Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category
On The Metropolis Case
In which Matthew Gallaway aka your local gay recluse gets a book deal. Eight or nine years ago, we decided to write a novel. It was actually our second attempt; the first one — a satirical look at internet start-up culture in the late 90s — we had retired to the desk drawer after sending […]
Filed under: Animals, Capitalism, Dissonance, Dream, Faith, Infrastructure, Landscape, Language, Literature, Weather, Writers-American | 15 Comments
Tags: Agents, Book Deals, Editors, Matt Gallaway, Matthew Gallaway, The Metropolis Case
On the Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
In which The Gay Recluse loves Carson McCullers. Not long ago we finished reading The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers. Published in 1940, the book — as the jacket tells us — made McCullers (only 23 at the time!) a literary star. In the book, which is set in a small town […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Conspiracy, Dissonance, Literature, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | 2 Comments
Tags: Carson McCullers, Gay Voice, John Huston, Marlon Brando, Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. “Love is perceiving and perception is anguish.” — James Baldwin, Just Above My Head
Filed under: Gay, Language, Literature, Longing, Quotes, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Anguish, James Baldwin, Love, Perception, The George Washington Bridge
In which The Gay Recluse is once again perturbed. Have you heard about Measuring The World, the international bestseller by German/Viennese author Daniel Kehlmann? It sold more copies than any other German-language book since Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, and was highly acclaimed by critics everywhere for its playful use of language and magic realism: according to […]
Filed under: Drivel, Gay, Literature, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, Writers-German | 4 Comments
Tags: Alligators, Daniel Kehlmann, Dogs, Measuring the World, Naturalists
In which The Gay Recluse compares and contrasts. Recently we stumbled across a review of The Curtain, Milan Kundera’s 2007 collection of essays about the art of the novel. We found the review notable 1) for its pretentious language and 2) for its failure to acknowledge what is really a rather shockingly homophobic passage in the book. Let’s start with the […]
Filed under: Conspiracy, Dissonance, Drivel, Language, Literature, Pessimism, The Gay Recluse, Writers-French | 14 Comments
Tags: Critics, Homophobia, Milan Kundera, The Curtain
On The First Time I Met Frank O’Hara and a Few Thoughts on Whether Gay Culture Is Really Dead
In which The Gay Recluse files a book report and rambles on. Recently we finished The First Time I Met Frank O’Hara by Rick Whitaker, a collection of essays about gay writers culled from the past 150 years or so of American/English literature, ranging from titans such as Melville, Wilde and Dickinson to the more […]
Filed under: Gay, Language, Literature, Pessimism, Philosophers, Search, Sickness, Stereotypes, Writers-American | 2 Comments
Tags: Book Reports, Gay Culture, Rich Whitaker
In which The Jane Austen Watch reports on the intersection of two centuries. Today we heard from our newest correspondent, The Jane Austen Watch, who filed the following report: The roses in Astoria are in bloom, and all the local inhabitants are basing the horticulture of their small front gardens on the assumption that they […]
Filed under: Landscape, Language, Literature, Longing, The Gay Recluse, The Jane Austen Watch, Writers-British | Leave a Comment
Tags: Astoria, Blooms, England, Jane Austen, Persuasion, Pink, Roses
In which The Gay Recluse asks a reader to think more conceptually. In response to our recent Franco Harris Hot Gay Statue submission, Reader Queerunity writes: all football players wear spandex, why is this gay? We’re posting this comment — and thanks for bringing this up, Queerunity — because we think it raises an interesting […]
Filed under: Athletes, Conspiracy, Gay, Hot Gay Statues, Language, Letters, Literature, Photography, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Football, Franco Harris, Gay, Hot Gay Statues, Spandex
In which The Gay Recluse again laments the suffocation of the gay voice in American literature. If you’re like us, when you scanned through the list of books included in New York Magazine‘s recent “New York City Canon 1968-2008,” you had one reaction: wtf! where are the gays? In every other format, gays are represented […]
Filed under: Bad Rock, Conspiracy, History, Infrastructure, Literature, Memory, New York City, Ruins, Search, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | 4 Comments
Tags: 9/11, AIDS, Andrew Hollaran, Closet Cases, Dancer from the Dance, Edmund White, Gay Books, Gay Literature, Gay Voice, HIV, New York Magazine, Rick Whitaker, Sam Anderson, Susan Sontag
In which The Gay Recluse reads a book five years later and says wtf. Last fall, after we posted our thoughts on the suffocation of the gay voice in American literature, a reader suggested that for the sake of comparison we check out The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa al Aswany, which said reader described to […]
Filed under: Decay, Dissonance, Drivel, Gay, Literature, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, Writers-Egyptian | 4 Comments
Tags: Alaa al Aswany, Egypt, Gay Characters, Stereotypes, Yacoubian Building
