are Gray’s They were unlike anything else being written at the time. In “The plowman homeward plods his weary way/ And leaves the 1896 the Decadents were writing poetry about urban life and world to darkness and to me.”) Gray wrote in the 18th century, what Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, called in a poem “the Housman in the late 19th and early 20th, but some things had love that dare not speak its name.” A Shropshire Lad,onthe not changed. The prevailing attitude toward homosexuality was other hand, was both pastoral and heterosexual, despite, as still what George V is reputed to have said on learning that Parker puts it, “the faint note of suppressed homosexual desire someone he knew was homosexual: “I thought chaps like that that sounds like a muffled drumbeat throughout the book ... shot themselves.” partly because we know the biographical background to the Parker discusses two young Englishmen who did just that, poems, know what led Housman to write them, know that one in 1895, another in 1951. The first, a soldier named Harry Moses Jackson was their buried mainspring.” Maclean, shot himself three months after the second trial of Oscar Wilde. Housman wrote an angry poem about Wilde’s conviction Andrew Holleran’s fiction includes Dancer from the Dance, Grief, and (“Oh they’re taking him to prison for the colour of his hair”), but The Beauty of Men. the poem inspired by the suicide of Maclean—a newspaper clip-

November–December 2017 15 ping about the inquest was found in Hous- mentioned—which is why scholars had tried man’s copy of A Shropshire Lad—seems Housman Country: to cleanse their translations of Greek mas- written out of complete despair: Into the Heart of England terpieces of any such reference. Housman by Peter Parker was writing out of his isolation as a homo- Shot? so quick, so clean an ending? Farrar Straus & Giroux sexual. But with the magic of art he was able Oh that was right, lad, that was brave: 539 pages, $30. to transmute his ache for a particular student Yours was not an ill for mending, at Oxford into a general lament for the Eng- ’Twas best to take it to the grave ... The Invention of Love lish “lad”—the country boy he had grown Oh soon, and better so than later After long disgrace and scorn, by Tom Stoppard up with whose life, like that of young men You shot dead the household traitor, Grove Press. 112 pages, $14. everywhere, could be darkened by so many the soul that should not have been born. things. It wasn’t the middle-class Jackson through whom Housman expressed his despair, it was the coun- There is another, defiant poem by Housman that goes: “let try boys who were betrayed by friends, murdered, shot, or sent God and man decree/ Laws for themselves and not for me;/ And into battle, as in the Scottish Border Ballads—an earlier tradition if my ways are not as theirs/ Let them mind their own affairs,/ that influenced Housman’s poems. their deeds I judge and much condemn,/ Yet when did I make This is one of Parker’s themes: that Housman was able to ex- laws for them?” But it ends with a note of bitter resignation: press his private angst with a brilliance that made his grief uni- “Keep we must, if keep we can/ These foreign laws of God and versally understood. For instance, Housman was writing about man.” The poem that follows “Shot?” in A Shropshire Lad, the public conscription for the Boer War that he’d witnessed however, echoes the despair inspired by the suicide of Harry growing up, but his poems served as epitaphs for the young men Maclean: “If it chance the eye offend you/ Pluck it out, lad, and who carried copies of his verse into World War I. The celerity be sound:/ ... But play the man, stand up and end you,/ When with which the lads of England became sacrificial lambs on the your sickness is your soul.” fields of France makes the chapter on the war the hardest to read. Housman, John Addington Symonds, Walter Pater, and Oscar The switch from a culture that worshiped youth to one that Wilde were all educated in the classics; yet they lived in a Chris- slaughtered it is still breathtaking. The English architect Edward tian culture that made sex between men the vice that could not be Luytens, Parker points out, not only designed the stage sets for the first production of Peter Pan (J. M. Barrie’s play about “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up”), but also for the Me- morial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval (a town in Picardy, France, where so many of them died). One of the strangest aspects of A Shropshire Lad is its anticipation of the Great War. As the American poet Robert Lowell said: “One feels Housman foresaw the Somme.” Indeed, there is no better example of the stoical detachment with which Housman faced the world than his arguing with his publisher against raising the price of his book during the war because that “diminishes the sale and therefore diminishes my chances of the advertisement to which I am always looking forward: a soldier is to receive a bullet in the breast, and it is to be turned aside from his heart by a copy of A Shropshire Lad which he is carrying there. Hitherto it is only the Bible that has performed this trick.” The last quotation is an example of the ferocious irony with which Housman kept emotion at a distance. It’s not only because of the poetry that Tom Stoppard wrote The Invention of Love, his 1997 play; it’s that Housman was the template of the repressed homosexual, a waspish Cam- bridge don who spent his career editing the Latin writer Manilius—an astronomer who didn’t even write about human beings. Housman may have wanted his poems to go straight to young men’s hearts, but he so rebuffed personal intimacy that even admirers like Willa Cather and E. M. Forster were crushed by attempts to befriend him. Hous- man, one senses, wasn’t about to pretend that any relationship could take the place of his devotion to Jackson, much less one that came about because of the poems he’d written about that love. Cather burst into tears after leaving his apartment. Forster gave up after receiving a letter from the poet so “absolutely hateful” that he destroyed it.

16 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE HIS IS BUT ONE of the fascinating things one learns from Parker’s exhaustively researched account—which even includes an excerpt from a speech Forster gave in which he speculated that the reason Englishmen of Housman’s sort wore moustaches was to conceal the trembling lip when Temotion struck. Parker’s book is really a series of marvelous essays. The first part, a biography of Housman, ends on page 158. What follows is a chapter on the idealization of pastoral England between the wars, and then a detailed survey and evaluation of the efforts by composers who set Housman’s poems to music. Next comes a chapter on World War I; a chapter on postwar Eng- land and another on the returning soldiers’ “rediscovery” of Eng- land, which included hikes to places like Shropshire, song-settings by composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butter- worth, and something called Morris dancing. The final entry is a survey of Housman’s continued appeal that includes a young man reciting a poem in Chinese on YouTube and the pop singer Mor- risey’s recommending that his fans read Housman. (“I thought his poems would be drivel about babies and flowers,” one fan writes, “but it’s really good stuff about suicide.”) And finally, we get the entire text of A Shropshire Lad at the end, so that you may refer to the poems while you’re reading. The joke is that Housman never even saw many of the places referred to in A Shropshire Lad. For someone growing up in Worcestershire, Shropshire was simply a line of hills that formed the western horizon. But if this “land of lost content” with its “blue remembered hills” is indeed romanticized, it’s a persua- sive idyll: a prosperous England at peace, country lanes, lads playing football. Parker’s book meanders like one of the rivers in Shropshire past one interesting thing after another. Like The Invention of Love, Housman’s Country is a love letter to a van- ished time. What the poet cries out for in his final speech in Stop- pard’s play is “Oxford in the Golden Age!” Still, there is nothing time-bound about the issues Housman faced. “We all have our Moses Jacksons,” Parker writes at the close (and, he might have added, our version of Manilius as well: those pursuits with which we kill our time on earth), and we all know that young men still kill themselves because they see no future as homosexuals— which is why the writer Dan Savage launched the “It gets better” campaign in the U.S. What made Housman’s devotion to Jackson so familiar was not that he was attracted to a straight man but that this attraction seems to have been mixed with a sense of abjection—the feeling that Jackson, the handsome heterosexual athlete, was the man Housman should have been. Jackson, when he returned briefly to England from India to get married, did not even invite Housman to his wedding, which Housman had to learn of from a friend after the fact, as if Housman’s love would have con- taminated or contradicted the ceremony. Indeed, if there is anything to be gleaned from reading Parker and Stoppard, it may be that the long opening of the closet in 19th-century England— from Walter Pater to Edward Carpenter, John Addington Symonds, Housman, Henry James, E. M. Forster, J. R. Ackerley, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Alan Turing (another suicide), and Joe Orton (murdered)—may have been in large part about the problem of reconciling being homosexual with the ideal of being virtuous. And yet, despite Jackson’s rejection, Housman does not seem

November–December 2017 17 to have led an entirely bleak life. The two men stayed in touch think so.” Other countries have a similar homosexual tradition, throughout their lives. Housman’s less closeted brother Laurence, Parker points out, but: “It is no surprise that Robbie Ross, Oscar a playwright (Victoria Regina), was convinced that Housman did Wilde’s friend and champion, learned parts of A Shropshire Lad sleep with Moses’ equally handsome younger brother, Adalbert, by heart so that he could recite them to the playwright when he who died young, as in a Housman poem. And although Housman was in prison. Housman sent Wilde a copy of his poems when the failed his exams at Oxford as an undergraduate—some think playwright was released in May 1897. ‘I have been reading your under the strain of his love for Jackson—and he had to take a job brother’s lovely lyrical poems,’ Wilde wrote to Laurence Hous- as a clerk, he eventually became a Cambridge don—not nearly as man.” (Traces of Housman, Parker notes, are discernible in The miserable as Gerard Manley Hopkins, an earlier and I think Ballad of Reading Gaol.) The Invention of Love not only drama- greater poet who repressed his love of another man, surrendered tizes the relationship between Jackson and the poet but gives us a his life to the Catholic Church, didn’t even publish his poems, quick history of British homophobia, from Labouchere (author of and died in exile. Housman liked Paris, though what he did there the eponymous 1885 legislative amendment that criminalized sex- is less clear. “The truth is,” Parker writes, ual relations between men) to a late appearance by Wilde, who ends the play in a debate with Housman. that although we now know a good deal about Housman’s emo- Toward the end of his book, Parker examines the etymology tional life, we still know absolutely nothing about his sex life. of the word “lad.” In Housman a “lad” means the sturdy English W. H. Auden may have been “pretty sure” that Housman was yeoman, “handsome of face and handsome of heart,” the idol in “an anal passive,” but he based this assertion on nothing more the idyll, plowing his field, playing sports, doomed to suffer ro- than a hunch and a wish to shock the readers of The New Yorker. The Parisian male prostitutes and the affair with the Ve- mantic betrayal, conscription, early death. During World War I, netian gondolier, referred to in some books as if established Paul Fussell said, lad meant “a beautiful brave doomed boy.” fact, not only have no verifiable substance but have been more For the so-called Uranian poets (more frank, less published, than or less conclusively proved to be biographical misreadings. the Decadents), a lad was a sunnier, more pæderastic ideal, like those nude boys swimming in the paintings of Henry Tuke. But Still, Housman remains one of the key figures in the history of in Housman the lad is always associated with misery. Ezra homosexuality in Britain, that roster of writers that led the Amer- Pound wrote a parody: “The bird sits on the hawthorn tree/ But ican critic Paul Fussell to ask: “Do the British have a special tal- he dies also, presently./ Some lads get hung, and some get shot/ ent for such passions? An enquirer turning over the names of late Woeful is this human lot.” Housman, who started out as a writer 19th- and early 20th-century literary worthies might be led to of light verse, put it this way: “This is for all ill-treated fellows/ Unborn and unbegot,/ For them to read when they’re in trouble/ And I am not.” Nowadays the word “lad” connotes the hero of a Nick Hornby novel, or the young drunks who get so violent at soccer games abroad that certain Baltic countries will not allow them in, or the lovers in “My Beautiful Laundrette,” in which Daniel Day-Lewis played the gay boyfriend of a Pakistani immigrant. But the quality common to lads of different eras is simply their vulnerability. Housman’s first intimation of mortality was his mother’s death when he was twelve, and it may be that loss that lies beneath the tragic vision of A Shropshire Lad—and the fu- tility of his love for Moses Jackson, or a particularly English melancholy. Some people find the latter to be mawkish, senti- mental, and self-pitying, like the lyrics of Appalachian or country music, in which the singer is always getting shafted. But when the poems succeed, there’s no denying the beauty and rhythm of Housman’s language. Gore Vidal predicted that in the future people would gossip about writers’ lives and not bother to read their work. Housman illustrates that to some degree. He will always stand for the tragedy of a love that had to be repressed. He has become a mon- ument to British reserve. It’s the power of what is not said in the poems, Parker argues, that’s the secret of their effectiveness. And while everything is said by everyone about everything these days, and homosexuality could not be more out of the closet in England and the U.S., human nature remains the same. We do all have our Moses Jacksons—which is why the poems still retain their power, even in countries where gay men can marry, raise children, go on Grindr, and take Truvada to deter a disease that wiped out their immediate predecessors almost as quickly as World War I exterminated the lads of Housman’s England.

18 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE ESSAY Thomas Mann’s Secret Sharer

JEFFREY MEYERS ANY MODERN WRITERS had agoniz- enjoyed.” ing relations with their disturbed children. Using Klaus’s nickname—based on baby Erika’s mispro- Joseph Conrad’s son was imprisoned for nunciation of “Klausi”—Thomas blissfully wrote: “Eissi at the embezzlement; James Joyce’s daughter moment enchants me.” Intruding on Klaus when he was un- became insane; Robert Frost’s son killed dressed and washing himself, he noted in an astonishing entry: himself; Ernest Hemingway severed rela- “Am enraptured with Eissi: frighteningly handsome in the bath. Mtions with his mentally ill son, who became a tormented trans- Find it very natural that I should be in love with my son.” Ex- sexual. Thomas Mann fathered six children in symmetrical cited but frightened by these feelings, he insisted that they were pairs—girl-boy, boy-girl, girl-boy—between 1905 and 1919. His natural. He was also pleased to discover, while prowling around three oldest children—Erika, Klaus and Golo—were homosex- the house, what he euphemistically called “nonsense” (Unsinn): ual; Klaus and Michael, the youngest, committed suicide. Klaus his two sons engaged in mutual masturbation: “I heard some enjoyed the advantages of his father’s culture, wealth, fame, noise in the boys’ room and came upon Eissi totally nude and up prestige, and influence, but found it difficult to free himself from to some nonsense in Golo’s bed. Deeply struck by his radiant his father and establish an independent identity. adolescent body, overwhelming.” Thomas was not unduly dis- Thomas Mann had had homosexual affairs before marrying turbed to find that his erotic obsession with Klaus made him Katia Pringsheim, and afterwards still had powerful, though re- impotent with his tolerant wife: “Doubtless this stimulation fail- pressed, yearnings for young men. His subtle homosexual ure can be accounted for by the presence of desires that are di- themes appeared in Tonio Kröger and Death in Venice.InMario rected the other way. How would it be if a young man were ‘at and the Magician, the conjuror Cipolla hypnotizes the hand- my disposal?’” The implication is that if he had a homosexual some young Mario, who is humiliated and forced to kiss him in “other life,” he could get an erection with a young man. public. Thomas recorded his homosexual experiences in his In his biography of Thomas, Anthony Heilbut stated that Diary, which he left behind in Munich when Klaus later “spent many stoned hours specu- he later went into exile and was afraid that When Klaus was eleven, lating on his father’s ‘abnormality,’ as if that the Nazis would seize and use them to de- Thomas Mann seemed might supply a common bond.” But neither stroy his reputation. (The English translation Klaus nor Heilbut provided a convincing ex- of 1982 censored or suppressed many sensa- to possess an in-house planation of Thomas’ weird behavior. In the tional passages.) Thomas chose to suppress Tadzio who matched the end, Thomas did not go as far as Lawrence his homosexuality by marrying and enjoying idealized adolescent Durrell and the religious sculptor Eric Gill, a secure life. Though he would encourage in Death in Venice. who slept with their daughters, or Djuna Klaus’ homosexuality, he expected the son Barnes, who had sex with her grandmother. to follow his respectable path. However, during Klaus’ adolescence, father and son were In May 1918, when Klaus was eleven years old and strug- secret sharers of a covert homosexual identity. Thomas initiated gling with the changes of puberty, Thomas seemed to possess an Klaus into homosexual practices that he himself had physically, in-house Tadzio who matched Aschenbach’s idealized adoles- but not emotionally, repressed. As a child, aware of his father’s cent in Death in Venice.InhisDiary he recorded, “I am really sexual obsession, Klaus flirted with Thomas to attract the at- pleased to have such a beautiful boy as a son. ... His naked tention he desperately needed from his formal and distant fa- bronzed body left me unsettled.” Two years later, from May to ther. As an adult, he acted out Thomas’ homosexual desires and July 1920, Thomas revealed his forbidden feelings for Klaus. fantasies. Thomas’ erotic fantasies were both narcissistic and The normally undemonstrative Thomas described using physi- quasi-incestuous. He was strongly attracted to the idea of in- cal gestures and soothing words about platonic man-to-man love cest. In Song of the Little Children (1918), he exalted the con- to justify and make his son accept his own rash behavior: “I cept and declared that “incest could be seen as a highly refined made Klaus aware of my inclination with my caresses and by version of marital love.” In his historical novel The Holy Sinner persuading him to be of good cheer.” Continuing to stroke his (1951), Pope Gregory, a child of incest, unwittingly enters an in- son and attributing his own perverse feelings to the boy, he com- cestuous marriage. But after his first dangerous sexual impulse, mented on Klaus’ youthful writing, their common endeavor, Thomas had to keep Klaus at a safe distance. “while sitting on his bed and caressing him which, I believe, he As Klaus grew up, he had to come to terms with an overwhelming force in his own life as well as with a writer of genius Jeffrey Meyers’33 books have been translated into fourteen languages and mythical public figure. Thomas’ patrician background and and seven alphabets. One of his recent books is Thomas Mann’s Artist- dignified appearance, his forceful character and fame as a Heroes (2014). writer, the adoration he received from his wife and servants, in-

