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 ““…A magnificent lookat the ccongressman’s ppersonal and ppolitit cal life and tthe breadth of itss wwider historical ccontexts.” —Michael G. Lonng $29.95 | pb | 2017 A HOLIDAAYY OFFFER Save 30% with code S679 umass.edu/umpress or 1-800-537-5487 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.