Gay and Lesbian Review Nov.-Dec. 2018
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(LONG) BEFORE STONEWALL The Gay& Lesbian Review WORLDWIDE November–December 2018 $5.95 USA and Canada ANDREW HOLLERAN Oscar Wilde on Tour in America TOMÁS PROWER Between the Greeks and Stonewall GEORGE AITCH Bronze Age Buddies DALE BOYER MemoirsofaKinsey6+ VERNON ROSARIO Drag Kings in the Music Halls AUBREY GARCIA BADER III Soap Operas and Social Change Holiday Reading Amy Bloom tells all on Eleanor Roosevelt and ‘Hick’ Felice Picano looks into Michelle Tea’s non-memoir Dennis Altman queries a ‘great person’ theorist Michael Schwartz visits David Sedaris and family David Sedaris The Gay & Lesbian Re view November–December 2018 • VOLUME XXV, NUMBER6 WORLDWIDE The Gay & Lesbian Review ® WORLDWIDE CONTENTS PO Box 180300, Boston, MA 02118 Editor-in-Chief and Founder (Long) Before Stonewall RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. ____________________________________ FEATURES Literary Editor MARTHA E. STONE Bronze Age Buddies 12 G EORGE AITCH Poetry Editor Legendary pair-bonds show up in the world’s earliest literature DAVID BERGMAN Between the Greeks and Stonewall 15 T OMÁS PROWER Associate Editors ... LGBT folks seem to disappear, but a lot can happen in 2,500 years PAUL FALLON Oscar in Blackface 19 A NDREW HOLLERAN JEREMY FOX The lessons from Wilde’s American tour made it back to England CHRISTOPHER HENNESSY MICHAEL SCHWARTZ Drag Kings in the Music Halls 23 V ERNON ROSARIO Male impersonators from the Civil War to Contributing Writers Saturday Night Live ROSEMARY BOOTH Diary of a Kinsey 6+ 25 D ALE BOYER DANIEL A. BURR Samuel Steward was a human laboratory of same-sex exploration COLIN CARMAN ALFRED CORN Soap Operas and Social Change 27 AUBREY GARCIA BADEN III ALLEN ELLENZWEIG Since the ’70s, they’ve both reflected and shaped LGBT attitudes CHRIS FREEMAN PHILIP GAMBONE MATTHEW HAYS REVIEWS ANDREW HOLLERAN IRENE JAVORS Jenny Uglow — Mr. Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense 30 R OSEMARY BOOTH JOHN R. KILLACKY Robert W. Fieseler — Tinderbox 31 A NDREW HOLLERAN CASSANDRA LANGER Julia Van Haaften — Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography 32 I RENE JAVO RS ANDREW LEAR David Sedaris — Calypso 34 M ICHAEL SCHWARTZ DAVID MASELLO ARTHA TONE FELICE PICANO Imani Perry — Looking for Lorraine 36 M E. S JAMES POLCHIN Blanche McCrary Boyd — Tomb of the Unknown Racist 37 S ARAH SARAI JEAN ROBERTA BRIEFS 38 VERNON ROSARIO Jonathan Flatley – Like Andy Warhol ; Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls 40 P HILIP GAMBONE HEATHER SEGGEL Andrew Reynolds — The Children of Harvey Milk 42 D ENNIS ALTMAN Contributing Artist Michelle Tea — Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticism 43 F ELICE PICANO CHARLES HEFLING Patrick E. Horrigan — Pennsylvania Station 43 C HARLES GREEN Nicola Griffith — So Lucky 44 J EAN ROBERTA Advertising Manager John Larison — Whiskey When We’re Dry 45 T ERRI SCHLICHENMEYER STEPHEN HEMRICK Nick White — Sweet and Low 46 M ARTIN WILSON Webmaster Mark Jason Williams, writer; Andrew Block, director — The Other Day 49 A LLEN ELLENZWEIG BOSTON WEB GROUP Jason Moore, director — The Cher Show 50 J OHN R. K ILLACKY ____________________________________ Board of Directors OEMS STEWART CLIFFORD (CHAIRMAN) P & DEPARTMENTS ART COHEN GUEST OPINION — This Is What Theocracy Looks Like 5 J. SETH ANDERSON EDUARDO FEBLES DONALD GORTON (CLERK) GUEST OPINION —PROSPER Act Could Devastate LGBT Students 7 TIMOTHY R. BUSSEY DIANE HAMER CORRESPONDENCE 8 TED HIGGINSON BTW 10 RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. ROBERT HARDMAN POEM — “the tsar” 14 SEAN PATRICK MULROY DAV I D LAFONTAINE ART MEMO — In 1966, a Slutty Roman Emperor Did It All 18 CHAY LEMOINE ROBERT NICOSON ART MEMO — In the Footsteps of F. O. Matthiessen 22 SCOTT BANE RICHARD SCHNEIDER,JR.(PRESIDENT) MARTHA E. STONE POEM — “Michelangelo’s David” 38 JOHN TOLEDO THOMAS YOUNGREN (TREASURER) POEM – “after i drive my boyfriend home from his hernia surgery, he sleeps” 41 PATRICK KINDIG ARTIST’S PROFILE — Amy Bloom Tells of a First Lady’s Second Love 46 COLIN CARMAN WARREN GOLDFARB (SR. ADVISOR EMER.) CULTURAL CALENDAR 48 The Gay & Lesbian Review/WORLDWIDE® (formerly The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, 1994-1999) is published bimonthly (six times per year) by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational corporation located in Boston, 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. Back issues available for $12 each. All correspondence is sent in a plain envelope marked “G&LR.” © 2018 by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. All rights reserved. WEBSITE: www.GLReview.org • SUBSCRIPTIONS: 844-752-7829 • ADVERTISING: 617-421-0082 • SUBMISSIONS: [email protected] Nv'mb'r–D'c'mb'r 2018 