November–December 2017 19 spired awe and reverence in Klaus. fies his respectable father in his In their upper-class and extremely autobiographical story “Disorder rigid household, the children re- and Early Sorrow” (1925): “Bert is mained remote from their parents. blond and seventeen. He intends to They had a separate nursery and get done with school somehow, were mainly brought up by nurse- anyhow, and fling himself into the maids, governesses, and tutors. arms of life. He will be a dancer, Their father was exceptionally or a cabaret actor, possibly even a withdrawn except for a brief hour waiter—but not a waiter anywhere or so each day when they fiercely else save at Cairo, the night-club, competed for his interest. whither he has once already taken Handsome, intelligent, and suc- flight, at five in the morning, and cessful, Klaus was also disturbed been brought back crestfallen.” and tormented. Like Thomas, Klaus Thomas assumed his characteristi- went into exile when Hitler took cally ironic attitude toward his pre- power and became active in anti- cocious, impatient, and ambitious Nazi politics. He edited the high- son (“crestfallen” suggests sexual brow magazines Die Sammlung dysfunction), who recklessly flung (The Collection) in 1933, an exiles’ himself into life and became a fa- journal published in Holland, and mous, worldwide cabaret actor. Decision in 1940. Thomas, hoping Later on, W. H. Auden thought to protect his valuable Munich Klaus was “wasting his life in New house and possessions and unwill- York, pretending too much and ing to publicly oppose the Nazis in achieving too little.” Thomas con- 1933, refused to write for Die Klaus Mann, ca. 1932 firmed this judgment by telling Sammlung, but he did publish in the wartime Decision. Klaus Klaus: “For a long time people did not take you seriously, re- reported on the Spanish Civil War, and Thomas was proud that garded you as a spoiled brat and a humbug; there was nothing his son served in the psychological warfare branch of the U.S. I could do about that.” Army. Klaus wrote several novels, most notably Mephisto Thomas, a self-absorbed deity with an artist’s overwhelming (1936), based on the spectacular career of the pro-Nazi actor ego, was completely absorbed in his work and habitually treated Gustaf Gründgens, his lover and Erika’s sometime husband, who Klaus with benign neglect. Klaus wrote that his father main- was patronized and protected by Hermann Göring. He also pub- tained a similar attitude toward both his son and his fictional lished his autobiography, The Turning Point (1942), which cel- characters: “observant irony, half-amused, half-skeptical; in- ebrated his homosexual heroes with biographies of “Mad” King dulgent, understanding and moderately curious as to what was Ludwig of Bavaria, Peter Tchaikovsky, and André Gide; and he going to happen next.” Thomas, who was often alarmed about adopted Jean Cocteau as his mentor. impending disasters, couldn’t possibly approve of a son who Christopher Isherwood, who knew Klaus in the louche was financially dependent on his parents throughout his adult precincts of Berlin and Los Angeles, observed the contradiction life—as well as a homosexual and a drug addict. As Klaus wrote between his apparent and real character: “On the surface, as al- in his diary: “I perceive, again, very strongly and not without ways, Klaus was bright, witty and seemingly interested in what bitterness, [father’s] complete coldness to me. Whether benign, was going on in the world around him. He had a lot of courage whether irritated (a very curious kind of ‘embarrassment’ at the and he tended to keep the melancholic side of his nature hid- existence of his son): never interested, never engaged in any den. ... He felt, with an extraordinary intensity, the sadness and real sense with me.” Klaus had to endure his frightening father’s cruelty of life.” Like Adrian Leverkühn in Thomas Mann’s Doc- intimidating silence, severity, irritation, and anger. tor Faustus (1947), Klaus committed a series of Faustian trans- Klaus defined his own identity as a writer in relation to his gressions. Heilbut wrote that “Klaus’ characteristic blend of father. His literary efforts were inevitably criticized by review- voyeurism, narcissism, melancholy and nostalgia is a self-con- ers either for exploiting Thomas’ famous name or for failing to sciously decadent, if not campy, variation on his father’s equal his titanic achievement. In Klaus’ memoirs, he is torn be- themes.” Klaus described himself as a hooked fish and admit- tween veneration and rivalry, between a desire to bask in his fa- ted that his provocative and scandalous behavior made Thomas, ther’s greatness and to reveal his human failings. He took care always keen to protect his dignified image, deeply ashamed: to conceal the cracks in the family façade and never managed to “Having begun my career in his shadow, I wriggled and floun- explain why he felt crippled, even crushed, by his father’s over- dered and made myself rather conspicuous for fear of being to- whelming presence and leadership of the anti-fascist exiles. It tally overwhelmed. ... What I failed to realize was the amount seemed expedient, Klaus wrote of himself in the third person of embarrassment my eccentricities caused my father.” It’s and with a significant proviso, “to exploit his father’s prestige hardly surprising that Thomas, ignoring his own responsibility and contacts. But his vanity, or his sense of honor, prevented for Klaus’ problems, strenuously disapproved of the adult son him from doing so—at least, for a while.” for whom he’d had such high hopes. The anti-Nazi context of Klaus and Erika’s memoir, Escape Thomas portrayed Klaus as a rebellious teenager who de- to Life (1939), demanded a dignified and flattering portrait of

20 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE Thomas as leader of the German emigration. But there were and terrible death. Klaus had survived Nazism, exile, and war, some hints, between the lines, of his repressive power and god- but he seemed to have an unlimited pharmacopoeia that in- like authority at home. They recalled that they seldom saw their cluded cocaine, heroin, morphine, opium, and Demerol. father, who demanded absolute quiet during his morning work Thomas refused to take Klaus’ drug addiction seriously and hours and when he rested and wrote letters in the afternoon. claimed that his son took morphine only in moderation. There were “terrible moments” when he suddenly appeared to Infected with syphilis and poisoned by arsenic treatments, yell at them for disturbing his writing. They associated him with too weak to break his drug habit, the victim of miserable ho- the vague smell of cigar smoke, eau de cologne, and dust from mosexual adventures and beatings from rough-trade sailors, his books. “He did not seem to trouble his head about us,” they Klaus was alienated from both his parents and from Erika, for recalled. “He thought it was better to give us ‘a living example’ whom he had incestuous desires. He was lonely, uprooted and than to make any attempt to bring us up in the way [he believed] homeless, blocked as a writer, unable to publish his works in we should go. The atmosphere of our home [had] the feeing of Germany, and bitterly disillusioned about conditions in postwar spiritual responsibility, the discipline of work, the regularity of Europe. Klaus made several unsuccessful suicide attempts, and life.” In fact, Klaus rejected these bourgeois values throughout Thomas, though noting his son’s perilous connection to Carla his rebellious and self-destructive adult life. and ignoring his pleas for sympathy, refused to visit him in the Always eager for his father’s approval and constantly dis- hospital. On July 12, 1948, he told Theodor Adorno: “I am appointed at not getting it, Klaus sadly confessed: “He never somewhat angry with him for having tried to do that to his seemed to remember exactly with whom I lived, which book I mother, whose steadfast understanding over the years had was working on, or where I had been spending the time since he spoiled him. ... The situation remains dangerous. My two sisters had seen me last.” The most Thomas could offer, while noting committed suicide, and Klaus has much of the elder sister in Klaus’ notorious escapades, was a solemn jocularity that seemed him. The impulse is present in him.” In Cannes in May 21, to foresee failure: “Good luck, my son! ... And come home when 1949, Klaus finally killed himself with an overdose of sleeping you are wretched and forlorn!” Home provided a comfortable pills, slit wrists, and a gas oven. refuge but did not offer emotional support. On the day Klaus died, Thomas, on a lecture tour, placed In a key passage, Klaus tries to define himself in opposition public duty above family responsibility. He wrote to Alfred to Thomas, but ends by submitting to his profound influence: “I Knopf: “In Sweden the tragic news reached us, and our first prided myself on being disorderly and eccentric, as my father is idea was to give up the whole trip. But eventually I decided to punctual and disciplined. I reveled in mysticism, for I thought fulfill my lecturing obligations, and I believe this was the right him a skeptic. ... He is by instinct and tradition a Protestant: I thing to do.” Heilbut explained Thomas’ rather cold, self-pro- was attracted to Catholicism. With the exception of Nietzsche, tective reaction by stating that either “Klaus’ drug addiction and most of the great men in whose works and characters he took continual cries for help had exhausted his family, or that the particular interest left me rather cool.” highly ‘theatrical’ gesture (the adjective he used to describe Critical and dismissive, Thomas judged his children with Carla’s suicide) demanded an equally public act of defiance.” implacable severity, and Klaus sadly affirmed: “It is no easy job In a letter to Hermann Hesse dated July 6, 1949, Thomas to be the child of a genius.” Klaus felt that no matter what he gave another, more anguished explanation of his response to achieved as a writer, he could never (as suggested by the title of Klaus’ suicide: his memoir, Escape to Life) escape from his father and live his own life. He agreed with one of Tolstoy’s children, who ex- His case is so very strange and painful, such skill, charm, cos- mopolitanism, and in his heart a death wish. ... My thoughts plained: “Nothing can be worse than being the son of a great dwell sorrowfully on his abbreviated life. My relationship to man. Whatever you do, people compare you with your father.” him was difficult, and not without feelings of guilt, for my very Klaus lamented that Thomas “triumphs wherever he goes. Shall existence cast a shadow on him from the start. Yet as a young I ever get out from under his shadow? Will my strength last so man in Munich he was a high-spirited prince who did a great long? In a word, ‘great men’ should certainly not have sons.” many provocative things. Later, in exile, he became far more Thomas agreed that “someone like me should obviously not serious and moral, and truly industrious as well; but he worked bring children into the world.” with such facility and speed that there is a scattering of flaws But these statements meant quite different things to each of and oversights in his books. Who can say when he began to them. Klaus meant that he was doomed to be constantly over- develop the death impulse which was so mysteriously at variance with his surface sunniness, geniality, facility, and cos- whelmed by his father. Thomas meant that his secret sexuality mopolitanism? Inexorably, in spite of all our support and love, doomed him to produce homosexual misfits. Thomas, the self- he destroyed himself, for at the end he no longer reacted to styled Goethe of the 20th century, wrote of Goethe’s son Au- thoughts of loyalty, gratitude, consideration for others. gust in his novel Lotte in Weimar (1939): “To be the son of a great man is a high fortune, a considerable advantage. But it is Here Thomas begins by admitting feelings of guilt and taking likewise an oppressive burden, a permanent derogation of one’s some responsibility for Klaus’ suicide. He then contrasts Klaus’ ego.” literary faults with his own hard-earned perfection and con- Thomas’ two sisters and two sons all committed suicide. In fesses that he doesn’t understand the motives for his son’s self- July 1910, his sister Carla, blackmailed and then jilted by her destruction. In their memoir, Klaus and Erika perceptively lover, took cyanide. Distancing himself from that tragic event, defined the great theme of Thomas’ work—and of their lives— Klaus called it “an exquisitely botched attempt at theater.” In as “the motive of a love which burns the more unquenchably Doctor Faustus Thomas portrayed Carla’s failure as an actress just because it is hopeless.”

November–December 2017 21 ESSAY Inside West Side Story

DAVID LAFONTAINE N SEPTEMBER 26, 1957, West Side Story actor Montgomery Clift, who was playing the part of Romeo premiered on Broadway at the Winter Garden and sought Robbins’ assistance in making the role more relat- Theater and was instantly hailed as a mile- able to audiences. Clift and Robbins were lovers for several stone in the history of American musical the- years. His idea for a modern-day Romeo and Juliet emerged at ater. Arthur Laurents’ script presented an this time and was thus intertwined in Robbins’ psyche with a updated version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and homosexual relationship. OJuliet in which the star-crossed lovers were placed in Manhat- The result was a scenario about two young people in love, tan in the 1950s. Shakespeare’s Romeo became Tony, the son of one Jewish and one Catholic, which would take place during Polish immigrants, and Juliet became Maria, a teenager who the celebrations of Passover and Easter. The play would be had recently emigrated from Puerto Rico. The feuding Capulets called East Side Story. In 1949, Robbins approached Arthur and Montagues had their counterparts in the rival gangs known Laurents and Leonard Bernstein about creating a musical based as the Jets and the Sharks. on this concept. From its inception, the play was connected with Infused throughout West Side Story is a gay sensibility that’s intolerance and social barriers, subjects that resonated with the expressed subtextually in the relationship between the hero Tony three men, all of whom were Jewish as well as gay (or at least and Riff, the leader of the Jets, and choreographically through struggling with being gay). the homoeroticism of the all-male dance sequences. Equally bold In 1955, after a long hiatus, the project came back to life, but is the inclusion of the character named Anybodys, a teenage girl the story was radically recast to focus on racial rather than reli- who identifies as a male and longs to be accepted as a full mem- gious prejudice. Shakespeare’s senseless feud between the Ca- ber of the Jets. Anybodys is Broadway’s first transgender youth. pulets and the Montagues was transmuted into gang rivalry Along with Arthur Laurents, composer Leonard Bernstein, underpinned by racism. Jerome Robbins agreed to be director as director-choreographer Jerome Robbins, and lyricist Stephen well as choreographer, and when Laurents recruited the virtually Sondheim were all in various stages of com- unknown 25-year-old songwriter Stephen ing to terms with their homosexuality in the Celebrating sixty years of Sondheim to be co-lyricist with Bernstein, oppressive atmosphere of 1950s America. West Side Story and the the creative team was complete. With the exception of Sondheim, the creators Few figures in the history of Broadway of West Side Story had narrowly escaped pro- four gay men who created musicals have engendered more controversy fessional ruin during the anti-gay and anti- the landmark musical than Jerome Robbins. Tormented by inner Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era. conflicts related to his homosexuality, he By 1957, the persecutions were essentially over, the far Right routinely abused and humiliated the large cast of singers, ac- was in retreat, and West Side Story afforded four gay men an op- tors, and dancers. At times he even berated his three collabora- portunity to create a work of art that challenged prejudice and af- tors in front of the production team. firmed the power of love in defiance of social norms. Robbins had a tumultuous life history. In 1943 he joined the Reviewers praised West Side Story for its sociological bold- Communist Party, attracted by the party’s promotion of minor- ness and for changing the face of the American musical theater, ity and workers’ rights, apparently unaware of the party’s hos- but they did not comment, at least publicly, on the gay subtext tility towards homosexuality. His left-wing politics made him a of character relationships or the homoeroticism of the dancing. target for reactionary forces in the McCarthy era. Ed Sullivan, Sixty years after its premiere in New York City, the musical de- a columnist for the New York Daily News, threatened to expose serves to be revisited, including the gay elements that tiptoe his affairs with men if Robbins did not cooperate with the House through the story along with an overall gay sensibility that Un-American Activities Committee. shows up in the story, the lyrics, and the dancing. The sexual The outcome damned Robbins eternally in the eyes of many proclivities of the four collaborators, far from being irrelevant, in the entertainment industry: On May 5, 1953, Robbins testified served as a rich source of creative inspiration. voluntarily before the House Un-American Activities Commit- tee, giving the names of colleagues he said were communists. JEROME ROBBINS:ORIGINS OF THE MUSICAL That Bernstein and Laurents were willing to give Robbins a sec- Robbins is credited by his collaborators with the original con- ond chance by working with him on West Side Story testifies to cept for the musical. In 1948, he enrolled in the famous Actors the deep bond among the three men. Robbins himself may have Studio, where “The Method” was taught. One of his peers was seen West Side Story, with its progressive social message, as a chance to redeem himself after his act of betrayal. David LaFontaine is a professor in the English Department at Mas- As West Side Story’s choreographer, Robbins came into the sasoit Community College in Massachusetts. fullness of his genius and emerged as the most innovative Amer-

22 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE ican choreographer of his generation. The play’s first scene relies entirely on dance and music to convey the history of the Jets, a gang of white youths. In this all-male “Pro- logue,” Robbins subverts macho stereotypes by having the street-tough, violent young men engage in graceful, bal- letic movements. The sensual dancing establishes the bonds of love among the gang members and radiates a dis- tinctly homoerotic sexual energy. While Robbins’ perfectionism yielded memorable results on stage, the pressures that mounted in the months before the premiere also brought out the worst in him. While tyrannical with the company as a whole, he singled out the male lead, Larry Kert, for particular cruelty. Cast as Tony, Maria’s lover, Larry Kert was a rarity in the 1950s: an openly gay actor. Robbins clearly knew Kert was gay when the role was cast, but at some point before the premiere his attitude towards his leading actor changed. One day during rehearsal of the rumble scene in which Left to Right: Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, Harold Prince, Bernardo kills Riff and then Tony retaliates by killing Robert Griffith, Leonard Bernstein, and Jerome Robbins on the WSS set. Bernardo, Robbins became frustrated with Kert’s movements. in Hollywood. Living as a male couple in the 1950s meant the Arthur Laurents recounts the painful scene in his memoir: daily risk of harassment and professional ruin. Thus forbidden “’Faggot!’ Jerry shouted at him over and over. ‘Do you have to love was very much on Laurents’ mind as he was writing West walk like a faggot? Can’t you move like a man, you faggot!’” Side Story. The relationship between Riff, the leader of the Jets, Depressed by his abusive director, Larry Kert nevertheless and his best friend Tony is central to the plot. Riff has lived with went on to triumph on the Broadway stage as Tony. His full- Tony and his family for four years, and while Tony is drifting bodied, lyric tenor voice is preserved on the original cast album. away from the Jets, Riff is determined to hold onto him. Kert’s characterization of Tony as a sensitive dreamer, weary The erotic nature of the bond between Riff and Tony is con- of macho violence, has set the standard for interpretations of veyed in Act I, scene II in an exchange of internally rhyming the role in the many revivals since 1957. The show ran for 732 phrases that is a pattern in their conversation. In pleading with performances on Broadway and was viewed by critics as Rob- Tony to come to the dance and maintain his connection with the bins’ particular triumph. At the 1958 Tony Awards, Robbins was Jets, Riff invokes their history together when he says: “Because the only one of the four to be honored with a Tony Award for his it’s me asking. Womb to tomb!” “Sperm to worm!,” replies work on the musical, winning in the category of choreography. Tony, sexing things up. Running through the relationship be- When it came to the award for Best Musical, West Side Story tween Riff and Tony is a subtext that’s romantic and sexual, lost to a feel-good show about marching bands and wholesome reminiscent of Coney and Finch in Home of the Brave. Viewing Americana called The Music Man. Tony as a bisexual man, in love with both Riff and Maria, in- tensifies the dramatic tension in the play and augments the ARTHUR LAURENTS’SOCIAL REALISM theme of love that defies social norms. Updating Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the most famous The tragic turning point in West Side Story is the rumble love story in the English language, was a creative challenge that scene, Act I, scene 4, in which Tony’s attempt to stop the fight- might have defeated a playwright with less talent than Arthur ing between the two gangs has fatal consequences. Riff is killed Laurents. Born in 1918, making him the same age as Robbins by Bernardo and Tony retaliates by stabbing Bernardo, Maria’s and Bernstein, by the 1950s Laurents was one of America’s brother. His killing of Bernardo is a crime of passion, a response most renowned playwrights and screenwriters. to losing the man he has loved for so long. Tony is a tragic vic- His first play, Home of the Brave, premiered in New York in tim, and the real culprit is a culture defined by racism, homo- 1945 and won critical acclaim. The autobiographical hero, phobia, and macho violence. Coney, is a Jewish soldier who’s embittered by the anti-Semi- The atmosphere of sexual rebellion is reinforced by Lau- tism around him. In Original Story By, Laurents’ memoir, he rents’ invention of a character named Anybodys, who is not characterizes the relationship between Coney and his buddy based on any character in Romeo and Juliet. Anybodys is a Finch as psychologically homosexual. Both Home of the Brave teenage girl who dresses in the male uniform of the Jets, talks and West Side Story were informed by Laurents’ experience of tough, fights effectively, and longs to join the gang. Laurents’ prejudice as a gay man and a Jew. He writes: “My first play and sympathetic portrait of Anybodys as a transgender youth is a my first musical center on prejudice. Possibly a coincidence, Broadway milestone. As the play progresses, Anybodys grows probably not, but no matter: a decade after the play, I still had in stature. She saves Tony from being arrested after the rumble, more than enough anger to fire the musical.” and later that night she bravely infiltrates the Sharks’ territory In 1955, when East Side Story became West Side Story and and learns that Chino is searching for Tony with a gun. If Any- Laurents began writing in earnest, the author was grappling with bodys were empowered by the Jets, she might have assisted prejudice on a daily basis due to his decision to move in with his Tony in his plan to leave New York with Maria, thus saving him lover, Tom Hatcher, a handsome, blond actor whom he had met from being murdered.