In which The Gay Recluse celebrates Easter. It was not until eleventh grade — in Mrs. S____’s English class — that we began to appreciate the obsessive and illogical side of literature, which of course is to say we were reading Wuthering Heights. Do you remember Mrs. S____? How thin and small and severe she […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Dream, Landscape, Language, Literature, Memory, Obsession, The Gay Recluse, The Spring Garden, Washington Heights, Weather, Writers-British | 1 Comment
Tags: Catherine, Easter, Emily Bronte, Fort Tryon Park, Heathcliff, Heather, Sylvia Plath, The Moors, Wuthering Heights
In which The Gay Recluse kills two birds with one stone. Today we received a certain amount of shit for “trashing” Arthur C. Clarke as a major closet-case only milliseconds after he died. Fair enough, we trashed him a little. But our purpose in doing so — besides being an internet traffic whore, of course […]
Filed under: Disease, Dissonance, Gay, History, Language, Letters, Literature, Longing, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse | 5 Comments
Tags: Arthur C. Clarke, Closet Cases, Closet Queens, Internet Whores, Self-Hatred, The Gay Voice
In which The Gay Recluse reads an acclaimed book of contemporary fiction and is more than disappointed. When we first received our copy of Call Me By Your Name (FSG, 2007) by Andre Aciman, we were a bit startled (but pleased, to be sure) that a book about a love affair between a 17-year-old boy […]
Filed under: Drivel, Gay, Literature, Pessimism, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Andre Aciman, Bad Books, Call Me By Your Name, Closet Case, Gay Voice, Homophobia, Stereotypes
In which The Gay Recluse looks at the suffocation of the gay voice at The New York Times and other hallmarks of the new dark ages. For those who missed it, we would like to point you in the direction of a recent post by Jeff Weinstein, in which he compares a truth about Jasper […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Literature, New York City, Nostalgia, Pessimism, The Times, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Food, Jasper Johns, Jeff Weinstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Roberta Smith, The Gay Voice, The New York Times
On Maiden Voyage
It was difficult to read Maiden Voyage, the 1943 novel by Denton Welch, although not in any of the usual ways. For starters, the prose is relatively simple, marked by compact sentences — very much in keeping with the voice of a sixteen-year-old — but deceptively elegant; sincere and direct without ever being vulgar or […]
Filed under: Literature, Memory, The Gay Recluse, Writers-British | Leave a Comment
Tags: Catcher in the Rye, Denton Welch, Holden Caulfield, Maiden Voyage
There is something oddly unsatisfying about The Master, Colm Toibin’s 2004 treatment of the life of Henry James. Odd because we almost always love Toibin’s prose, which is elegant but unpretentious, and — unlike so much contemporary fiction — never shifts tenses or otherwise calls attention to itself in a distracting or superfluous manner. Occasionally […]
Filed under: Gay, History, Literature, Longing, Memory, Resignation, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American, Writers-Irish | 1 Comment
Tags: Bear, Colm Toibin, Daddy Bear, Gay Bear, Hendrik Anderson, Henry James, Homophobia, Hot Bears, The Master, William James
On The City and the Pillar
In which The Gay Recluse looks back at a classic of post-war American fiction written in a gay voice. Admittedly, to read Gore Vidal’s 1946 novel The City and the Pillar is to be thrown with startling efficiency into what has to be one of the bleakest periods in history, the post-war era of the […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Gay, Literature, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Gay Classics, Gay Literature, Gay Writers, Gore Vidal, John Waters, Paul Morrissey, Same-Sexers, The City and the Pillar, Thomas Mann
On A Book of Memories
Today – after more than two months of reading over 700 pages of tightly wound dream and remembrance – we finally finished A Book of Memories by Peter Nadas. If you remember, it was a Michael Kimmelman interview with Nadas a few months ago that prompted us to write a diatribe against the beleaguered state […]
Filed under: Communism, Gay, Language, Literature, Memory, Writers-Hungarian | Leave a Comment
Tags: A Book of Memories, Gay Literature, Gay Voice, Gay Writers, Hungarian Writers, Peter Nadas, Quotations
In which The Gay Recluse offers approximately fifteen quotes from a modern masterpiece written in the “gay voice.” A Book of Memories by Peter Nadas: “[T]here’s nothing in the world with which I have a more intimate relationship than ruination.” “If one could learn the most important things in life, one would still have to […]
Filed under: Gay, Language, Literature, Pessimism, Writers-Hungarian | Leave a Comment
Tags: A Book of Memories, Gay Literature, Gay Voice, Gay Writers, Hungarian Writers, Peter Nadas, Quotations
Although the year — and our annual ceremony — is fast winding down, we felt that we could not let it slip by without acknowledging 2007’s most remarkably opaque book review, which today appeared — just under the wire! — in The Times Sunday Book Review. Because this was easily the most remarkably opaque book […]
Filed under: Drivel, Literature, The Times | 1 Comment
Tags: Diary of a Bad Year, J.M. Coetzee, Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times Sunday Book Review
The Gay Recluse 