Let’s imagine that your name is Rex Cole. You were born in 1887 in Port Huron, Michigan. You drop out of school at the age of 16 to become an electrician. Dissatisfied with the provincial life, you fight the tide of many millions and head east to New York City, where you save enough money [...]

In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion columns in The Times.
Maureen Down/Faith, Freedom and Bling in the Middle East
The Short Version: The Middle East is an opulent (and sexist) mess. Guess what? W isn’t helping.
In her words: “It does not bode well for the president’s ability to push the Israelis and Palestinians that he [...]

In which The Gay Recluse offers a summary and score for selected opinion columns in The Times.
Frank Rich/Haven’t We Heard This Voice Before?
The Short Version: Hillary Clinton’s genuine moment in New Hampshire was not “the tears,” but in the debate when she made Barack Obama look like a condescending asshole jerk. By the time of [...]

In which The Gay Recluse looks back at a classic of post-war American fiction written in a gay voice.
As we read A Boy’s Own Story, we are repeatedly struck by the bleak and joyless sense of oppression that seeps out from almost every page of Edmund White’s treatment of a boy growing up somewhere in [...]

In which The Gay Recluse offers a summary and score for selected opinion columns in The Times.
Gail Collins/Hillary’s Free Pass
The Short Version: Hillary’s tears touched the exhausted and overworked woman in all of us.
In her words: “Hillary was a stand-in for every woman who’s overdosed on multitasking. They grabbed at the opportunity to have kids/go [...]

[Note: Click here for our review and revised analysis from opening night.]
In musical terms, Friday night’s final dress rehearsal of Die Walküre (and with the understanding that it was just that, i.e., a rehearsal) at the Met seemed problematic; first Jim Morris (Wotan) canceled, which when announced sent the expected sigh of disappointment across the [...]

As we watch Repulsion, the Roman Polanski film starring “the young” Catherine Deneuve, it’s hard not to be impressed by the way Polanski — like so many great artists — seems to predict the future. Released in 1965, the film presents a tightly wound portrait of a London which — and as a metaphor of [...]

The occasion: a brunch for eight in our Washington Heights apartment, scheduled to begin in exactly 3 hours and 48 minutes. Which is to say that it was 9:12 am and we were in the car racing south on the West Side Highway, having already vanquished the Fairway in West Harlem, where despite the early [...]

With the publication of Henry James: The Mature Master, the second in a two-volume biography by Sheldon Novick, we can expect the coming weeks/months/years to be marked by the usual chorus of naysayers who like to challenge any assertion of same-sex activity by a historical figure — even one like James with such a recognizable [...]

In yesterday’s Times, we were told that Italy has sunk to new depths of despair on many fronts, “struggling as few other countries do with fractured politics, uneven growth, organized crime and a tenuous sense of nationhood.” There is widespread malaise, or malessere. Quoted is Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome: “It’s a country that [...]

As anyone who has read Cormac McCarthy knows, the best (which is to say, the truest) stories of the American West — although like pretty much anywhere, once you peel back enough layers — are filled with unfathomable extremes of violence and oppression; this was more than confirmed for us recently when we read (as [...]

Of all the political columnists at The New York Times, Frank Rich has always seemed the most comfortable — or perhaps we should say the least oblivious — writing about political and social issues from what could be called a gay perspective. After all Rich, who was perhaps the most feared theater critic in [...]

To the brave soul who trapped a mouse in a gluetrap and left it in the hallway, bravo! We would like to commend you for digging so deep and summoning the courage to carry such a ferocious beast — did you use your bare hands? — to the elevator, where we and countless others were [...]

Recently we arranged a visit to the doctor, who in frantic tones described the many maladies he had encountered just that morning in his other patients. “One young man just contracted ____, which means he will probably not live more than _____; meanwhile the drugs I prescribed for Ms. _____are not exactly helping with the [...]

Today we were delighted to be joined by New York Times columnist David Brooks, just in from his recent trip to China.
David Brooks: Hey! China was neat-o, but did you know that despite the ups and downs of the business cycle, the United States still possesses the most potent economy on earth?
The Gay Recluse: [...]

In Hotel de Dream, Edmund White offers us, within a larger work about the last days of American novelist Stephen Crane, a novella about a boy prostitute along the lines of what Crane may or may not have actually written, and may or may not have destroyed for fear it would tarnish his reputation. [...]

Please wait while we stop for a second to listen to this piano and watch the reflection of the city street in the glass. In fact, since you asked, nothing could be more important: it’s more than just memories we hear through this door, but scenes from a past unlike any we have every known.

While this day is not so different than so many others, to the extent we feel like we are under siege — fending off sickness and financial ruin and political censure at every turn — as we survey our past and contemplate what lies ahead, we are grateful for many things. Such as? Well, life [...]

But did you not hear about the trial of the man who killed a cat that was stalking migratory birds in a Texas sanctuary? What a nightmare! On one hand, who can deny the allure of the cat, creature of the night, possessor of dreams? Yet who has not stood in awe of birds flying [...]

In our dreams, the Empire State Building hovers and glows with a radiance that is seriously awesome to behold; it is a beacon to all who seek refuge in the city, and furthermore is not — as Fay Wray tells us — unstinting or cold in this respect, even if like the rest of us [...]