November–December 2017 23 Drawing upon his own experiences as a gay, Jewish man in opened in Washington, the reviews completely ignored Sond- the 1950s, Laurents sends an emotionally resonant, socially sub- heim, and he became despondent. In an extraordinarily mag- versive message in West Side Story. The deaths of three major nanimous gesture, Bernstein offered to remove his own name as characters by the end, including the hero Tony with whom co-lyricist, giving Sondheim the full writing credit in order to Arthur Laurents so strongly identifies, is a scathing commentary boost his career. How many of Bernstein’s lyrics survive in the on the misguided traditions that ruin lives and destroy love. musical that opened in New York is a matter of conjecture. A song that is quintessential Bernstein for its romantic qual- LEONARD BERNSTEIN:COMPOSING THE DREAM ities may well contain lyrics he wrote for Tony and Maria after Of the four gay men who created West Side Story, Bernstein was the deaths of Riff and Bernardo. The ballad is called “Some- a genuine celebrity of the era. For many years the conductor of where” and expresses a yearning of the lovers to be free from the prestigious New York Philharmonic, Bernstein’s classical their hostile surroundings. “There’s a place for us,/ A time and compositions included three symphonies, but it was ultimately place for us./ Hold my hand and we’re halfway there./ Hold my his music for West Side Story that would come to be regarded as hand and I’ll take you there./ Somewhere.” It might be supposed his masterpiece. that Bernstein’s dream of finding “a new way of living” has per- Love and sexuality were as important to Bernstein as his sonal overtones related to his longing for the freedom to express passion for music. He first acted on his sexual feelings for men his true sexual nature. Writes Bernstein biographer Allan in his youth, most likely during his years as a musical prodigy Shawn: “He had no personal experience of gang violence, but at Harvard University. In his early twenties he forged connec- he certainly knew anti-Semitism and surely, like all his collab- tions with luminaries in the classical music world such as Aaron orative team, understood sexual intolerance and the risk of ad- Copland. He scored his first triumph in New York when he com- mitting to a love that violated social norms.” posed the music for the ballet Fancy Free (1944), which was choreographed by Jerome Robbins, with whom Bernstein may STEPHEN SONDHEIM:SOMETHING’S COMING have had an affair. A theatrical neophyte compared to his three collaborators and Bernstein’s years in New York were a time of sexual free- twelve years their junior, Stephen Sondheim was also in an early dom and intense creative output, with writing the music for hit stage of understanding his homosexual identity. Since his youth, musicals such as On The Town and Wonderful Town. But his when he was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, who became growing fame and, very likely, the FBI’s knowledge of his sex- a surrogate father to him, Sondheim had nurtured the seemingly uality resulted in Bernstein being blacklisted by CBS Radio and impossible dream of having a musical produced on Broadway TV in 1950. The fear of being destroyed professionally may by the time he was thirty. Writing the lyrics for West Side Story have contributed to his decision to try to counter his homosex- was the break of a lifetime. The daily collaboration with three ual nature by getting married to Felicia Montealegre, an actress. gay men whom he admired deeply must have been amazing, a Be it noted that Bernstein was the only one of the four collabo- hint of things to come. Tony’s opening song, “Something’s rators to be married. His sexual relationships with men did not Coming,” captures this spirit of anticipation. The song is a mu- end with his marriage, however. By the mid-1950s, the truth of sical soliloquy in which Tony expresses an all-consuming desire his sexual nature had become apparent to Felicia, as indicated to meet someone who will change his life forever. “With a click, in a frank letter she wrote to her husband in the early years of with a shock,/ Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock,/ Open the latch!/ their married life. Something’s coming, don’t know when, but it’s soon—/ Catch Conforming to an outwardly traditional role did not dimin- the moon,/ One-handed catch!” The yearning is expressed in ish Bernstein’s charisma or attractiveness. At the time of West gender-neutral terms, allowing for an open interpretation of Side Story, he was in his late thirties, extroverted and ebullient, Tony’s sexuality. The “something” he awaits could be any- with a zest for life and a passion for political causes, including thing—something unprecedented, perhaps taboo, that might the new nation of Israel. Photographs reveal a strikingly hand- turn out to be wonderful. some man with a shock of hair over his forehead, blending the Many of Sondheim’s lyrics in West Side Story are rich with image of the wild maestro with the debonair charm of Cary sociological implications and psychological darkness. In depict- Grant. He once described the relationship between himself as a ing the lives and thought patterns of gang members and alienated conductor and the members of his orchestra as follows: “One youths, Sondheim’s lyrics are sardonic, hip, and surprisingly rides on something like waves of love which are dictated by the graphic for the late 1950s. The song “Gee, Officer Krupke” is a composer. It is sort of sexual.” blistering, hilarious attack on socially defined concepts of nor- Bernstein’s musical score for West Side Story is considered mality. Riff and the Jets thumb their noses at a range of social au- by many musicologists to be the finest ever composed for a thorities: the agents of the law, psychologists, social workers, and Broadway musical. The sound is youthful, modern, jazzy, and the family. An oddly suggestive passage goes like this: “Gee, Of- erotic, as exemplified by the “Prologue,” the all-male opening fice Krupke,/ We’re down on our knees,/ ‘Cause no one wants a that introduces the Jets and the Sharks. The finger-snapping that fella with a social disease.” The youths’ anger at the buffoonish punctuates the dance, the use of musical dissonance, and the Officer Krupke perfectly expresses the anger felt by homosexu- brassy explosions of sound create a sexually charged musical als in the 1950s at a society that reduced them to criminals. texture which, accompanying Robbins’ sensual choreography Sondheim’s original ending to the song was intended to for the male dancers, conveys a homoerotic feeling. shock audiences and be a Broadway first: “Gee, Officer In composing the score, Bernstein became very close to the Krupke—Fuck you!” However, the salty language was nixed young Stephen Sondheim, his co-lyricist. When the show by Columbia Records, the producer of the original cast album,

24 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE on the grounds that obscenity laws would make it illegal to ship It would be an understatement to say that Stephen Sondheim the album across state lines. Bernstein saved the day by coming achieved his dream of writing both the music and the lyrics for up with the phrase “Krup you!,” which was more subtle and de- Broadway musicals. To mention only a few of his better-known lighted the creative team. Broadway musicals—A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The sensational success of West Side Story launched Sond- the Forum, Company, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music— heim into Broadway’s stratosphere, and doors were opened by there’s little doubt that West Side Story was formative, his first producers and directors everywhere. Sexual fulfillment, how- opportunity to write the edgy lyrics that would become his ever, did not come quite so rapidly or spectacularly, though trademark. By the 1970s, former mentors such as Leonard Bern- things were moving in that direction, however slowly. It would stein were participating in tributes to Sondheim, sometimes pro- be several more years before he had his first affair with a man. nouncing him the greatest creative force in musical theater of Sondheim never again worked with Bernstein, whose kind- the 20th century. Today Stephen Sondheim is still going strong ness towards the younger man had been so crucial. But imme- at the age of 87, and he is open about being a gay man. diately following the success of West Side Story, he was again Of the four collaborators, Leonard Bernstein came to be the working side-by-side with Arthur Laurents and Jerome Rob- most closely identified with West Side Story. His score is re- bins, this time on the musical Gypsy, which premiered on garded as a uniquely brilliant and complex work for the musi- Broadway in 1959 and starred Ethel Merman. Once again it was cal theater. His Symphonic Dances from West Side Story,an Laurents, who by now had become an intimate friend, who orchestral overture based on the stage songs, is now performed brought Sondheim on board. Sondheim’s interest was piqued in classical concert halls along with other of Bernstein’s more when he learned that Rose, the central character and the mother formal works. Paradoxically, it was Bernstein, the only one of of the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, was a lesbian who had had the four collaborators who ever married, who did the most to many affairs with women in the early 1900s. break the silence about homosexuality in the arts. His wife died in 1978, leaving him grief-stricken. But in the 1980s, he em- THE LEGACY OF WEST SIDE STORY barked on a new phase of his life, which included public ap- West Side Story’s status as one of the most enduring works of the pearances with a variety of male lovers in support of gay causes. American musical theatre was enhanced by the release of the When Leonard Bernstein died on October 14, 1990, Jerome film adaptation starring Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer on Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim gathered for October 18, 1961. Co-directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Rob- an intimate funeral service with Bernstein’s closest friends and bins, the film received reviews that were even more laudatory family. It was the last time the four men were together. than those for the stage production. The movie won ten Oscars, a record for a musical, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Rita Moreno, the only Hispanic actor in one of the leading roles. Of the four gay men who were responsible for the stage play, only Jerome Robbins had any involvement with the movie, but before filming was complete the producers decided to fire Rob- bins. This setback did not, however, stop Robbins from showing up at the Oscars ceremony to collect his shared Best Director award along with Wise. West Side Story on stage and screen cemented Jerome Robbins’ status as a brilliant modern choreographer and made him a rich man. But fame and financial security did not enable his personal demons to subside, and he never fully accepted his gayness. He died in New York in 1998, only a few months before the opening of a London revival of West Side Story. Arthur Laurents never received the adulation accorded to Robbins and Bernstein for their contribution to the Broadway musical, though his book reads even more brilliantly with the passage of time. West Side Story was Laurents’ first involvement in a musical, and he followed up by directing I Can Get it For You Wholesale, which starred a young actress who was in fact his discovery: Barbra Streisand. The social realism of his book for West Side Story continued to animate Laurents’ work for decades to come. He scored a professional triumph in 1983 when he directed the hit musical La Cage Aux Folles,which celebrates gay characters who are out, proud, and on the cutting edge of social change. Laurents’ personal life evolved over the decades, and his life partnership with Tom Hatcher became publicly known. Laurents published several frankly written memoirs in his later years and died in 2011 at age 93.

November–December 2017 25 PHOTO ESSAY Picturing ‘The German Vice’

STEPHAN LIKOSKY ARLEZ-VOUS ALLEMAND?” In the and exchanged throughout the world. In 1909 alone, the last early 1900s, this question (“Do you speak year of the Eulenburg trials, an estimated 833 million cards were German?”) could be heard in certain pis- mailed in Great Britain, 668 million in the U.S., 160 million in soirs and cruising spots around Paris, a Germany, and eighteen million in France. coded way to ask if someone was gay. This expression derived from the fact that FIGURE 1. In “The Moltke-Harden Trial,” Count Kuno von ‘Psame-sex sexuality was starting to be called “the German vice” Moltke is shown leaving the courthouse where his libel case is at this time, and Berlin was seen as the destination of choice for being heard against Maximilian Harden, editor of the news mag- such activities. azine Die Zukunft. Harden had accused Moltke, the recently re- Charges of homosexuality in the government and in the mil- signed military commander of Berlin and member of the Kaiser’s itary were taken very seriously in Wilhelm II’s Germany (1890– inner circle, of being homosexual, and Moltke sued. Testimony 1918). There had been some scandals involving the German revealed that Moltke was in a sham marriage with his wife, Lilly Army and the apparent suicide, in 1902, of industrialist Friedrich von Elbe, who blamed her husband’s infatuation with Prince Alfred Krupp after proof of his dalliance with boys on the Isle Philipp zu Eulenburg for the marriage’s failure. Eulenburg, an in- of Capri became public. But it was the so-called Eulenburg Af- timate friend of the Kaiser’s, was a prince and hereditary peer in fair that truly shocked Germany and the world, and that had the the Prussian House of Lords and had served as ambassador to more serious consequences. A group of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s clos- Austria-Hungary before being exposed as homosexual. In the est friends and cabinet members were brought to trial on charges end, Moltke, with his somewhat effeminate mannerisms, was of homosexuality in a series of five civil trials and court-mar- judged “subconsciously homosexual,” a position argued by Mag- tials lasting from 1907 to 1909. In the course of the highly publicized proceedings, at which the renowned sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld testified, concepts of homosexuality and gay identity would become issues of public discussion for the first time. It could be argued that the modern concept of gay identity was born during the Eulenburg Affair. (Two recent books, Robert Beach’s Gay Berlin (2014) and Mar- tin Duberman’s Jews Queers Germans (2017), discuss the affair and acknowledge its importance.) The general public in both Germany and France viewed homosexuality as a perversion, and men who engaged in it were seen not only as effete, but also, because they were vulnerable to blackmail, as a potential threat to national security. No doubt this is part of the reason why the French, Germany’s chief enemy, spoke of “the German vice” and depicted German military personnel on postcards as un- manly and effeminate. And while feminizing one’s enemy was standard practice, French postcards were particularly profuse and imaginative in doing so. Similar sentiments, interestingly, can be found on Polish, Italian, and Belgian cards, while Germans themselves at times gave a humorous twist to their being associated with homosexuality. So, let me share some of my findings regarding this important episode in queer history as it is reflected on postcards, which were an early medium by which ordinary people could learn about current events and be exposed to new ideas. Indeed, the importance of postcards cannot be overstated. During their golden age, from 1898 to 1919, billions of cards were printed

Stephan Likosky’s latest book is With a Weapon and a Grin: Postcard Images of France’s Black African Colonial Troops in WWI (2017). Figure 1 (top) and Figure 2 (bottom)

26 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE Figures 3, 4, and 5 (left to right) nus Hirschfeld, while Harden was acquitted. At no point was Wilhelm stands with his rear end sticking out while his mono- Moltke accused of violating paragraph 175 of the German penal cle and bright red lips further indicate effeminacy. The card, ti- code, which criminalized homosexual acts. Over fifty foreign tled “The Crown Prince at the Council of War,” is number 4 in journalists were assigned to cover the series of trials, and hun- a series called “The Enemy.” A decade after the trial, the as- dreds of articles covering the events were published. On the sec- sumption is being made that recipients of this French card ond day of the first trial, police were called in to control the would still remember the Eulenburg scandal. crowds outside. FIGURE 4. An undated Italian card referring to the Battle of the FIGURE 2. A humorous spoof on the Eulenburg affair can be Marne in World War I again evokes the name of Eulenburg to found on a German card featuring a fairy tale maiden and two refer to homosexual behavior. On the card, two officers after couples. The central couple is comprised of two men in an em- the battle are having the following dialogue: “First officer: It brace. The one on the left is pictured as effeminate, dressed in was von Eulenburg who opened the rear to von Bülow. Second a checkered suit and with his derrière protruding. The men cry officer: Golly! Once again?” Von Bülow was the German am- out to one another: “My Sweetie! You, my beloved soul!” To bassador to Italy from 1914 to ’15 and was unable to persuade their right is an ordinary-looking older couple in which the frau Italy to join the Central Powers. Earlier he had been accused by admonishes her husband: “Look, old guy, you never flatter me the journalist Maximilian Harden of homosexual behavior at with such pretty names.” On the left side is an inset showing a the all-male social gatherings of the Kaiser’s friends hosted by long-haired young princess with a castle tower behind and a Prince Eulenburg. caption that reads “Phili: Fairy Tale.” This is a reference to Prince Eulenburg (“Phili”), and the terms “sweetie” and “my FIGURE 5. Kaiser Wilhelm’s second son Eitel Friedrich, though beloved soul” came up in the libel trials as terms of endearment married, was rumored to be gay. Like his older brother Wilhelm, exchanged between Moltke and his alleged lover Eulenburg. he also fought in World War I. A French postcard hints at Eitel’s

FIGURE 3. The association of Prince Eulenburg with the homo- EGR Writers House sexuality believed to be rampant throughout Germany and its Subsidized housing for writers in Augusta, Maine military prevailed for many years after the trials of 1907–1909. On a French propaganda postcard mailed in 1920, an effeminate Crown Prince Wilhelm testifies in court. “Yes, Your Hon- ors, I am the same type of person as Henry III (a fool of a man, I agree). I wanted the war because I had promised it to my dar- ling officers. If my father had refused, I would have caused a scandal à la Eulenburg, you understand?” Henry III was a 16th- century king of France who was said to have had homosexual relations with his court favorites, known as the “mignons,” the same word used by the crown prince to describe his officers. www.egrwritershouse.blogspot.com

November–December 2017 27 illicit relations with his orderlies, while depicting him in the most unflattering (for a soldier) manner. The top of the card reads: “Visions of the Great War. The pretty little family. Eitel Fritz, sweet friend of the orderlies.” Below the caricature, the caption reads: “One of the ways of getting volunteers into Eitel Fritz’ regiment.” Eitel is shown from the rear with protruding buttocks, standing daintily with one foot in front of the other. With a white-gloved hand to his puckered lips, he is returning a salute to two other servicemen. The card is signed by the artist, Jerzy Ostoja (1878–1937).

FIGURE 6. A scathing allusion to Moltke can be found on another French propaganda card from World War I. This card, mailed in 1914, depicts a French soldier with his bayonet pen- etrating the rear of a German soldier, who is throwing up his arms in pain. The French caption above the illustration reads “War 1914,” and the one below reads “Sheaths for French bay- onets patented by Moltke.” Feminizing the enemy is standard practice in war propaganda, but this explicitly sexual image re- calls the accusations related to Moltke’s homosexual liaisons from a decade earlier.

FIGURE 7. The theme of rampant homosexuality in the German military extends to an illustrated postcard printed in Poland.

Left: Figures 6 and 7. Above: Figure 8. Here, four German officers are assiduously inspecting a group of Turkish soldiers from behind, focusing on their butts. The main caption reads: “In Constantinople, during a military inspection by a body of German generals.” Under that, a soldier named von Schweinemann is saying: “Deli- cious material, no?” Another, von Hinterlader, replies: “Out- standing! Chap for chap! Perfect for the Prussian guard!” The name Schweinemann translates as “Pig Man,” while Hinterlader, which literally means “breach-loading gun,” was a vulgar term for a homosexual.

FIGURE 8. German soldiers were known at times to prostitute themselves, if only to earn a bit of extra income, and there were areas of Berlin where one could make such con- nections. On an Italian postcard titled “Competition,” a female prostitute looks on resentfully from behind a wall at two men about to enter a building. The man bending over in front to open the door is a German soldier. Directly behind, if not pressed against his protruding rear end, is a finely dressed gentleman in a top hat. The caption reads: “She: The German soldier is really the greatest conqueror in the world.”

FIGURE 9. During the Eulenburg trials, questions arose as to the nature of male homosexuality. Was it inborn, as many thought, indicative of a “third sex,” or acquired? Or was it simply one variant in the array of sexual feelings and behavior exhibited by men? Due largely to the public discus-

28 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE with desire. Here, the image of the male sailor, long an icon of heterosexual virility, takes on a new twist.

THE FIRST QUARTER of the 20th century witnessed a heightened interest in homosexual behavior in Ger- many, spurred on by high- profile government scandals and concerns for state security. The Eulenburg Affair of 1907–1909 set the stage for open public discourse on the nature of homosexuality while at the same time drawing all the more attention to Germany as a center of homosexuality and confirming the notion of “the German vice.” This association of Ger- many with homosexuality was then employed for propagandistic purposes by Below: Figure 9. Above: Figures 10 and 11. Germany’s enemies in World War I. The picture postcard, a sions generated by the trials, the word ubiquitous means of communication at the time, both reflected “homosexual” signifying a personal- and reinforced this stereotype. ity type started to gain currency. On an anti-German card, printed in Brus- sels, we see in profile the head of a German officer, made to look effeminate with his eye liner, monocle, and reddened lips. Below are the words “Une ‘tante’ d’Allemagne!,” best translated as “a German auntie.” It is an early example of a postcard revealing how society was coming to view homosexuals as a social type.

FIGURE 10. A rather curious French card labeled “The Belly Dance: souvenir of a voyage to Morocco” refers to Kaiser Wil- helm’s visit to Tangier in 1905. The Kaiser declared that he had come to support the independence of Morocco, a stance that was a direct challenge to French influence in the country. The French card implies that the only return for Germany was a belly dancer in the form of a German soldier performing a sexy dance with a veil. Rather ironically, three years later, while performing a pas seul in a tutu in the presence of the Kaiser at a private estate, chief of the Military Secretariat Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler dropped dead. The affair, with its homosexual overtones, was hushed up at the time.