3 FROM THE EDITOR Holiday Issue: (Long) Before Stonewall HIS ISSUE is “before Stonewell” in two senses: its epic of Gilgamesh, with which George Aitch begins his piece, theme is all about LGBT lives and times that predate the tells of an exceedingly close friendship between the title king T1969 riots; and it precedes a special 25th-anniversary and the wild man Enkidu, but even if we assume that the two issue of this magazine—in fact, a whole book—that will com- were Western-style boyfriends, it’s still not clear what this tells memorate the 50th anniversary of the riots. The coincidence of us about (homo)sexual relations in 2nd-millennium BCE Sumer. the two anniversaries reminds us that our first year, 1994, was Another survey piece (by Tomás Prower) drops in on several marked by a special Stonewall issue and other fanfare. historical episodes from the medieval West to ancient China to The parentheses in this issue’s rubric are a hedge, as “long” see if it’s possible to talk about LGBT history as having a unity is a relative term. One essay takes us all the way back to the or at least a common thread. Bronze Age, while another is set in the 20th century. Everyone Fast forward to Oscar Wilde, whose “love that dare not speak knows that the attempt to find LGBT themes in distant times its name” was a reference to Greek pederasty—which has never and places is frowned upon by those who insist that our notion stopped us from treating Wilde as the first gay activist. Andrew of “gay” or even “homosexual” is a recent invention. But I think Holleran explores Wilde’s American tour—a madcap clash of this is precisely the point of these essays: to consider what can cultures in so many ways—which inspired the zany quality of be said about the sex-and-gender systems of the past, even while his early plays. The late 19th century was the age of the music recognizing that different cultures have arrived at widely vary- hall, one feature of which was the presence of male imperson- ing systems of both sex and gender. It’s still possible to study, ators onstage, as Vernon Rosario documents here, a motif that say, the ancient Greeks or the Zhou Dynasty without assuming made it into the Vaudeville era and onto the silver screen (think that they shared our concept of gay identity. To the extent that Dietrich and Garbo). In the 20th century, we encounter Samuel they countenanced some form of same-sex sexual contact, we Steward (in Dale Boyer’s piece), who wrote gay novels under seem to have at least one thing in common. the name Phil Andros and carefully documented his many sex- To be sure, the farther back in time we travel, the greater the ual encounters. That brought him to the attention of Alfred Kin- indeterminacy. Thus the piece on the Bronze Age relies on an- sey, for whom Steward was an entrée into a vast gay subculture. cient texts from a material and symbolic world that’s really quite At that point, could Stonewall be far behind? lost to us, in which literature played a very different role. The RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. “An essential read for anyone who is trying to figure out how social change works.” —Dean Spade, Seattle University School of Law $25.00 | 244 PAGES “One of the best books in trans studies in recent years.” —Susan Stryker, UniversityofArizona $24.95 | 280 PAGES “A powerful intervention into how we understand what queer literature has been and what it might become.” —Dana Luciano, Georgetown University $27.00 | 344 PAGES An updated edition of this measured, practical, and timely guide to LGBT rights and issues for educators and school officials $22.95 | 392 PAGES University of Minnesota Press 800-621-2736 • www.upress.umn.edu 4Th Gay & Lsban Rvw / oRLdide GUEST OPINION This Is What Theocracy Looks Like the country. Such a claim is dubious, but it does point to the J. SETH ANDERSON queerness of the city. Utah is home to a high number of LGBT HE ORIGINS of the state of Utah are rooted in queer- parents; the current mayor is the first lesbian to hold the office; ness. When Brigham Young led about half of the Mor- three of seven city councilmembers are LGBT; the city coun- Tmon Church membership across the Mexican border cil voted to rename a major thoroughfare Harvey Milk Boule- illegally in 1847, he and other church leaders brought with vard; the University of Utah employs renowned psychologist them a hatred of the United States government and a devotion Lisa Diamond and queer theorist Kathryn Bond Stockton; the to the practice of polygamy. In the Great Basin Desert, Young city hosts the Damn These Heels LGBT film festival every and the other self-proclaimed “peculiar people” at last found July; and the Utah Pride Parade is the second largest civic event refuge from the violence and suffering they had endured for in the state.