FIGURE 11. Germans were not without a sense of humor when it came to homosexuality. On a card titled “Kleidermusterung!” (“clothing inspection”), two sailors in a line waiting to be in- spected break rank. The one furthest to the right assumes a feminine pose of modesty with his eyes cast downward and his left arm held coyly behind his head. The adjacent sailor glances over

November–December 2017 29 ROUNDTABLE A Priest’s Book Stirs the Faithful

Editor’s Note: The original “roundtable” had three participants, all of two). The second major section provides a theological perspec- whom contacted me in the same week clamoring to review a new book tive and offers LGBT persons a series of affirming scriptural by James Martin titled Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church passages and associated questions for reflection. Though sim- and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, plistic and largely inoffensive, this second piece does not con- Compassion, and Sensitivity. The onslaught persuaded me to cover this stitute a serious problem. It’s just that, in much of the book, book, though three pieces proved too many for this “religiously unmu- rebellious and loud-mouthed gays are told in effect to behave sical” editor, so the upshot is a kind of review and response. Donald L. Boisvert had submitted a review that was quite critical of Martin’s book, themselves, to change their rhetoric and attitudes, while the while Brian Bromberger proposed a defense of it, having interviewed Church hierarchy is given no similar instructions. The “bridge” the author in early summer. So it seemed logical to share Boisvert’s cri- that’s vaunted in the book’s title seems to be more of a one-way tique with Bromberger so as to allow the latter to comment. street. When you step back and look critically at the ways in which Martin unpacks respect, compassion, and sensitivity, first for the Catholic hierarchy and then for the LGBT community, you Nothing Has Changed have to be struck by how the former body always comes out looking better. It’s those rambunctious gays and lesbians who need to learn more respect, more compassion, and more sensi- DONALD L. BOISVERT tivity. Nowhere does Martin object to core Catholic teaching on homosexuality. For him, it’s simply a question of using better, T TOOK ME a little over an hour to read James Mar- more nuanced, language—words that don’t hurt quite as much. tin’s long-awaited Building a Bridge, and several days Much of this seems to me to be just another version of “Love the to figure out what was wrong with it. It is a book full of sinner, hate the sin.” Martin cherry-picks the more palatable good intentions. But in fact, something sticky and al- parts of Church policy on homosexuality—hence the focus on most insulting lurks within this short book. the Jesuit values of respect, compassion, and sensitivity—while Jesuit priest James Martin, editor at large for Amer- ignoring the far more troublesome and nefarious elements of Iica magazine, is a best-selling spiritual writer and lecturer and Catholic dogma, notably the doctrine that homosexuality as an the author of numerous books, including The Jesuit Guide to objective moral disorder. (Almost) Everything. He is very skilled at making traditional Martin’s stubborn refusal to engage with such substantive Roman Catholic teaching on almost any topic accessible to cra- issues is what gives the book a superficial feel. After all, no one dle Catholics and to the uninitiated alike. The problem in a nut- can really object to dialogue, so why not kiss and make up, or shell is that Martin, ever conflict-avoiding and bland, never at least be more civil to one another? All very nice, but all very challenges fundamental Church teach- defeatist in the long run. There is, I think, ing. One needs to remember that not one a sort of basic anti-confrontational, al- iota of official Catholic teaching on ho- most anti-intellectual tone to Martin’s mosexuality has been altered in recent analysis. My recommendation would be years, despite Pope Francis’ good will that Catholic LGBT people who want to and oft-quoted inclusive remarks. Mar- confront these questions with greater tin is cut from the same cloth as the substance turn to such scholars as John Pope, so there certainly is nothing unfa- McNeill and Mark Jordan, who have miliar here. spent their lives adroitly dissecting offi- The book is an extended version of a cial Roman Catholic teaching on homo- talk Martin gave when he received a sexuality. Nowhere are they, or others “Bridge-Builder” award from New Ways like them, mentioned in Martin’s book. Ministry, a Catholic LGBT-positive or- And then there’s the question of sex. ganization. It is divided into two parts. Make no mistake: this is what most both- The first and more substantive, titled “A ers the Catholic Church. Orientation or Two-Way Bridge,” outlines, in turn, a emotional preference is one thing, but number of ways in which the Catholic what two women or two men do with hierarchy and the LGBT community their bodies is quite another. In a review could deal with each other from a posi- of Martin’s book in Commonweal maga- tion of “respect, compassion, and sensi- zine, theologian David Cloutier puts it tivity” (each of those three themes quite nicely: “For ultimately, the sexual- meriting an individual chapter, times ity is not the problem; the sex is.” Indeed

30 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE it has always been thus. So it’s hard to see how Martin’s view get into a long complicated discussion as I would rather focus of a dialogue between the LGBT community and the Catholic on areas of commonality. If you want people to start listening Church changes things. Nothing of significance will happen so to each other, you don’t start at the place where they are far- long as the Church maintains its exclusively heteronormative thest apart. What the Church needs to do is listen to LGBT peo- position on human sexuality. Martin’s total avoidance of the ple rather than talking at them, telling them what to do and subject of sex speaks volumes. A book that purports to be about condemning them. It is an invitation to start a conversation and prayer. LGBT people but ignores the defining feature of their identity isn’t going to take us very far or very deep into the heart of of- Through his editorship of America magazine, Martin has had ficial Catholic homophobia. the opportunity to become friendly with many American bish- There are many legitimate reasons why Catholic LGBT in- ops and knows where most of them stand on the LGBT issue, dividuals may choose to remain in the Church, and those need so he’s probably a reliable barometer on the (mostly poor) rela- to be respected. But equally important, the Church’s teachings tionship that exists between the hierarchy and the LGBT com- on homosexuality need to be critically examined and chal- munity. lenged. This book does neither. Rather, it seeks to put a cover on The distance between the LGBT community and the Church dissent, and especially on loud and in-your-face dissent. I do hierarchy is demonstrated by one “radical” proposal in Martin’s not believe that this is the only legitimately Christian way to rather mild book, which is for the Church to refer to LGBT peo- change the world. ple by the labels they use themselves, like “gay” and “LGBT,” rather than with phrases like “same-sex attraction” or “homosexual persons” as favored by many bishops. The latter continue to reject “our” words because they want to define people Give It Time by their “sexual urges” rather than their personal identity— which is a meaningless distinction, since the act cannot be engaged in without an actor. Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago BRIAN BROMBERGER (appointed by Pope Francis) recently made headlines when he supported this proposal at an April press conference. Even Pope HE CHIEF CRITICISM of Fr. James Martin’s Francis has used the word “gay.” The fact that Martin has re- book—from both Donald L. Boisvert and other ceived such negative blowback from the Catholic right on this reviewers—is his silence on the core Catholic bland, inoffensive recommendation speaks volumes about how teaching on homosexuality as codified in the Catechism about homosexuality, which it describes as “intrinsically disordered.” And one Tcan certainly sympathize with their impatience. But Martin believes that a fundamental change in Church teaching can only be a long-term goal. The question is, what is the best way to get there? His answer is that we need to engage in a respectful, sensitive, and compassionate dialogue between the LGBT community and the institutional Catholic Church, something that occurs through building personal relationships, however labo- rious and time-consuming they can be. (Shorter term, Martin believes that the language of “intrinsic disorder” needs to be updated.) Boisvert’s other objection is that Martin never actually mentions sex—an activity that gay Catholics do want to be able to engage in—or the need for the Church to revise “its exclusively heteronormative position on human sexuality.” These are modest proposals, to be sure. Martin’s book is neither a work of moral theology nor a discussion on the sexual morality of LGBT people, with Martin viewing himself not as a theologian but as a writer–journalist. In an interview that I conducted with Martin last June, I asked him about this criticism of his book, and he replied:

The basic reason I did not address this issue is that the hierarchy and LGBT community are too far apart, with both sides clear on where they stand on sexual relations. I didn’t want to

Donald L. Boisvert is a retired professor of religion, a published scholar of gay spirituality, and an Anglican priest living in Montréal.

Brian Bromberger is a freelance writer who works as a staff reporter and arts critic for The Bay Area Reporter.

November–December 2017 31 far the Church still has to go on this issue. Perhaps the most revolutionary section of an otherwise tame book is the endorsements on the back cover from Cardinal little death, Joseph Tobin (Newark) and Cardinal Kevin Farrell (Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life). Never be- dissociative identity fore has an LGBT book received such praise from two princes of the church—Farrell in particular (whose endorsement Mar- at this moment of letting go tin welcomed, saying: “short of getting the Pope to endorse it, all of me works this is a pretty high level of support”). Both Cardinals are ap- together pointments of Pope Francis, which suggests that he is selecting in this place I most desire bishops who are open to LGBT Catholics. who are you Of course, many LGBT people have long since given up on Catholicism or religion in general. Due to negative or abusive who did you say childhood experiences, an aversion to organized religion, and/or you were lack of belief in God, they have written off the Catholic Church does it matter who I am as either toxic or irrelevant. And yet, there are still those who you could be anyone want to participate fully and equally in religious institutions, yet I remember your exactness however dicey they may be. Gay people of faith are often for a time caught between a rock and a hard place, accused by the larger if I see you subculture of being apologists for religious intolerance, even as again they feel victimized by this intolerance and protest against it. I may not know you Reform can only come when people stay and fight for their I may not be rights and a place at the table, because it forces the church to contend with an issue that they fervently wish would disappear. who you expect It may very well be that LGBT Catholics need their own MARC FRAZIER Stonewall, as Church teaching is probably not going to change even under this more progressive Pope. Barring that, it becomes essential to lay the groundwork for gradual reform through di- my interview with him, Martin stated that he should have made alogue. One development that Martin cites is that more gay it clearer in his book that “because of the immense suffering Catholics are coming out to their congregations, claiming their and marginalization LGBT Catholics have felt at the hands of identities despite institutional opposition. One result is that sixty the Church, the onus for building a bridge is on the hierarchy. percent of lay Catholics now approve of marriage equality, so The hierarchy cannot look at LGBT people solely through the they’re far ahead of priests and bishops on this issue. lens of sexual expression, which is shocking to me, as if they are On August 9th, The National Catholic Reporter, a main- only sexual beings. They must get past the sex.” stream Catholic newspaper, referencing James Martin’s book in If there is to be bridge-building, what issues should be talked an editorial, called for a dialogue on sexual ethics for all about initially? “To be honest, simple knowledge, as many bish- Catholics. The piece pointed out that Church teaching is funda- ops either don’t know personally any out LGBT people well or mentally opposed to sexual acts that a majority of people en- have never asked them what their lives have been like. That’s gage in, concluding: “We call on bishops to continue the work how basic it is at this point. One of my closest friends is a gay of developing the doctrine of sexuality that began in Vatican II man who left a religious order and has been with his partner for ... to loosen its rigid interpretation of millennia-old ideas about twenty years. Mark has cared for his partner who has a serious natural law and the procreative norm ... otherwise any dialogue illness. The question to the church and the bishops is: What can around LGBT inclusion will only be stymied.” So, despite the they learn about love and fidelity from Mark and his partner? limited scope of Martin’s book, it has already had an impact. In The key is to listen to people’s experiences.” Martin believes there is a real shift in the Church occurring on LGBT matters from Pope Francis down—with his welcoming tone and em- "Ricard offers a thoughtful phasis on mercy as opposed to doctrinal adherence—a kind of debut... The narrative is endear- awakening to the experiences of people formerly kept in the ing and impressively assured, closet. and it will be an entertaining treat for fans of LGBT romantic Despite achieving marriage equality, LGBT people still have iction ... a warm, fun, character- a long way to travel before they have total equality and accept- driven tale about moving on ance. Much of the resistance is religious-based bigotry, which and embracing life.” is not confined to the Catholic Church by any means, so the di- — Kirkus Reviews alogue Martin is proposing could have wider implications for American society. At a time when people in Washington are talking about erecting walls, Martin’s recurring metaphor of building bridges stands out in marked contrast. It may be that www.russellricard.com Martin’s proposals and critiques don’t go far enough, but at least they are moving in a positive direction.

32 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE BOOKS A Confabulation of Poets

EVIEWING John Lauritsen’s It feels more personal than Don Leon and Don Leon is in essence review- ALAN CONTRERAS has some pointed, powerful, and delicately ing a review, as the book is en- snarky language that we might easily use tirely concerned with the today: R Don Leon and Leon to Annabella: meaning and provenance of another author’s work. Lauritsen thus provides two Lord Byron Between the sheets salacious lawyers pry. benefits in one package. We get the full text Edited by John Lauritsen Yet nature varies not:—desires we feel, As Romans felt; but woe! if we reveal, of these two peculiar and interesting poems Pagan Press. 185 pages, $14.99 For what were errors then, our happy times and also the assembled end result of an ex- With sainted zeal have registered as crimes. ceptionally thorough detective story involving the work of several serious researchers over a period of a hundred years. “End By comparison to Annabella, Don Leon is really a sort of result” may be the wrong term for an investigation that has only political brief dressed as a poem. A rather bald statement of the a misty closure, but we get what is currently known, laid out in need for social tolerance of homosexuality, Don Leon is far a way that allows any reader, even one not steeped in Byronic ahead of its time, the first such statement known to be issued in lore, both to enjoy the poem and appreciate the work English, though Jeremy Bentham wrote something of Inspector Lauritsen and his fellow sleuths. that was not published. A much more direct, Byron had a complex and somewhat forceful, and in some ways cheerful ride troubled sexual life that would be recog- than André Gide’s austere, academic nized as a bisexual variant today. He Corydon (1911) almost a century seems never to have met a woman later, Don Leon feels more like he didn’t instinctively seduce— Aaron Fricke saying in 1980 that not that they fled from the hand- he is damn well going to take some and charming writer. To his boyfriend to the prom, and the contrary, one of his more society needs to get over it. significant female compan- Not only is the tone unusual ions pursued him ever more for its subject and time pe- strangely for years, some- riod, but the brute clarity of times dressed as a boy. As the message is akin to the James Merrill put it upon opening of Stravinsky’s seeing an opera in which the Rite of Spring: a writhing understudy soprano stepped platter of radical new ideas in for the final act, she simply heaved into the un- changed her hair, but it didn’t prepared face of the prevail- save her marriage. Byron was ing social order. ditched by his one actual wife, In addition to his more ob- apparently on fidelity grounds, vious and traditional hetero sex after a very short time together. I games, Byron took seriously at can’t help but wonder what credi- least one part of his early Calvin- bility he thought he had by the time ist upbringing: “God made man—let he wrote in Leon to Annabella of “all us love him,” though in Byron’s case those I scorned” in order to remain loyal to God made boy. He had a taste for Gide- Annabella. He scorned very few. lings, though he quite sensibly approached But the words “he wrote” in that last sentence writing of his uranic desires for teenage lads in a need to be explored. One of the main issues in this book is manner both oblique and coded, like the far more astringent whether in fact Byron wrote any of this work at all. Lauritsen and reserved A. E. Housman a century later [see essay on page makes a plausible case that Byron probably did write the 15]. Whether he personally wrote these words in Don Leon can Annabella poem, though the story of its discovery in a peasant’s be argued, but their meaning, and the meaning of similar pas- hut once used by Byron reads like something from the annals of sages, cannot: P.D.Q. Bach. Annabella has a masterful rippling cadence to it and is more readable and enjoyable as a poem than is Don Leon. Full well I knew, though decency forbad The same caresses to a rustic lad; Alan Contreras is a writer and higher education consultant who lives Love, love it was, that made my eyes delight in Eugene, Oregon. To have his person ever in my sight.

November–December 2017 33 Don Leon was published in one form in 1866 but written much might have collectively added to Leon appears in the Don Leon earlier, probably in the 1830s or even 1820s, and most likely by collection; the setting and relationships that serve as a principal several authors. Even if you know nothing of Byron the bisex- basis for that theory are set forth in Lost Angels. ual and don’t care to, this work is an important piece of gay his- The response to Don Leon’s request for a new way of think- tory. As a poem it is somewhat labored and quite variable, which ing about sexual variety was social shock. Early printings of this lends weight to Lauritsen’s view that it is in all likelihood the work were destroyed in one way or another, and the text became work of several quills, albeit in skillful hands, perhaps follow- a rare and nearly mythical presence in gay history. As late as ers poetical, sexual, and temporal of Lord Byron: a dead poet’s 1934, the London police treated a printing of this work as bon- society, if you will. fire material. Whether these poems were by Byron, the school of So who wrote Don Leon? Lauritsen also published this year Byron, friends and followers of Byron, or just courageous gay The Shelley-Byron Men: Lost Angels of a Ruined Paradise, people determined to right a wrong, the poems themselves are a which helps flesh out the nature of the group of young men clus- remarkable milestone of gay history, and we can all be grateful tered around the two poets in Italy. Speculation on how they for their appearance in this exceptionally thorough source. Your Minority Status Has Changed Again

NE OF THE DEBATES in gay petus for the emergence of gay safe spaces and lesbian studies in the late VERNON ROSARIO around commercial strips, most often in 1980s was whether the field urban neighborhoods in decline due to mid- should stay independent or be in- dle-class flight to the suburbs. Young gays O Sex Cultures tegrated into traditional academic depart- and lesbians fleeing homophobic families ments. Lesbian and gay (soon to be LGBT) by Amin Ghaziani and towns flocked to the gay ghettos to find scholarship was already springing up in Polity Books. 220 pages, $22.95 lovers, jobs, and cheap housing. English and French departments, but could it And, being fabulous, they redecorated! make inroads in history, other social sciences, and even the basic Gay gentrification in the last decades of the 20th century came sciences? Should scholars fight for autonomous departments like full circle, making the gayborhoods too expensive for all but the Women’s Studies or Africana Studies? What might be lost in affluent. As Ghaziani points out, this is not simply an economic merging with mainstream academia, versus what might be gained issue, though housing costs are certainly an important element. by coaxing every discipline to take a queer perspective? It is not just that the gay residents are older and wealthier, but Amin Ghaziani’s Sex Cultures demonstrates how to bring new residents are wealthier and straighter. The gayborhoods LGBT Studies to a broad undergraduate audience. It’s something have become more appealing to hetereosexuals thanks to greater of a Trojan horse, however. If it were adopted as a classroom cultural acceptance and even the appeal of gay culture. Just think text, unsuspecting freshmen signing up for an Introduction to of the throngs of straight couples and families attending pride Sociology class might think they had accidentally walked into an parades and the widespread marketing of these by chambers of LGBT Studies class. Let’s hope they stay for a wide-ranging ex- commerce. Greater cultural acceptance has also meant gay peo- amination of cultural sociology from a gay angle, where even ple can feel safe in many more neighborhoods beyond the gay- “heterosexuality” is looked at with a queer eye. His central the- borhoods. With the increasing numbers of gay couples with sis is that sex and sexuality are not biologically determined, but children, neighborhood schools are a priority instead of bars. only make sense through the lens of culture. Or, as Ghaziani Ghaziani’s chapter titled “Politics and Protest” tackles the schematizes it: “Sex + Culture = Sexuality.” competing politics of difference versus assimilation in its many Ghaziani is an assistant professor of sociology at the Uni- manifestations. I mentioned one aspect of the conflict at the versity of British Columbia who has studied gay marches, as start: the academic debate over establishing independent LGBT well as the rise and fall of gay neighborhoods: “gayborhood” Studies departments versus infiltrating established depart- seems to be the hip term for what I called the “gay ghetto.” He ments. The broader political debates have involved inclusion of was recently interviewed in a NewYorkTimesarticle (June 21, lesbians and then bisexuals and transgender people under the 2017) on the decline of gayborhoods across America—an issue “gay” umbrella, but also whether issues like “gay marriage” he tackles in the first chapter of Sex Cultures. Detailed histori- and “gays in the military” represented conservative, assimila- cal work has documented the rise of gay meeting spots in large tionist politics and the abandonment of radical separatism or, in cities across the U.S. in the early 20th century. This process re- the 1990s, a “queer” agenda. A concrete example of this tension ally took off after World War II for a variety of demographic blew up in Los Angeles this spring: the annual gay pride parade reasons, including women entering the workforce, urbanization, held since 1970 (but long criticized for becoming overly com- and overall economic expansion. The conservatism and explic- mercial) was canceled in favor of a protest march against the itly anti-homosexual attitudes of the 1950s also provided an im- Trump administration. Even heterosexuality gets the gay treatment here. Ghaziani Vernon Rosario is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department is largely inspired by the work of historian Jonathan Ned Katz’ of Psychiatry at UCLA. The Invention of Heterosexuality. Like the gay and lesbian his-

34 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE torians of the early 1990s who had explored the cultural ap- a good prism for exploring these complexities. How a researcher pearance of same-sex identities from antiquity to the 20th cen- divides up and asks about sexual behaviors or sexual orientation tury, Katz turned the same critical lens on “normal” sexuality as will subtly shape results. This is further complicated when one it branched out from “sexual inversion” and homosexuality in tries to capture information about cross-cutting identities like the 19th century. Ghaziani’s contribution is to periodize het- race, ethnicity, and class. He highlights again the importance of erosexuality since the 1980s. He points out how the AIDS cri- considering culture even in the collection of supposedly objec- sis contributed to a harsh stigmatization of homosexuality and tive, quantitative data. a sharper distinction of heterosexuality. In the 1990s, this crys- The American culture wars return again in the conclusion. tallized around cultural wars defending the supposed founda- He reviews both U.S. and international surveys about evolving tions of heterosexuality: marriage, military, and Christianity (in acceptance (or condemnation) of homosexuality. He summarizes the guise of the right to discriminate against homosexuals). The his thesis that sex and sexuality are not simply biological facts 21st century, Ghaziani argues, has seen a blurring of these sharp that have a “normal” sexuality outside of evolving cultural distinctions between gay and straight men: metrosexuals, bro- meanings and values. It is clear here that Ghaziani is making his mances, str8 youth, and dude sex. In some ways, the pendulum last pitch to the conservative freshmen in the auditorium—those of sexuality has swung back to the 19th century, when labels who have stuck around until the end of the semester and mem- didn’t constrain individuals’ enjoyment of sex and affection. orized the highlights for the final exam. But have their minds Ghaziani’s final chapter deals with methodological issues in been widened to embrace and accept sexual diversity and a cul- the study of sexuality. This is the most quantitative and tradi- tural perspective of sociology? I can only hope that Ghaziani’s tionally sociological chapter, dealing with issues of constructing book is widely adopted in classes and can enlighten a genera- surveys, gathering and analyzing data, and classifying societies: tion of youth, thus proving the revolutionary potential of main- their sexuality, race, political opinions, etc. LGBT issues provide streaming LGBT Studies. ‘The Closet’ Made Me Do It

LOSET SONNETS is structured and falsity, freedom and slavery, male and in one of those postmodern ways DAVID BERGMAN female, gay and straight. that remains intriguing. The text It will come as no surprise that these du- is supposedly the life work of G. alisms are unstable. None is more unstable C Closet Sonnets: S. Crown, a thoughtful if somewhat con- than the central figure of the closet. To be ventional scholar, professor, husband, and The Life of G. S. Crown (1950-2021) “in” the closet is both to be held prisoner by father. We are told in the preface to the son- by Yakov Azriel conventional values and to have access to an net sequence that Crown was born in 1950, Sheep Meadow Press expansive universe, to be an outlaw in civil the same year as Yakov Azriel, the author. 98 pages, $19.95 society and a “slave” of Pan. As a teenager, Crown is to die in 2021; only then will his he thinks of himself as a bat who, because he family find nearly a thousand sonnets that concern his closeted is different, is shunned not only by “all mammals,” but by all birds desires for other men. The preface claims that his family was as well. Still, Crown begins to “sense how oceans, ebbed and “unaware” of his homosexual life, but they don’t seem particu- flowed inside [his] closet” and when he meets a fellow “flutist” larly shocked by the news. In fact, the family goes to the con- with whom he “can express/ a paradise that’s pure and undefiled,” siderable trouble of culling the work down to about 150 poems he nevertheless finds himself “a son of adam, tast[ing] sin.” and getting them published. (So much for Crown’s lifelong cer- We know from the preface that Crown never was able to give tainty that his family would reject him if they knew he was gay.) up the metaphor of the closet; indeed, it organizes his life. It pro- If this weren’t complex enough, it is important to note that the vides him with a space for self-pity and an excuse for his cow- name “Yakov Azriel” is an invention of the author, who was ardice. Only briefly does he give thought to how he has cheated born Gerald Rosenkrantz, in Brooklyn, and only adopted his his wife and children of the attention and love they deserve. present name when he moved to Israel. Mostly he regards his wife as a tormentor whose sexual needs re- Yet if this layering of self-invention is postmodern, the book quire him to separate mind from body in a kind of psychic exe- in other respects is conventional. It is a sonnet series. Azriel cution. There is little movement in these poems. From the very rigidly follows the Petrarchan scheme, which is even more dif- beginning he is paralyzed, not by misunderstanding his desires ficult than the Shakespearean. To his credit, he writes with amaz- or some confusion of gender identity, but by his fear of being ing fluency and, within this tight little form, great variety. Closet different, of breaking with conventionality. Sonnets is as close to a page-turner as a book of poetry ever One of the ways these sonnets work is to separate gay from comes. Part of Azriel’s fluency derives from his treating a fairly straight in increasingly dramatic ways. It is not enough to make limited series of topics that fall into the standard dualisms: truth gay people Greeks and straights Trojans; Crown imagines gay people as mermen, a totally different species, swimming to At- David Bergman, professor of English at Towson University near Balti- lantis, an undiscovered continent. But even that is too close. He more, is the poetry editor of this magazine. next makes gay people Martians, separate from Earthlings by

November–December 2017 35 both space and biology. This increasing separation is needed to is the path I lost.” Yet having confronted his cowardice, he finds maintain the rather rickety metaphor of the closet and justify his a way of slipping away: “Yet even now I can’t erase/ my mem- need for the closet. The straight self is only allowed connection ories of the forest trails, the bed/ we shared one night, his kisses with the gay self under the tightest restrictions. The metaphor of and embrace,/ his eager hands, his body and his face.” That one the closet reinforces the fear of contamination. night, he argues, justifies a lifetime of fear, self-loathing, and Only briefly does he accept responsibility for his abject con- deception. The emptiness of this gesture is shown by the fact dition. In the poems supposedly written in his thirties, he tries to that we never know whom he’s talking about or whether this wiggle out of responsibility with the how-could-I-know argu- man exists outside of his imagination. ment. He excuses himself because “I don’t possess Apollo’s Closet Sonnets is divided into six parts, one for each decade eyes/ which can foresee the future prison key/ each choice cre- of Crown’s life (starting with his teenage years). Because the ates.” Nor can we forgive the upside of his heterosexual cha- poems are organized in chronological order, you’d think they rade. If he had followed his homosexual inclinations, his would be sensitive to the historical changes that occurred over “daughter and my sons/ would never have been born.” Father- the seventy years of Crown’s life. But no. The book hides its hood excuses all the lies and deceptions that rule his life. Twenty head in the never-never land of mermen and Martians and pur- years later, he’s still using his children as justification for his be- ple mockingbirds. There is not a hint of an AIDS epidemic in havior. He cannot be open about being gay because “My children the poems of the 1980s and 90s. But this ahistoricism is more cry/ at night, for in their dreams, huge monster-jaws/ are seen telling in a poem titled “The Berlin Wall,” from the 2010-21 pe- emerging from the sea.” The children would be frightened by riod, where he compares himself to the divided city except he re- the truth. But these “children” by then are in their twenties. alizes “now the wall is crashing down at last;/ the city of Berlin Even at the end of his life, he’s finding excuses for his inac- is really one.” The problem is that the Berlin wall came down in tion. In “The English Teacher,” he discusses Robert Frost’s “The November 1989, at least twenty years before this poem was sup- Road Not Taken” in personal terms. Like Frost, Crown also posedly written. It’s not just the history of the gay movement faced a choice: “There was a man. A good,/ courageous man. He that has passed Crown by; it is the world in general.

BRIEFS

Kingdom Come: A Fantasia eventually assuming her voice and identity. This book is useful to gay and lesbian liter- by Timothy Liu “A Fantasia” is an appropriate subtitle for ary studies for its revival of Capote and its re- Talisman House. 150 pages, $19.95 this hypnotic and mysterious book. framing of Stein through her most accessible It’s difficult to classify Timothy Liu’s lat- JIM NAWROCKI works. Also valuable is its method of “homo- est book, Kingdom Come. Liu is best sexual reading,” which teases out the homo- known for his poetry, having published ten So Famous and So Gay: The Fabulous sexual content of the two writers that sits on books of poems, from Vox Angelica (1992) Potency of Truman Capote and the surface of their texts like a butch at the to his most recent, Don’t Go Back to Sleep Gertrude Stein bar, flagging notice. This is a book about (2014). Kingdom Come, his latest, is a by Jeff Solomon gayness overlooked and gay lives lovingly, something of hybrid. It’s divided into four Minnesota. 288 pages, $27. materially recovered. GINO CONTI sections, most of which consist of a kind of In So Famous and So Gay, literary critic Jeff dialogue between the narrator and his Solomon explores the celebrity and mass Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer lovers. In the first section, “The Messages market success of Truman Capote and EditedbyStephanie Chambers, et al. You Saved,” a former patient leaves a se- Gertrude Stein to ask the question: How were Coach House Books. 368 pages, $19.95 ries of 26 elaborate voicemail messages these openly gay authors able to profit and In To ronto’s Gay Village there is a larger- with his ex-therapist. The messages carry a flourish despite homophobia? Solomon con- than-life bronze statue, unveiled in 2005, of sense of the patient’s progressive despera- cludes that both writers possessed a “fabu- Alexander Wood (1772–1844), a Scottish- tion as he semi-jokingly refers to himself lous potency”—a “broadly queer” appeal that born magistrate and merchant. He was in- as a stalker. They’re rife with sexual obses- exceeded the “specifically gay” features of volved in a s candalous “sex crime” in 1810, sion: in one, he describes a violent, kinky their personæ and works. Simply taking up when he was accused of o verly thorough encounter he had with an older man, a these two authors together makes for a queer physical examinations of several men who church organist, when he was technically pairing, notes Solomon: the canonical Stein, had molested a woman. Taunted as “Molly underage. In another, he phones the elusive a looming masculine figure of the lesbian Wood,” he fled back to Scotland for a few therapist in the throes of masturbatory ec- modernist avant-garde known for her convo- years but later returned to Canada, resuming stasy and begs his father figure to “fuck me luted prose, and the effeminate Capote, his professional career and buying property to kingdom come.” known as much for his public persona as for that became known as “Molly Wood’s The book’s “Hall of Mirrors” section his writing. The concept of “fabulous po- Bush.” Wood represents the o ldest subject in comes close to prose poetry, offering a se- tency” is an unlikely conjunction of gendered this anthology, but there’s no real order, ries of short, hermetic pieces, almost like descriptors. By modifying the masculine whether chronological or topical, to the mas- fables, each one full of vivid imagery. The virility of “potency” with the feminine-lean- sive number of essays, ranging in length narrator’s sense of panic peaks in the last ing “fabulous,” Solomon gets at something of from a few paragraphs to several pages. This section, “Songs for Going Under.” In a se- the cross-gendered appeal of Capote and is a deliberate choice by the many editors of ries of short, incantatory paragraphs, he Stein, both celebrities who were “talked this self-described “eclectic mix.” The con- dives deeply into his mother’s life story, about more than read.” tributors include playwright-director Sky

36 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE What makes it particularly important that this book be taken tains “a miracle of rare device,/ A sunny pleasure-dome with to task is its use of metaphors grounded in the past to glorify so- caves of ice!” cial injustice. If the metaphor of the closet was ever useful, it How are we to feel about G. S. Crown? Perhaps I take the was as a way to motivate people to declare their true nature as a character too personally, since he was supposedly born a week personal and political act. Unfortunately, in the Closet Sonnets, before me and became, like me, an English professor. (I’ll be re- it becomes a way to justify silence and repression. The closet in ally angry if I ended up dying in 2021 as he is supposed to.) We Crown’s poems becomes the womb of the imagination. “In order don’t get many facts about Crown, but one can guess that, like to survive, you sometimes must/ invent alternative realities,” the author, Yakov Azriel, he grew up (as did I) in a New York such as his fantasies of mermen and Martians. “A Strange De- Jewish middle-class family. His life could have been my life, vice” is a riddle poem. He has a tool to transport him from “uni- but it wasn’t. I’m not particularly brave or self-aware, but I re- verse to universe” outside of time and space. fused to make the bargain he made. It’s not a fair bargain either for oneself or for one’s children (presuming you have them). By using this device, a man like me He holds on to the closet as some people hold on to injustice, as is able to explore a world beyond a justification for his unhappiness rather than as a metaphor that his closet’s ice, a world in which he’s free leads to corrective action. I am impatient with G. S. Crown be- to build a submarine and cross a sea far warmer than his closet’s frozen pond. cause, like me, he was still a teenager when Stonewall occurred; This strange device is writing poetry. he was still in college when gay groups began to form on university campuses; he was still in his twenties when the first The closet is needed so it can be transcended by poetry. It’s a marches on Washington began. This sequence of sonnets re- neat trick. Isn’t he lucky? Living a frustrated, dishonest life in flects none of that history. The life it supposedly traces is a sad the closet has enabled him to write poems. And how literary one, a cautionary tale of self-indulgence and weakness. Azriel’s he’d become, since the poem borrows language from Co- genuine skills as a formalist are put in the service of a far too leridge’s “Kubla Khan,” where the stately pleasure dome con- common bankruptcy of will.

Gilbert; Jamaican-Canadian writer Makeda that this form of “therapy” is still practiced in Our Time: San Francisco in the ‘70s Silvera; and the founder of Glad Day Book- the U.S., offering the false promise, still ap- by Chuck Forester shop in Toronto, Jearld Moldenhauer. Sev- pealing to some teenagers and parents, that Querelle Press. 159 pages,$19.97 eral contributors chose to write about the these ad hoc tortures can turn a gay person Longtime LGBT activist Chuck Forester has African-American R&B singer Jackie Shane, straight. JAYSON MORRISON had an admirable career. He served in the ad- a resident of Toronto and a nightclub per- ministrations of three San Francisco mayors, former whose early 1960s hit single “Any Pride and Joy: LGBTQ Artists, Icons and was an executive with many nonprofits (in- Other Way” provided the title of this book. Everyday Heroes cluding the Human Rights Campaign), and MARTHA E. STONE by Kathleen Archambeau led the effort to raise $3.5 million for the San Mango Publishing Group. 322 pages, $16.95 Francisco Public Library’s Hormel Gay and How to Survive a Summer: A Novel Since his inauguration, Donald Trump has Lesbian Center. Our Time is clearly autobio- by Nick White surrounded himself with shady figures fix- graphical, but he has chosen, perhaps un- Blue Rider Press. 348 pages, $26. ated on pushing “religious freedom” as a wisely, t o frame it as a novel. Inspired by a film he has seen, narrator Will means of suppressing LGBT rights. Over the The narrative focuses on Paul,ayoung Dillard decides to take an interstate trip to re- summer Trump announced a ban on trans Midwesterner who journeys to San Fran- visit the camp where he endured four weeks people entering the military. Coming against cisco,the gay mecca of the early 1970s, to of gay conversion therapy some years ago. this backdrop, Pride and Joy is a refreshing start a new life. This is a young-man-from- Hoping to find closure and relief from the reprieve. Kathleen Archambeau’s study pro- the-provinces novel, replete with many“gee trauma he still endures, he also grudgingly files thirty individuals who represent the full whiz” moments of improbable luck and for- meets his estranged father and two of the five spectrum of the LGBT rainbow. Each subject tuitous encounters. Handsome Paul has no campers he met at age fifteen. Of course, all comes across as a complex person and not problem findingsex,butwhathe really were indelibly affected by that summer in just a checked box. The profiles range from wants, of course,istruelove. When he’s not central Mississippi. Dillard weaves this jour- famous people like playwright Tony Kushner looking for that, he’s busy with his quest to ney with his own recollections of that sum- to lesser-known but still inspiring people like assemble a collection of LGBT literature mer and earlier teen years when he failed to Sidney Grant, the founder of Ballroom Basix, that will give gay men and lesbians a sense fulfill his Baptist preacher father’s expecta- an arts education program in New York City. of their history and “help start the revolu- tions of masculinity. Strong parallels exist be- In these compact profiles, Archambeau dis- tion.” He eventually houses the library in a tween White and Dillard’s lives, and the cusses how the subjects’ sexual identity storefront financed by a wealthy friend. The novel often reads more like a memoir due to shaped their life experience, and how in turn novel concludes with a bizarre, raucous White’s closeness to the main character. The this experience informed their art or activism. opening ceremony during which a huge advantage is White’s ability to produce a con- The book would be especially appropriate for crowd breaks intoanimpromptu rendition vincing depiction of Dillard’s trauma, the teenage readers in search of gay role models. of “OvertheRainbow,”leaving everyone in camp, and its leaders. Fear tactics, solitary For those of us who are weary or alarmed tears. If it sounds corny, it is. I would have confinement, and sadistic games were all part over the state of the nation, it can serve as a preferredtoreadForester’s own,nonfiction of the camp’s approach. Camp leaders clearly reminder of where the LGBT community has take on the history he has witnessed and the had their own unfinished battles with same- been and how far we’ve come. contributions he has made. sex desire. This book serves as a reminder DAN CALHOUN JIM NAWROCKI

November–December 2017 37 He Made It Cosmic to Be ‘Different’

HEN I interviewed film- the moment that all queer Bowie fans of a maker Duncan Jones, who MATTHEW HAYS certain age will never forget: the 1983 also happens to be the son Rolling Stone cover story in which the artist of David Bowie, I closed revealed another new persona, this one de- W Forever Stardust: the interview with this question: Did it ever cidedly heterosexual, in which he basically weird him out that so many gay journalists David Bowie Across the Universe dismissed his previous statements about told him that the first time they dyed their by Will Brooker being gay or bi as “experimenting.” In hair blond was because of his father? Jones I.B.Taurus. 259 pages, $22.95 other words, it was all just a phase. Adding met the question with a laugh, but for gay to it all was the magazine’s cover headline, men of a certain generation, Bowie was one of the most serious which read “DAVID BOWIE STRAIGHT.” At the dawn of the AIDS defenses against homophobia one could have. There he was: an crisis, this could not be ignored or denied. I still recall looking undeniably brilliant artist, performer, and rock-and-roll icon— at the cover on the newsstand: “If the fearless Bowie is running who had boasted brazenly of his sexual conquests of men. scared,” I thought to myself, “then this is even more horrifying Following his shocking death last year at age 69, some peo- than I’d imagined.” ple criticized the obituaries for downplaying or neglecting to Brooker’s conclusions are not judgmental, but somewhat mention Bowie’s gender outlaw status. It’s hard to imagine how damning nonetheless. He points out that much of Bowie’s ini- anyone could have missed it, given the cross-dressing, the tial flirtation with gender play and nods to being bent were just makeup, and the lusty lyrics, not to mention the photos of Bowie ways of getting attention and driving up record sales. The ruse cuddling with Lou Reed and Mick Jagger at Studio 54, or the worked beautifully, until Bowie started pushing into the Amer- over-the-top homoerotic role he played in Merry Christmas, Mr. ican mainstream market, where tastes were far more conserva- Lawrence. Thankfully, author Will Brooker gets into a thought- tive and less tolerant. Brooker finds subsequent interviews with ful and pleasing analysis of Bowie’s substantive style in For- ever Stardust, a book that manages to be written from the perspective of an obvious fan who is never fawning or shallow. Indeed, this is a comprehensive addition to the field that has come to be known as Bowieology, which, given all the changes that this enigmatic artist went through in his life, is no small feat. Brooker’s strategy is to leap about in time and space as he writes, picking up on different themes to which Bowie would return. His book will hold appeal for all Bowie enthusiasts re- gardless of their gender identity or position on the Kinsey Scale, but readers of this magazine may be most interested in what is in fact the most compelling chapter: “Gender and Sexuality.” Brooker begins by unpacking many of the accolades made in the days and weeks following Bowie’s death. Obituary writers, perhaps constrained by both space and time, were quick to con- flate Bowie’s extensive gender play, including cross-dressing and donning of makeup, with his expressions of same-sex desire or his bisexuality. But the two—gender identity and sexual orientation—are two distinct things, as Brooker understands. Brooker also understands that an artist whose themes and messages were so intricate deserves to be treated with detailed Bowie in which he says his motivation for many of the state- analysis. He notes that Bowie’s repeated use of the alien ments in the Rolling Stone interview were made for that very motif—that he had been dropped here from some other planet, reason: to pave the way for his biggest mainstream success, the as the title of the cult movie The Man Who Fell to Earth sug- Let’s Dance album and subsequent “Serious Moonlight” tour. gested—had a paradoxical effect on his fans: it was this very Brooker’s writing style and tone are inviting, and his intel- otherworldly status that made them feel less alone. Bowie’s var- ligence and extensive research breathe life into every page of ious personæ explain why such a range of people on the margins Forever Stardust. He is to be commended for acknowledging of society felt connected to him. the enigmas surrounding an artist as complex as Bowie. Like The highlight of this chapter is its measured examination of most great artists, Bowie led a life and created a body of work that is riddled with contradictions. As Brooker contends, his Matthew Hays is the co-editor (with Tom Waugh) of the “Queer Film connection and meaning to LGBT spectators will remain one Classics” book series. of his enduring mysteries.

38 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE What Makes a Culture Tolerant?

AME-SEX MARRIAGE is now free press, freedom of association, and ac- legal in two dozen countries— ROSEMARY BOOTH cess to the media expose people to a wider while same-sex sexual behavior cross-section of humanity. remains punishable by death in Adamczyk’s nine case studies group S Cross-National Public Opinion seven others. What accounts for the range countries by dominant religion—Catholic, of differences in acceptance of gay, les- about Homosexuality: Protestant, and Muslim—and focuses on bian, bisexual, transgender, and queer per- Examining Attitudes three countries in each group. The three sons throughout the world? Across the Globe Catholic countries, Spain, Brazil, and In Cross-National Public Opinion by Amy Adamczyk Italy, were all found to be relatively sup- about Homosexuality; Examining Attitudes University of California Press portive of LGBT rights. While some across the Globe, sociologist Amy Adam- 304 pages, $39.95 Catholic countries were less tolerant, czyk has woven an impressive tapestry of these three also have in common a rela- nuanced answers to this urgent and complex question. Her tively free press. Predominantly Protestant countries include powerful if not entirely surprising conclusion is that religious Uganda, South Africa, and the U.S., all of which combine a salience—the importance people attach to religion—is the most mixture of conservative and mainline denominations. Former important factor associated with reduced tolerance for homo- British colonies all, they display widely divergent attitudes sexuality at the national level. Also implicated, but with the op- toward homosexuality, from Uganda’s draconian anti-gay posite effect, is the level of economic development along with laws to legal support for marriage equality in the other two the degree of democratic government. countries. These differences in tolerance correlate with wide Born on a dairy farm in rural Wisconsin, Adamczyk stud- economic disparities: a GDP per capita of $46,000 in the U.S., ied fashion design before turning to social science; she is now $5,600 in South Africa, and $458 in Uganda. The latter coun- professor of sociology at CUNY’s John Jay College of Crim- try’s extreme poverty corresponds to a rural and insular so- inal Justice. Her well-organized findings and evidence-based cial organization. For the third set, Adamczyk had intended conclusions are relevant for policy makers, legislators, and to study three Arab countries, but the scarcity of WVS data others working to increase tolerance in a fast-changing world. forced her to examine three non-Arab Muslim nations: The text is packed with figures and tables, a wide-ranging bib- Malaysia, Turkey, and Indonesia. Even there, the data proved liography, and detailed notes. In addition, many statements challenging to interpret, and she ends up calling for “more re- require careful qualification. Nevertheless, the researcher’s search” on this topic. style is engaging, with inconsistencies in evidence treated as Like Arab Muslim countries, Chinese Confucian societies puzzles for which she offers possible solutions. have had relatively little scrutiny. For this reason, as well as The national comparisons are presented in three tiers. The the availability of a research infrastructure, the author chose first is based on responses to the World Values Survey (WVS) to study Taiwan, a country with Confucian and Buddhist that were gathered from nearly 200,000 people in 87 coun- strains but low religious salience, general prosperity, and a tries from 1999 to 2014 to explain differences in tolerance for healthy press. How, then, to explain the relatively low level of LGBT people. The author probes results from nine countries gay tolerance? To explain this paradox, Adamczyk inter- using socio-historical data and content analysis from news- viewed people whose jobs or activities gave them insight into papers. Finally, she looks at tolerance in depth in one country, how people there view homosexuality, including members of Taiwan, based on her own fieldwork. LGBT organizations. Her conclusion is that Taiwanese views A country’s level of tolerance is derived from the per- of marriage and divorce, and the priority given to family centage of respondents who say that homosexuality is “never structure, may reduce tolerance for homosexuality. In support, permissible” or that they would not want gay neighbors. she cites the Confucian obligation to worship ancestors, with About two-thirds of the variance among WVS countries can its emphasis on progeny and procreation. But if Taiwan’s fer- be explained by religious salience, per capita GDP, and the tility rate, now lowest in the world, is any indication, that ob- extent of democratic development. While the first of these ligation has weakened. Possibly Taiwan’s recent high court factors was not unexpected, a surprising finding was that even decision supporting marriage equality simply reflects the nonbelievers living in strongly religious cultures hold atti- waning of traditional beliefs—in turn prompting a strong tudes similar to those of believers. Prosperity, on the other counterreaction led by the five percent of Taiwanese who are hand, tends to increase tolerance, as it enables people to raise Christians. their sights above everyday survival and experience a wider Where are things headed? Looking around the world, world than family or community. Similarly, democratic insti- Adamczyk finds that eighty percent of the countries exam- tutions tend to increase open-mindedness to the extent that a ined are becoming more liberal. On the other hand, she cau- tions against premature optimism: “we can’t assume change Rosemary Booth is a writer and photographer living in Cambridge, will be linear or simple.” Most critically: “religion remains Mass. relevant.”

November–December 2017 39 Musical Orientation

HE CENTENNIAL of American savaged the piece; others admired his use of composer Lou Harrison’s birth PHILIP GAMBONE non-European musical systems. During the was marked this year by celebra- early 1940s, Harrison was in Los Angeles, tions around the country, includ- taking lessons with Schoenberg, who T Lou Harrison: ing a concert—“Lou 100: In Honor of the praised the pieces he was working on. Divine Mr. Harrison”—at Tanglewood. American Musical Maverick Schoenberg encouraged the twelve-tone “Divine” is only one of many epithets by Bill Alves and Brett Campbell novice to simplify, pointing him “away from accorded to, or lobbed against, the composer Indiana. 602 pages, $55. elaboration and complexity and toward the over his long and prolific life. For those who clarity and transparency of Mozart.” admire Harrison’s music, he was a guru of the world music move- In 1943, Harrison moved to New York. With neither a ment. He once said that his goal was “to regain ... techniques boyfriend nor much money, and hating the clangor of the city, which in the Occident have been destroyed.” For many young this was a turbulent and depressing time for him. Much of the American composers in the final decades of the 20th century, this music he produced in the next few years was melancholy and “mirthful Buddha figure” gave them permission “to unabashedly sorrowful—“a shadowy soundtrack to disturbing feelings and embrace beauty.” But Harrison also has his detractors. Early crit- brushes with madness.” Fortunately, Harrison befriended yet an- ics called his music “unfittingly barbarous and noisy.” Later, his other composer, Virgil Thomson, who hired him as his copyist. embrace of non-Western music systems opened him to the charge Thomson introduced Harrison to a circle of gay and bisexual of being the “Santa Claus of new music.” composers—his “little friends”—among them David Diamond, In Lou Harrison: American Musical Maverick, Bill Alves and Leonard Bernstein, Ned Rorem, Paul Bowles, Samuel Barber, Brett Campbell have written an eminently scholarly, fair-minded, and Gian Carlo Menotti. and exhaustive biography of a composer they claim enjoyed “one During these years, Harrison was smoking and drinking of the richest lives ever lived in American arts.” Harrison’s blend heavily. A week before his thirtieth birthday—broke, struggling of Eastern and Western music-making techniques, his “ecumeni- to compose, rarely getting his music played, and having gone cal spirituality,” and his deep distrust of the academy allowed through a painful separation from a lover—he suffered a nerv- him to chart his own path, “without obligation to musical trend ous breakdown and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. It makers or others’ ideas of a conventional career.” took him a long time, as he put it, “to reconstruct a life out of the Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1917, Harrison enjoyed an idyl- detritus,” which led him to a new musical path, one that the au- lic childhood full of art, books, and nature. Musically preco- thors describe as full of “sunny calm” and “guileless purity.” cious, he wrote his first composition when he was ten. By the Harrison began “to draw from world resources, collecting time he was in high school in suburban California, he had im- them like a magpie.” These resources, an eclectic mix of “pan- mersed himself in every aspect of music. His esoteric interests Pacific sounds,” encompassed Javanese, Indian, Japanese, Thai, and shy nature triggered the taunts of classmates, who called Korean, and Chinese musical styles and systems. By the mid him a sissy. The winter after he graduated from high school, Har- 1950s, he had dedicated his life to “integrating two great streams rison’s family moved to San Francisco, where he discovered the of human music, East and West.” This was also the period when city’s vibrant artistic community, as well as its gay underground. Senator Joe McCarthy was conducting his witch hunts. Some of The lonely adolescent “emerged a breathlessly energetic, charm- Harrison’s musical friends, among them Aaron Copland, were ing young artist now surrounded by convivial and sympathetic targeted. The relentless interrogations made Harrison regret that friends.” he had lived a closeted life, and he resolved “never to hide in Among those early friends was Henry Cowell, an ultra-mod- any closet about anything ever again in my life.” ernist composer, who became Harrison’s mentor and teacher. Increasingly, Harrison’s large-scale compositions—pieces Cowell introduced the young Harrison to tone clusters, alternate like Pacifika Rondo (1963), a “symbolic tour of Pacific cul- tunings, polyrhythms, the twelve-tone world of Arnold Schoen- tures,” and Novo Ordo (1968), a protest oratorio for chorus and berg, and, perhaps most importantly, to the notion that Eastern orchestra—established themselves as landmarks in the world musical traditions were no less advanced than European forms. music movement. Critics and musicians praised the crystalline By his early twenties, Harrison was “leavening the possibilities” texture of these works. “One could see Himalayas and skies and offered by these musical models with his own emerging voice. forests,” poet Calvin Harlan noted. Musician Robert Hughes In 1938, Harrison met John Cage. While Harrison “cared called Harrison’s compositions “play, like dolphins in the water.” more about having fun and creating beauty than about Cage’s In 1967, Harrison met Bill Colvig, who would become his self-conscious avant-gardism,” the two hit it off. Under Cage’s in- romantic and creative partner for the rest of his life. When spiration, he composed his Fifth Simfony (1939) for four percus- Colvig suggested that he write an opera on a gay subject, Harri- sionists, a piece he described as “quite Cubistic.” Some critics son enthusiastically turned to the life of the young Julius Caesar. Completed in the early 1970s, at the height of the Vietnam War, Philip Gambone is the author of four books, including the novel Bei- Young Caesar featured positive portrayals of homosexuality and jing (Wisconsin). intercultural understanding. Unfortunately, its weak libretto and

40 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE On Disability’s Frontier

JOHN R. KILLACKY

In the Province of the Gods by Kenny Fries University of Wisconsin Press. 216 pages, $26.95

OET AND MEMOIRIST Kenny Fries is a pioneer in the disability rights movement. Twenty years ago, two of his Lou Harrison in 1989. John Fago photo. Pbooks reframed the prevailing narrative away from peo- the “sheer audacity” of its world-music texture and gay-rights ple being defined by their disabilities to one affirming the full theme doomed it to failure. Harrison was crushed, but he made lives of those living with a disability. a comeback with a Buddhist-inspired piece, La Koro Sutro Fries was born with missing bones in both legs and had mul- (1971), which the authors call “one of the greatest sacred works tiple surgeries as a child. In his Body, Remember: A Memoir of the twentieth century.” (1997), Fries excavated medical records, family secrets, and By his sixtieth birthday, Harrison had become “one of the early sexual explorations to reclaim wholeness. His anthology elder statesmen of American music.” It was around this time that Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out he began writing for the Javanese gamelan orchestra, a sound (1997) featured powerful writing by Adrienne Rich, Eli Clare, that had captivated him as far back as 1939, when he first heard Terry Galloway, and Raymond Luczak, among others. He con- Balinese music at the Golden Gate International Exposition. tributed three poignant poems about his feet, scars, and re- “The actual sound of the gamelan is more appealing to me than defining beauty. that of a symphony orchestra,” Harrison said. Here was music I included an essay by Fries in an anthology I co-edited, that allowed him to exploit what he was most interested in: Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their Stories (2004). melody and rhythm. “Disability Made Me Do It, or Modeling for the Cause” was a In the next few years, Harrison produced an “orgy of game- caustic rumination on posing for a sex-positive depiction of a lan writing,” including his Double Concerto for Violin, Cello, gay disabled man having sex. Since then, Fries has written a and Javanese Gamelan (1982), one of his masterworks. Such memoir juxtaposing Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest pieces, conceived against the prevailing Western musical insti- with the history of his orthopedic shoes, published several vol- tutions, represented an entirely new musical genre. Increasing umes of poetry, and written the libretto for an opera commis- success brought him commissions, grants, travel opportunities, sioned by the Houston Grand Opera. invitations, and piles of correspondence. Fries’ latest book, In The Province Of The Gods, tenderly The frenzy of activity took its toll. Harrison began to suffer chronicles two extended trips to Japan researching the realities from exhaustion and poor health, and in 1989 underwent triple of people who are physically different. Initially, what surprised bypass surgery. The deaths of several gay composer friends— him was that he was treated primarily as any other gaijin (West- Aaron Copland, John Cage, and Leonard Bernstein—also took erner), and not as a disabled person. When visiting ancient their emotional toll, as did the death of Colvig in 2000. None of shrines, temples, gardens, waterfalls, and hot springs, he won- these setbacks stopped Harrison, now in his eighties, from pur- dered as he relished new smells and textures: “Is this the be- suing one of the busiest decades of his musical life. He also un- ginning of a new way of seeing?” His poems focused on the dertook another relationship, this time with a 44-year old flowers, teahouses, rocks, and bridges, but he realized that puppeteer, while also enthusiastically pursuing other, more ca- “What I was actually writing about was what was held in the sual sexual encounters. “Unless you have plenty of love, plenty of sex, plenty of affection,” he once said, “it just gets in your way if you’re trying to do creative work.” On February 2, 2003, while on a trip to Ohio to attend a festival of his music, Harrison collapsed and died. At his memorial service he was remembered for his “joyous energy, ferocious ap- petite for knowledge, generous philosophy, and contagious ardor for art, science, history, life.” Alves and Campbell have written a noteworthy book, one that combines an engaging biography with valuable musical analysis. The lay reader may find the analysis tough going, but these paragraphs can be skipped over, as I sometimes did, opting instead to listen to the pieces under consideration via YouTube, where a surprising amount of Har- rison’s music can be found. November–December 2017 41 gardens: a microcosm of what it means to be alive in an ever- Having in common a deep and powerful bond with their changing mortal world. And living life in a mortal world is per- community, Rule and Bébout became public figures in the fight haps the greatest lesson learned from the experience of living for LGBT equality. Rule was the only well-known, openly les- with a disability.” bian Canadian, and Bébout guided TBP through obscenity tri- Artists, scholars, and advocates introduced Fries to the als after Canada Customs seized his paper and one of her novels mythologies of disabled gods, one-eyed samurai, and blind at the border. TBP was dragged into court several times, as were priests roaming the countryside. He relived the horror of the Little Sisters and Glad Day, Canadian bookstores, an ultimately atomic bombing and its aftermath through interviews with hi- futile move by the government but a costly one for the defen- bakusha (survivors). He also shares his experiences of going to dants. Canada may currently enjoy a very positive image in the gay bars and staying overnight in a “love hotel” when it became U.S., but we should not forget the state-sponsored discrimina- too late to get a taxi. On his second trip to Japan, he met his fu- tion of past decades when gay literature was conflated with ture husband, who was teaching English in Sapporo. Just prior pornography. to the visit, Fries learned he had sero-converted and was on ten- A Queer Love Story is a wonderful book full of daily life de- terhooks about being HIV-positive, but his new man embraced tails, notes on the writing process, and commentary on gay and and loved him. lesbian issues. It will introduce younger readers to two exemplary In The Province Of The Gods is a finely honed philosophi- members of the gay community. Rule and Bébout typed long let- cal and autobiographical reflection on transcendence and self- ters before and after e-mail existed. Bébout tells Rule that one acceptance. While Fries thought he went to Japan to “understand day their letters will reveal the “concerns of our time and tribe.” the big picture of how those who are physically different are They also reveal two very serious people who don’t take them- viewed,” ultimately his pilgrimage revealed “a visceral under- selves altogether seriously. A strong moral compass guides their standing that the body, disabled or otherwise, is a fact of a mor- discussions, but both writers have a fine sense of irony. tal life, a continuum with no before, no after.” Although Rule’s last book, Loving the Difficult, offers many ______personal details about the author, A Queer Love Story, partly be- John R. Killacky is executive director of Flynn Center for the Per- cause of its length, gives a fuller picture. Diagnosed in her forties forming Arts in Burlington, VT. with rheumatoid arthritis, she delays its development by swimming in her own pool, and she seems to have had a full and stim- ulating social life as well as a close connection with her parents. At times her pithy comments are delightful, as when, for example, she writes: “the channel of my imagination shows nothing A Writer and Her Editor but snow.” At her pool she appreciates “all those marvelous women, gorgeously, gorgeously old ... sunning, swimming, floating about in teasing or earnest conversation.” MARGARET CRUIKSHANK Although Rule and Sonthoff lived together for more than forty years, Rule believes that short-term lesbian relationships A Queer Love Story: should be highly valued as well. Both she and Bébout express The Letters of Jane Rule and Rick Bébout skepticism about same-sex marriage. Rule wears her fame lightly, Edited by Marilyn R. Schuster recalling droll events connected with the various honors she re- Univ. of British Columbia Press. 619 pages, $49.95 ceived. Documentaries were made about her, and the film version of her first novel, Desert of the Heart, enjoyed great success. ANS of lesbian icon Jane Rule will celebrate the pub- Rick Bébout’s side of this correspondence eloquently doc- lication of her letters to a man whom she came to love. uments AIDS in Toronto in the 1980s and early ’90s. I cannot Less familiar to U.S. readers, Rick Bébout—editor of praise highly enough the depth of feeling and analysis of the Fthe Toronto gay paper The Body Politic and the book epidemic in these letters. Bébout describes taking care of Flaunting It: A Decade of Gay Journalism friends, dealing with his own HIV status, from The Body Politic—is equally engaging working for an AIDS agency, mourning the in these letters. At first the two were profes- “massive loss” to his community. His reports sionally related as editor and columnist: Rule on funerals are heartbreaking. One way he (1931–2007) wrote a column for TBP for ten copes is by reading the letters of Virginia years and gradually became close to Bébout. Woolf. Intimacy could hardly have been predicted I felt privileged to be in the presence of between writers whose lives were so differ- these two gifted, courageous writers, both of ent: Bébout (1950–2009) lived in the heart of whom left the U.S. for Canada when they Toronto’s gay community, loved the bars, were young. Imagine a book of 600 pages that and had many short-term affairs, while Rule, seems to end too soon. Will we ever again, in nineteen years older, lived quietly on Galiano, this age of texting, have such a lively, spirited, an island off Vancouver, with her longtime and revealing correspondence? partner Helen Sonthoff. Rule and Bébout met several times in Toronto, and also in Galiano, Margaret Cruikshank’s latest book is titled The Gay relishing their time together. and Lesbian Liberation Movement (Routledge).

42 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE enced fiction writer. Here a considerable amount of traveling is briefly described: “I stayed with her for a few days and then she drove me back to Thunder Bay, where she stayed with me for a Indigenous Alien few days. When it was time for her to go, we decided that I would go back up to Dryden with her again for a few days. We continued going back and forth together like that until October, JEAN ROBERTA when Grace decided to move in with me..” Despite the pedestrian narrative, this book could be eye- A Two-Spirit Journey: opening for readers who are unfamiliar with the evocations of The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder poverty and abuse in the life stories of indigenous Canadians, by Ma-Nee Chacaby with Mary Louisa Plummer and with the homophobia of “successfully” assimilated native University of Manitoba Press. 264 pages, $27.95 adults (many of whom are conservative Christians, thanks to residential school culture). For many “two-spirit” indigenous ACISM, sexism, and homophobia prevent most indige- individuals, a belief that their forerunners were highly respected nous “two-spirit” Canadians from reaching their full po- shamans and role models in their communities is the stuff of Rtential. Actually, cisgendered, heterosexual, and male legend, not of lived experience. indigenous Canadians don’t fare much better. Life stories like this one seem to be waiting for a great writer Canada, like the U.S., has a shameful history of colonizing who can do them justice. (In fact, I’ve seen a local indigenous and systematically decimating its native population. Ma-Nee theater troupe perform Chekhov, transplanted to a local reser- Chacaby, born in 1950, apparently escaped the forced assimila- vation, to brilliant effect.) In its bare-bones way, this book gives tion of the residential school system, but her childhood in an a plausible account of a queer life far outside the middle-class, isolated Anishinaabeg (indigenous) community in northern On- urban mainstream. tario is described as far from idyllic, especially after the death ______of her beloved grandmother. Jean Roberta is a writer based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The writing style of this book has a YoungAdult flavor. The actual writer is probably Mary Louisa Plummer, described as a social scientist and long-term friend of the subject. The simply- worded narrative includes unemotional descriptions of the events of Ma-Nee’s childhood, including extreme bullying, Underground Closet adult drinking parties that went on for days, and gang rape as a form of recreation for men. Later in her adolescence, there were unplanned pregnancies plus marital violence that repeatedly put ALLEN YOUNG her in the hospital, all of which took place before Ma-Nee left home to seek her fortune in a town dominated by a white, Eng- Swords in the Hands of Children: lish-speaking population. Reflections of an American Revolutionary Despite the predictable but disturbing litany of abuse, Ma- by Jonathan Lerner Nee emerges as a talented visual artist and a heroic survivor OR Books. 216 pages, $22. who eventually nurtures both children and adults in need. She leads a fledgling movement to cope with the devastating effects HE WORDS “fear” and “frightened” pepper Jonathan of HIV/AIDS in indigenous communities in Canada, at first by Lerner’s intriguing account of how he, a young idealist translating HIV-prevention material from English into a mix of Twith a sincere commitment to the civil rights and peace Ojibwa and Cree to make it accessible to people who previously movements of the 1960s, became affiliated with the violence- had no exposure to books or pamphlets on sexual health. prone Weather Underground Organization (WUO). Her sexual relationships also show a progression toward In his youth, the closeted Lerner held back from a potential greater fulfillment. In her early marriage to a man, she is a vic- acting career because “the ubiquitous and openness of gay peo- tim. Later, she marries a man whom she doesn’t love, but he is ple in theater frightened me.” He recounts an experience at a described as decent and responsible. After “coming out” to her- major anti-war march in 1968, where there was a confrontation self, she has loving relationships with several women, including between demonstrators and police in riot gear, and reveals his a much younger woman from Boston. This relationship even- fear of “those swinging truncheons.” Once immersed as a sol- tually falls apart because of irreconcilable differences. dier in the Weather Underground, whose leaders turned author- Here is a description of Ma-Nee’s second serious lesbian re- itarian and cruel, Lerner became fearful of his comrades. lationship: “Grace and I became lovers the second time I went Decades later, he has written a memoir about this era titled to Dryden. I was excited that such a beautiful woman wanted Swords in the Hands of Children. Having observed how some me as much as I wanted her. To me, she seemed natural like the alumni of the WUO show little or no remorse, and given my land itself. Grace had a wonderful mix of qualities. She was own strong opposition to the group, I admire Lerner’s courage both serious and easygoing, both cautious and fearless.” More and honesty in writing this book filled with his own remorse showing and less telling might have brought Grace a bit more and regret. to life. There is enough material in Ma-Nee’s life for several The WUO, or Weathermen, as they were called, started as a gripping novels, but neither she nor her co-author is an experi- faction in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the na-

November–December 2017 43 tional antiwar organization that both Lerner and I belonged to in the ’60s. The WUO, in an effort to combat imperialist violence, took to bombs and inflammatory rhetoric that Lerner doesn’t hesitate to call “terrorism.” Lerner writes that he never The Dead Are Everywhere made or placed any bombs, and I believe him, but he created and promoted Weatherman propaganda. A turning point in this story was the SDS convention in mid- CHARLES GREEN June 1969, in Chicago, which I attended, as did Lerner and about a thousand other activists. At this event, the future Weathermen The Disintegrations achieved leadership status in an election that involved fraudulent by Alistair McCartney vote-counting, as revealed in Lerner’s account. This is only one University of Wisconsin Press. 232 pages, $26.95 of the interesting revelations in Lerner’s book. Another is his re- port of having sex with Weathermen leader Bill Ayres, who later SEMI-AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL meditation on death, married Bernardine Dohrn. This sexual encounter was possibly Alistair McCartney’s The Disintegrations has the feel- part of a bizarre goal, promoted by Weatherman’s macho men, Aing of a conversation between new friends, exploring to “smash monogamy” and promote orgies. the idea of death through several stories. In fact, the narrator, Lerner, approaching seventy and now married to a man also named Alistair McCartney, is rather obsessed with death. named Peter, with whom he lives in a Hudson Valley town, did- He teaches at a college in Los Angeles directly across from a n’t fully come out until he was in his forties. When we met in cemetery, so he looks at “death” almost every day. He fre- the 1960s, we were both closeted, but in different ways. My quently walks around the grounds, at one point watching a fu- closet door was partly open—I was a self-accepting gay man, neral in progress. He meets a young man at the cemetery and though secretive. Lerner, however, was actively suppressing his talks with him. His new friend encourages McCartney to spend gay desires. Someone whispered to me at an SDS gathering in the night with him among the gravestones, but he thinks twice 1969 that Lerner (whose good looks I had noticed) was gay, but about it and runs away. when I awkwardly tried to hook up with him, he rejected me McCartney is full of information about death, much of it without any real conversation or interaction. gleaned on-line. He writes: “most humans use the internet to Lerner did things that closeted gay men sometimes do. He connect with the living. I prefer to use it to connect with the spoke openly with straight friends about “rolling a faggot” for dead.” He reveals that the population of the cemetery is money. He hustled rich men—“just using them,” without emo- 163,471, while the population of the suburb the cemetery is in tional attachment. He fell in love with a straight guy, Antioch is 38,816. Some of the more famous residents of the cemetery College pal Jeff Jones, whose surfer-boy good looks were a fac- are Rita Hayworth, Lawrence Welk, and Bela Lugosi. Accord- tor in Lerner’s pathway to the Weathermen. Above all, there was ing to McCartney, as a soldier in the Hungarian army, Lugosi his fervent desire not to be perceived as gay. hid in a grave and pretended to be dead, which, the actor later Nonetheless, I wonder if, when writing this book, he re- claimed, is how he learned how to act. membered the time when a fellow SDSer (me) approached him. McCartney’s first story involves his paternal grandmother, He certainly knew about my early gay liberation work, and he who visited when Alistair was a young child living in Australia. could have known about others. For example, former SDSer He remarks on her reserved nature as well as her age, smell, and Carl Wittman wrote the groundbreaking 1969 “Gay Manifesto,” the look of her skin, all of which made him suspicious of her. He influencing me and thousands of others. Or consider Jay Guy makes a remarkable observation: “all old people are foreign, Nassberg (now Jason Victor Serinus), a key player in Amherst because they’re closer to death.” Later, after she dies, he ob- College SDS who went on to become an SDS “campus trav- serves that his father regularly travels to Scotland to visit her eler,” was later courted by the Weather Underground (while he grave, but he “has never mentioned her again.” was a participant, along with Lerner, in the first Venceremos The next tale is of Robert, McCartney’s former coworker at Brigade in Cuba), and founded the New Haven Gay Liberation a restaurant in L.A., who fought drug addiction and died of an Front in the spring of 1970. overdose. McCartney had run into Robert once after leaving a I try to respect the coming out process as one of individual sexual partner’s apartment, and here the narrator captures per- choice. However, it’s harder for me to accept Lerner’s glacial fectly the awkwardness of such a situation. At Robert’s memo- pace, knowing he was a social justice activist who saw the gay rial, he describes the “sadness floating around the room, but movement emerging while decisively staying away from it. there was an undertow of ... excitement, the thrill, the flutter Something very powerful inside of him kept Lerner in the that accompanies the self-destruction of a fucked-up young closet, even leading him into a heterosexual marriage that lasted man.” several years (a fact I learned from a mutual friend but which he Later, McCartney talks about Catherine and David Birnie, a omits from this book). I have no problem wishing him joy now husband and wife team of serial killers who abducted, tortured, and thanking him for this valuable and sometimes entertaining and killed several women before being caught. They lived very memoir. near McCartney’s childhood home in small-town Australia. In- ______deed, “from our front door to the Birnies’ front door couldn’t Allen Young joined the New York Gay Liberation Front in 1970 and have taken more than four minutes.” His sister Julianne, a stu- co-edited four books with Karla Jay, including Out of the Closets: dent at the same university as one of the victims, could easily Voices of Gay Liberation. have been picked up by the Birnies, and he imagines how they

44 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE would have used their connection to the neighborhood to get her in the car. The killers were apparently incredibly talkative to the authorities and the media. McCartney is clearly fascinated “A sexy, scathing by them and goes into detail about their methods and back- insider’s view of INSIDE grounds, even delving into theories about why they killed. It makes for engaging, if macabre, reading. an interior design A NOVEL BY CHARLES L. ROSS While death may be the element that ties these stories to- magazine that gether, McCartney spends most of his time writing about the hardly needs its lives of his subjects, their struggles, their passions, and their murder plot to loves. In the process, he gradually reveals more about himself, keep readers as well. The Disintegrations is an unusual work of fiction that enthralled.” makes for a compelling reading experience. KIRKUS REVIEWS ______Charles Green is a writer based in Annapolis, Maryland. “INSIDE is The Devil Wears Prada of the decorating world.” More Transitions in Store FELICE PICANO author of Art & Sex in Greenwich Village TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER “Coolly observed, funny, and touching.” Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me ANDREW HOLLERAN by Janet Mock author of Dancer from the Dance Atria Books. 227 pages, $24.99 Charles L. Ross was art director of Architectural Digest (1978- HERE ARE many reasons to 1985) and the founding art director of Veranda (1987-2004). read Janet Mock’s earlier Available at Amazon.com Tmemoir, Redefining Realness (2014), not least of which is that it serves as a prelude, if not a prereq- “trying or pretending.” The seriousness of the surgery proved uisite, to reading her new book, Sur- that there was no “trying” here. There’s a lot of fussing about passing Certainty. The earlier book appearance in this book, and not just as it relates to gender. offered a unique look at becoming a Mock frets over her hair, her makeup, her breast size, and her transgender woman and eventually bottom. And while she stresses that she is female, it took months a transgender model in Hawaii. after her surgery before she realized that no one saw her as any- As this second memoir opens, thing other than a pretty black woman. Mock is a late teenager who has fully transitioned to female, Men were eager to spend time with her, she says, but she and she has just been hired illegally at a Waikiki strip club. The was reluctant to do more than dancing and other drink-selling legal age for dancing as a stripper there was 21, but the owner tasks required by the job. Certainly, she was urged not to sleep of the club hired her with a wink and a nudge. Though she re- with customers or especially to fall in love with them. When ally liked dancing and didn’t mind being naked in front of she finally did fall in love, it was with a Navy man she’d met at strangers, Mock admits with some embarrassment that she con- the club who accepted her transgender status without a blink. stantly feared being spotted, kicked out of the club, and losing Their tumultuous love affair is recounted here with a bit of a what turned out to be a lucrative job. She was inexperienced but swoon—and sadness as Mock recounts their growing apart and not shy; willing to learn from other dancers but eager to set her- subsequent split. self apart. She was a model employee, but she feared being Eventually, Mock moves to New York and writes about the taken for a transgender woman. empowerment she experienced upon taking control of her life. There really isn’t much in this book about Mock’s decision This part of the book doesn’t move with the lazy pace of the to transition or the process of doing so, but she writes that she first half, and it even feels rushed. There’s a lot of story that knew at a very young age that she was a girl in a boy’s body. goes nowhere except to further illustrate Mock’s relationship When she was an older gradeschooler, her mother looked the with men, friends and frenemies, and other women who ulti- other way while Mock embraced feminine clothing and grew mately became friends. Readers who get this far will be happy out her hair, and no one seemed to care much when Mock to see Mock find a dream job and true love, though the latter is started taking female hormones as an adolescent. Later, every told with much less drama than might be expected for this book. penny she had went toward a flight to Bangkok to finalize her To be continued? transition at age eighteen. Mock writes that she has “always ______taken issue with the term passing,” which indicates a sense of Terri Schlichenmeyer is a freelance writer based in Wisconsin.

November–December 2017 45 Hello Again (Tom Gustafson) Musical follows an erotic daisy- Cultural Calendar chain of ten characters in various gender combinations. Based on Arthur Schnitzler’s play La Ronde . Readers are invited to submit items at no charge. Must have rele- Saturday Church (Damon Cardasis) Drama with musical elements vance to a North American readership. E-mail to: [email protected]. concerns a 14-year-old boy in the Bronx whose family recoils when Be sure to allow at least a month’s lead time for any listing. he begins experimenting with gender and sexuality. Something Like Summer (David Berry) Drama traces the rela- Festivals and Events tionship between Ben and Tim, high school sweethearts whose lives intertwine in complex ways over the years. FILM FESTIVALS Cincinnati Outreels. Nov. 3–5. Tom of Finland (Dome Karukoski) Biopic covers the porn artist’s life and career from service in the Finnish Army in WWII to San Francisco Transgender Film Festival. Nov. 10–12. celebrity status in Southern California. Indianapolis LGBT Film Fest. Nov. 10–12. San Juan, Puerto Rico Queer Film Fest. Nov. 17–23. Theater / Dance Montreal, Québec LGBT Film Fest. Nov. 20–30. Torch Song Off-Broadwayproductionof HarveyFierstein’sclas- EVENTS sic play about drag artist Arnold Beckoff’s quest to be a loving husband and a Jewish mother. At the Tony Kiser Theater thru Dec. 3rd. ILGA Europe Conf. of the Int’l Gay & Lesbian Ass’n will be held in Warsaw, Poland, Nov. 1–4. Visit ilga-europe.org and follow links. Skintight Off-Broadwayplayaboutawomanjiltedbyherhus- band who moves in with her famous father, only to find he’s in- OutSummit brings together international and US-based activists volved with a man of twenty. At the Roundabout Theatre Co. for panels and workshops on human rights and LGBT identity. At CUNY School of Law in Long Island City, Dec. 9. M. Butterfly Broadway production of the classic drama about a romance between a French diplomat and a mysterious Chinese Creating Change Annual conf. of the National LGBTQ Task Force opera singer. At the Cort Theatre until Feb. 25, 2018. will be in DC, Jan. 24–28, 2018. Visit www.creatingchange.org. Fire & Air Terrence McNally’s new play explores the history of the 2018 LGBT Health Workforce Conf. is a call to action: “Securing Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev’s revolutionary company, and his Past Achievements and Building Our Future. To be held in NYC, relationship with dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Opens in January 2018. May 4–5, 2018. Visit: www.bngap.org/lgbthwfconf/ Angels in America Broadway revival of the epic drama is ex- Feature Films pected to open at the Neil Simon Theatre on Feb. 23, 2018. The Rocky Horror Show Classic camp musical is at the OutFront Behind the Curtain: Todrick Hall (directed by Katherine Fairfax Theatre Company in Atlanta thru Nov. 5th. Wright) Documentary about the singer-actor-director chronicles the creation of his new full-scale musical Straight Outta Oz. Le Switch Romantic comedy about a straight guy who goes to a bachelor party in Montreal and is swept off his feet by a charming Bones of Contention (Andrea Weiss) Documentary tells the tragic (male) florist. At San Francisco’s NCTC thru Dec. 3rd. life story of Spanish writer and poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered by Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. Art Exhibitions Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino) Drama based on André Aciman’s novel is about an American professor’s son whose Italian True Colors “In Our Own Words, Video Stories in Queer America” villa is host for a handsome graduate student one summer. will be at the Wilton Manors Gallery (part of the Stonewall Archives) in Fort Lauderdale thru Nov. 5th. Center of My World (Jakob M. Erwa) German drama finds 17- year old Phil falling for uber-jock Nicholas, who responds in kind— Juan Bastos: California Portraits Retrospective of L.A. painter up to a point. Complications ensue. whose portraits and cartoons graced 12 covers of this magazine (2006-12). At Denenberg Fine Arts in West Hollywood, Nov. 4–18. God’s Own Country (Francis Lee) UK drama about a young sheep farmer without much focus in life—until a handsome Romanian Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano LA Brings to light migrant worker arrives, and something happens. undiscovered art from the 1960s to the ’90s. At the ONE Gallery in West Hollywood thru Dec. 31st. Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies Assembles pieces of film, installations, works on paper, and other material from her archive. At the Leslie-Lohman Gallery in NYC, Oct. 7–Jan. 28, 2018.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – THE G&LR The Gay & Lesbian Review accepts unsolicited manuscripts and proposals on all GLBT-related topics. Especially sought are proposals on the following themes for issues in development: • Social Problems: Homelessness, addiction, poverty, etc. • Long Before Stonewall: GLBT culture from BC to the 19th c. • The Family: The ones we came from and the ones we create Please e-mail your proposal to the Editor at [email protected].

46 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE ARTIST’S PROFILE Steve Grand Is Not a Country Singer

STEPHEN HEMRICK SH: So, who are your favorite artists? Who SG: Well, I didn’t know I was gay until I inspired your music? was thirteen, and it kind of clicked because TEVE GRAND is a singer and musi- SG: Elton John. Beautiful voice, beautiful I had always felt like I was different. I never cian who plays the piano and the gui- songwriting, mysterious lyrics. And that he felt particularly effeminate. I just felt like an Star and writes much of his own music. made the piano sexy was appealing to me. outcast and kind of a weird guy, like I didn’t “All American Boy,” the song that launched Among current artists, definitely Lady fit in with the guys or the girls. I was in the his singing career in 2013, is also the name Gaga, because she’s so forthcoming about Boy Scouts and was more like a nerdy, out- of his most recent album. The latter in- her influences, and the fact that she’s really doorsy kind of guy. When I first got to cludes the hit song “We Are the Night,” a in this to make music that she loves. She school, the kids would make fun of me for tribute to the LGBT community. sometimes goes in her own artistic direction playing the piano. I was so bewildered by Grand grew up in Lemont, Illinois, a in ways that I can only imagine are often that because I thought the piano was so Chicago suburb, and started playing the against her label’s wishes. I also like Bruce cool. But I remember being in first grade piano at age five, writing his first song at Springsteen, his very American vibe. And and kids saying, “That’s gay.” age eleven. He later picked up the guitar Lana Del Rey—she’s another current artist At first I didn’t want to be gay. I thought and all the while was developing his singing that I’m really inspired by. it was a bad thing because of my religious voice. After a brief stint as a model, he upbringing in a Polish Catholic family. So began performing his own music along with SH: When did your career as a musician it took a while for me to accept myself, an eclectic mix of familiar songs. and songwriter kick off? and it took a while for my family to be okay I caught Grand’s act in Provincetown, a SG: When my song “All-American Boy” with it. But everyone’s great now, and one-hour singing tour de force in which he hit. I didn’t have a label, backing, manage- we’ve come a long way. alternates between piano and guitar. I in- ment, or anything like that. I just made it terviewed him in person the next day. Find with my own money, got a lot of my friends SH: I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit out more about Steve Grand on his website together, promised them booze and a fun that I first laid eyes on you as a model. How at www.SteveGrand.com. did you break into singing from modeling? Stephen Hemrick: In your act, SG: It’s so funny because I you sing, you play the piano, worked my whole life on and you play the guitar. Can you music. Then I did a couple of give us an overview of your mu- test photo shoots. I had no sical background? model presence, but I put Steve Grand: I started playing myself on a website where I piano when I was five years old. connected with a few photog- Even before that, I started con- raphers. I only did three or structing models of pianos out of four shoots. It was an avenue cardboard and glue. I was fasci- I wanted to try. When you’re nated with the piano æsthetically young, you just want to get as a piece of furniture and started your name out there any way making models of them. I saw you can. So I took a stab at it, Charlie Brown and Schroeder at but there didn’t seem to be a his little grand piano and thought career in it. People in the in- that was just the coolest thing. dustry would tell me I didn’t So when we moved to our new have the right proportions. house in the suburbs, one of the first things my parents did was buy this old time if they drove up three hours to Wiscon- SH: Do you think it helped launch your mu- upright piano, and I started taking lessons. I sin, where I rented a house to film the sical career? started playing guitar when I was around video. Maxed out my credit card, but a SG: Initially, sure. I think my look is ap- nine or ten years old. week later, I was on Good Morning Amer- pealing to people. I think inevitably, for I did everything music-oriented in school. ica and CNN. every performer, their look plays into how I played piano in jazz band. I played flute in people think of them. a symphonic and marching band. I did mu- SH: Your Midwestern roots come up in some sicals. I was the lead in West Side Story in of your songs. What was it like growing up in SH: “All-American Boy” tells a story of my senior year. I went to Belmont Univer- that part of the country as a gay kid? unrequited love. You mentioned in your sity for one year and studied songwriting SG: I grew up in the suburbs, close to show that it was a collaboration with a good there. All the rest of it has been mostly self- Chicago but far enough away where it was friend. Was it autobiographical? taught. I did songwriting on my own time kind of an insulated place. It was a tight- SG: Yes. It was not like any one instance, because I found it therapeutic. It was how I knit community and not extremely progres- but I had written a lot of songs about unre- felt I could express myself. I became ob- sive. My town has more churches per capita quited love, and I wanted it to be my first sessed with trying to figure out what made a than in any other town in the state. You statement as an artist. Even as a kid I had song create so much feeling. And I wanted drive over the bridge into town, and you see very intense feelings, as a lot of us do as to be able to make other people feel like my eleven steeples or so. young people. When I would fall for guys favorite artists made me feel. SH: How was your coming out experience? that I couldn’t have, it was so heartbreak-

November–December 2017 47 ing. It was so hard for me, especially be- But I’m so lucky, because for me it’s time I stripped down to a jock strap, and cause often it would be a friend, and I been so easy. Every day has been so clearly then to nothing, in a performance. That was would start to develop romantic feelings for better because I’ve been sober. I think a lot so much fun. And we raised a lot of money. him, but I wouldn’t tell him because I didn’t of people don’t have the advantage of hav- I’ve also toured Europe through the State want to hurt the friendship. It’s something ing such horrible experiences with alcohol. Department. I served as kind of an ambassa- that we’ve all been through; it’s a human Some people are just kind of teetering on dor to the country for the arts. I talked to experience. Falling for someone you can’t the verge. Also, I had a lot of good friends people in Latvia and Lithuania and Austria have rings especially true for gay people, and my family. Most of my friends from about LGBT rights. And I performed and but it’s not exclusively a gay experience. high school don’t drink, which made it easy spoke at the first Euro Pride that was in a for me. For a lot of people, alcohol defines former Soviet country. SH: You mentioned in your show that their whole social world. If everyone you’ve been sober for nineteen months. Can around you drinks, it’s very hard to stop. SH: You have the reputation of being a you talk about this on either a personal or Granted, I’m in an industry where there’s a country singer, but you’ve distanced your- societal level? lot of drinking. It’s how you socialize. It’s self from that. How did this notion get SG: I’m an intense person, and I think this how you have the courage to get up in front started? kind of personality is often prone to addic- of strangers and sing. So it was a crutch. I SG: I think BuzzFeed was the first to say tion, of substances and otherwise. For me it think it’s part of growing up, taking owner- that. It never came from my lips, which is manifested itself temporarily in alcohol. I ship, and just saying “enough is enough.” funny, because every news outlet has essen- had to recognize that it wasn’t working for tially disregarded that. “All-American Boy” me, that we’re not all created equally in that SH: How do you think it affects the LGBT is kind of a countrified rock ballad, but it’s way. Some of us can have a drink or two community? pretty much the most country thing I’ve now or then. For me, the second my lips SG: Drugs and alcohol and other kinds of done in my career. touched alcohol... I was blacking out almost substances that people abuse clearly affect every day for a while. our community disproportionately. Gay SH: Tell us something about yourself that For a year I tried to cut back because I people often come with more baggage be- most people don’t know. couldn’t imagine my life without drinking; it cause we’ve had the whole experience of SG: Let me think about that for a minute. I had become such a part of it. But after you coming out. think on a personal level, I’m quite intro- find yourself saying you’re sorry to people verted, meaning that it takes a lot of energy and apologizing for your behavior so many SH: You’ve also been an activist for LGBT for me to put myself out there and be social. times, you have to be more introspective and equality. Can you talk about these activities? I really get energized by being alone and by say: “All right, how sorry am I if I’m contin- SG: Well, my most recent charity thing I being creative by myself. I really like my uing to do the same thing that ultimately did was Broadway Bares in San Francisco, alone time, my quiet time, and it’s been an- leads me to being sorry?” So I thought I a benefit for REAF, the Richmond/Ermet other nice thing about not drinking and not would just take it one day at a time. And one Aid Foundation, which provides programs going out, because I never was really crazy day I stopped, right around New Year’s. I and support for LGBT homeless youth and about going out and just hanging out at didn’t even plan to stop for good. people living with HIV/AIDS. It’s the first bars. That just wasn’t fun.

ARTIST’S PROFILE Joy Ladin Is Not a Nature Poet SAMANTHA PIOUS vice versa? a particularly good project for me because I Joy Ladin: The poem came first. I don’t am so bad at noticing and describing things. OY LADIN is the author of eight books usually write poems that are based directly One of the major effects of feeling as if I was of poetry, including her latest collec- on an experience, but I live in a semi-rural about to die was the urgency of paying atten- Jtion, Fireworks in the Graveyard area down the street from a graveyard. And tion to everything I saw, smelled, and heard. (Headmistress Press, 2017). She is a chaired people go there to watch fireworks. That I tried to get that into the poems—the sensa- professor of English at Yeshiva University. summer began with a premonition that it tions and the mortal urgency of really Among her many awards and achievements, would be my last. I wasn’t upset. My intu- experiencing them. she is the recipient of an NEA Creative Non- itions about the future are always wrong. So I had been suicidal for much of my life, so Fiction Fellowship, a Hadassah Brandeis the sense that I was about to die almost cer- I was interested to see how it would feel if I Institute Research Fellowship, a Fulbright tainly meant that I wasn’t about to die. I really were about to die, what life would Scholarship at Tel Aviv University, and a decided to take the premonition as a writing mean. It turned out that I felt pretty good Forward Fives award winner. An occasional exercise, living the summer as if it really about the life that I was supposedly losing. interviewee on NPR, she has been a keynote were my last. There were going to be summers and sunsets speaker at many universities as well as non- I live in a very beautiful area. It’s a subur- whether I was there or not. I had a sense of academic venues. ban street, but surrounded by farms, and peace. Suddenly I was in the same position I interviewed Joy Ladin last April at her there’s a mountain. I promised myself I as all the other creatures that only live one office on the Stern campus of Yeshiva would take a walk every summer night at the summer. Instead of feeling like I was being University in midtown Manhattan. end of the day. The sunsets are usually beau- kicked out of life, I felt like I was deeply in tiful in that area, but that summer they were tune with the world that I was walking Samantha Pious: Could you talk about the extraordinary. I would take long evening through. It was glowing and burning and the title poem of Fireworks in the Graveyard? walks and try to experience every evening as light was changing all the time. I didn’t care Did the poem get its title from the book, or though it was one of few I had left. This was that it was getting dark.

48 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE SP: All this talk about nature, but in one of volumes of poetry? SP: Do you have any other inspirations be- your poems you say that you’re “not a nature JL: Fireworks is different from my previous yond Sappho, beyond Virginia Woolf that poet.” Why do you say this? poetry—not impersonal, but not caught up in you’d like to share with the readers? JL: I have a friend who really is a nature the emotional flux of the moment. My earlier JL: I am always inspired by Emily poet. She lives in northern Wisconsin. poetry is filled with abstractions. Often the Dickinson, Pablo Naruda, and César Vallejo. Whenever she describes the world around characters in those poems are personified ab- No matter how much I read them, I can’t do her, her language is gorgeous and vivid, spe- stractions interacting with other abstractions. anything like what they do. They remind me cific and vital. Like nature, good nature Their sense of existence, like mine when I what great poetry looks like. When they writing ramifies at every touch. The more we was living as a man, is not very grounded. write, they not only discover but create new pay attention, the more it’s there. And I have They are always teetering on the verge of possibilities, new forms of meaning, new always struggled to pay attention. non-existence, because they have so little kinds of truth. I don’t know that I’ve ever Another reason I don’t see myself as a na- flesh, so little world, inside them. One of the managed that, but I try to write toward a ture poet is that I don’t have a vocabulary of things I liked about writing the Fireworks sense that I’ve broken into a place that’s un- nature. Bird names and flower names—I just poems was that living as though I were dying familiar to me, where I’m vulnerable and can never remember them. (I happen to re- didn’t create that sense of panic, of drama. overwhelmed and not sure how it’s all going member the whippoorwill because it’s a Instead of being about the sense of vanish- to come out. That, to me, is the sign that I favorite.) You aren’t much of a nature poet if ing, they are about the sense of being here, might be writing poetry. you can’t remember the words for natural being a creature among creatures, a dying I have spent decades studying Dickinson’s things. Do you know the poet Fernando part of a universe whose life includes but techniques, trying to learn everything that I Pessoa? One of his heteronyms, Alberto doesn’t depend on mine. can from her. My sense of poetic rhythm and Caeiro, wrote very simple poems that re- rhyme came from Dickinson. She has fused description. Meditations on being. such strong control of the pulse of her I think in the very last poem in the book poems. When I was a young poet, a lot The Keeper of Sheep, he says, “By the of American poetry programs didn’t way, I was the only nature poet.” The one teach anything about sound. So I had to way that I could claim membership in the get that through Dickinson. nature poet club is that I think a lot about SP: Where do you see poetry in any of the nature of existence. its forms or genres going in the future? SP: But I recognize the intricacy of the JL: I am interested in trans poetics: the meadows and fields in your poem techniques we use to create language to “Summering.” In the second section, you represent and express ways of being seem to engage with Anglo-Saxon alliter- human for which there is little lan- ative verse. Has Old English poetry guage, ways of being human our lan- influenced your work? guage is not designed to express. A JL: I’m so grateful that you noticed that clumsy but historically significant ex- poem. It was like nothing I had ever done ample is Tiresias in The Waste Land. before, filled with nature words, strong Eliot describes Tiresias as an “old man stresses, and alliteration. I know very lit- with wrinkled female breasts.” This tle Old English verse, but there is a was not good poetry, but it was an early strongly stressed quality in Hebrew po- attempt to represent a way of being etry. It doesn’t work with stresses in the human. Tiresias is both, and neither, same way, but there are very dense con- male and female. sonant clusters. That was my model. But Today there are more and more trans it led me to what for me was a new way Joy Ladin in Genoa, 2016. Elizabeth Denlinger photo. poets writing, starting magazines, re- of feeling language, a way that is free of ceiving mainstream recognition, creat- SP: I thought I saw some allusions to the pressure to sound conversational, or psy- ing the lineage we will call “trans poetry.” Virginia Woolf in your writing. chologically naturalistic, or present a The pioneering work they are doing when JL: Thank you! I love Virginia Woolf, and I subjective perception. In that poem, there are they represent and express trans experience spent many hours reading her novels aloud just the things of the world, and the throb of and perspectives is not only a gift to trans with my ex, as well as reading them to my- the words for those things. Any corner of a people like me, who long for language for self. It was a huge part of my education, field in summer is filled with so many stories, ourselves; it is a gift to the human race, be- listening to what she teaches about the possi- so many lives, growing, dying, eating, being cause, to paraphrase E. M. Forster’s praise of bilities of syntax and endlessly ramifying eaten, hiding. In that poem, I felt that at least Virginia Woolf, they are pushing the light of sentences that can go anywhere and do any- I was pointing toward the thickness and language a little further against the darkness thing. I was in awe of the language she finds meaningfulness of existence in a way that I of what it means to be human. for the phenomenal rush of consciousness. had been scared of. So, I would love there to be Virginia Woolf in Samantha Pious’ first book, A Crown of Violets SP: Could you talk about Fireworks in the my poetry. There ought to be, given how (2015), offers a selection of translations of the Graveyard in relation to your previous seven much I was trying to write from her. poetry of Renée Vivien. Subscribe to the Digital Edition! Sign up for full Website access at www.GLReview.org

November–December 2017 49 THEATER A Play about a 1907 Play

AULA VOGEL, the Pulitzer-prize trading in subjects of cosmopolitan cur- winning dramatist of How I ALLEN ELLENZWEIG rency beyond the impoverished shtetls of Learned to Drive, has again col- Eastern Europe. laborated with director Rebecca Sitting out World War I in New York, P Indecent Taichman in Indecent. Taichman, who just Asch visited Europe after the Great War won the 2017 Tony for best direction of a A Play by Paula Vogel and was deeply shaken by the depredations play, is billed as “co-creator” of Indecent, Directed by Rebecca Taichman visited upon Jewish communities. Back in having worked with Vogel to devise the At the Cort Theatre, NYC New York, his devoted wife was alarmed at play’s highly theatrical presentation. The April 4–Aug. 6, 2017 his increasing depression and his quick play is at once a compressed history of a temper. An English-language production in daring Yiddish play, God of Vengeance, written by the Polish Greenwich Village in 1922 was another success, but the play’s novelist Sholem Asch in 1907, and a celebration of the stage- move uptown to Broadway encouraged the producer to cut the craft that makes theater distinct from film. crucial “rain scene” with its joyous lesbian kissing and em- Using a cast of seven, each playing multiple roles, and three braces, and to shift the lesbian relation to one of female manip- musicians who weave among the actors, the scenes move ulation. The troupe protested this desecration of the text, but episodically through the development and touring success of Asch yielded to the producer’s reading of the uptown audience. Asch’s drama about an observant Jew who runs a brothel in his Even with the cuts, however, the entire cast and the producer basement, and his virgin daughter who falls in love with one of were indicted for obscenity and found guilty at trial, although the house prostitutes—shades of Shylock and his daughter Jes- the verdict was overturned on appeal. sica. This, at least, is about as much of the Asch play as Inde- Living in America, Asch seemingly abandoned his play, recent reveals. fusing future performances of God of Vengeance in the wake of Scandalous in its time, God of Vengeance was nevertheless Nazi restrictions on Jewish life. However, Vogel shows a group celebrated in St. Petersburg and Moscow and in other European of desperate Jews, confined to the Lodz ghetto, performing the capitals. On first hearing the play, the founding father of Yiddish Asch play under the leadership of the original stage manager, a literature I. L Peretz advised Asch to “burn it.” Peretz and other character here called Lemml. Vogel uses Lemml as a distant naysayers were reacting as much to the implicit critique of Jew- echo of Thornton Wilder’s Stage Manager in Our Town, a “nar- ish life as to the idealistic yet carnal presentation of two young women in thrall to each other. Asch’s depiction of flawed, complex Jews and his willingness to approach lesbianism in his play may well have been the very ingredients that allowed sophisticated theater-goers before the Great War to find God of Vengeance worthy dramatic fare. Indecent is threaded with period klezmer, folkloric and cabaret dance, and theatrical flour- ishes. There are back-wall projections that trans- late a few Yiddish conversations, or designate the city and date in which a scene is set, or signal a momentary lapse in time as a single note is struck Adina Verson and Katrina Lenk in Indecent. Carol Rosegg photo. on a triangle. In consequence, characters “freeze” their action, then take up the scene a beat later. The Vengeance rator” who breaks the fourth wall and introduces us to the world players are, in fact, Wandering Jews, and Indecent links their of the present drama and the past history of Asch’s play. migrations to those of immigrants in search of safer shores. The world in which Asch came of age has almost disap- Vogel-Taichman’s work is swiftly paced, condensing Asch’s bi- peared by the time we see him in the early 1950s. This is to- ography and his play’s trajectory into a fleet hour and 45 min- ward the end of Vogel’s play; he is being interviewed by a young utes. In Vogel’s telling, Asch becomes the representative of Jewish student from Yale. This prompts an embittered Asch to those enlightened Ashkenazi Jews for whom Yiddish was their quip—I paraphrase—that it is easier for a rich man to enter the lingua franca, a linguistic vehicle toward modernity, even in kingdom of heaven than for a Jew to enter the sanctum of Yale. some cases a means to position themselves as secular writers In following the travels and travails of the playwright and players of the God of Vengeance, Vogel tracks the stamina of art and Allen Ellenzweig is writing a biography of celebrity portrait and male the vulnerability of life, but also helps to revive Asch’s reputa- nude photographer George Platt Lynes (1907-1955). tion and retrieve the memory of a lost culture.

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