Archive for the ‘Writers-American’ Category
In which The Tsarina takes over The Gay Recluse. On your entry tonight, The Tsarina remarks by quoting Henry Miller (1941): “There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.” [Via reader CBNY.]
Filed under: Quotes, Resignation, Sickness, The Russian Blue, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: 1941, Crazy Worlds, Guest Blogging, Henry Miller, Salvation, The Tsarina
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. Today I finally read the New Yorker article about David Foster Wallace, which was by turns inspiring and depressing; inspiring because (and this is hardly a surprise) he seemed to genuinely believe in fiction as a means to reflect/analyze/transform currents of our […]
Filed under: Architecture, Disease, Landscape, Literature, Quotes, Resignation, Travel, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Airplanes, David Foster Wallace, Ennui, Huysmans, Pascal, The George Washington Bridge, Waves, Work
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. Today we sent out to our millions of followers on Twitter the following tweet: Q: What post-war (US) novel best reflects the gay experience as BELOVED reflects the Af-Am exper? Me: Holleran/DANCER FROM THE DANCE (You?) Nobody answered! We followed it up […]
Filed under: Conspiracy, Gay, Literature, Writers-American | 6 Comments
Tags: Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance, Surveys, Tweets, Twitter
In which The Gay Recluse ponders Junot Diaz and the purpose of novels. Today we finished The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. For obv reasons — namely, the book won every award last year — our expectations were high, and but for the most part were met. In case we’re only the second-to-last […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, Dream, Literature, Pessimism, Washington Heights, Writers-American | 3 Comments
Tags: Dictators, Entertainment, Junot Diaz, Novels, Oscar Wao, Rafael Trujillo, Truth
On The Rest Is Noise
In which The Gay Recluse recommends a book about music. When we finished The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross’ survey of twentieth-century (classical-ish) music, our feelings were mixed; not about the book, which — as we are hardly the first to point out (Google it!) — works brilliantly on many levels. It’s really beyond our […]
Filed under: Bad Rock, Gay, Good Rock, History, Landscape, Literature, Writers-American | 5 Comments
Tags: Aerosmith, Alex Ross, Classical, Free Jazz, La Monte Young, Led Zeppelin, Pierre Boulez, Pittsburgh, The Rest Is Noise, The Who, Walter Benjamin, WDVE
In which The Gay Recluse recommends a scholarly work. Recently we heard from Scott Gunther, an old friend of ours from college (we also spent a semester together in Paris) and law school. Scott is now a French professor at Wellesley — i.e., he’s practicing as much law as we are, lol — and it […]
Filed under: Gay, Landscape, Language, Letters, Writers-American, Writers-French | 2 Comments
Tags: Academic Works, France, Homosexuality, Scott Gunther, The Elastic Closet
In which The Gay Recluse writes a book report. Just as the snow began, we finished Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking, a 2007 debut novel by Aoibheann Sweeney. The book is about a girl — Miranda — who grows up with her father on a tiny island off the coast of Maine; her […]
Filed under: Gay, History, Literature, New York City, Washington Heights, Writers-American | 2 Comments
Tags: Aoibheann Sweeney, Gay Voice, Ovid, Shakespeare, Snow, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather
On The Book of Getting Even
In which The Gay Recluse files a book report.* In The Book of Getting Even (a title we love, btw!) by Benjamin Taylor, we meet some interesting characters: first (and last) there is Gabriel Geismar, a Jewish — and notably, unapologetically gay! — teenage boy from New Orleans with a horribly abusive father (a rabbi) […]
Filed under: Gay, Literature, Nostalgia, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Benjamin Taylor, Book Reviews, Gay Fiction, The Book of Getting Even
In which The Gay Recluse considers the dark ages. So today we were reading about the new Thomas Pynchon novel, which is going to be released next year. Like so many adolescent boys we’ve known, we went through a serious Pynchon phase. His maddeningly complex yet (somehow) crystalline prose managed to resonate with the best […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Conspiracy, Gay, GWB Project, Literature, Memory, Science, Technology, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | 2 Comments
Tags: Adolescents, Boys, Conspiracy, Dark Ages, Entropy, Physics, The George Washington Bridge, Thomas Pynchon
In which The Gay Recluse loves The Manhattan Times. Hey, so The Manhattan Times wrote a charming (if we say so) piece on The Metropolis Case. If you’ve never read the uptown weekly, you’re missing out (and really, we’re not just saying that!). In this week’s issue alone, there are excellent articles about Andy Linares […]
Filed under: Animals, Literature, The Gay Recluse, The Russian Blue, Washington Heights, Writers-American, Writers-French | 4 Comments
Tags: Beatrice, Book Deals, Novels, The Manhattan Times, The Metropolis Case, Uptown
In which The Gay Recluse says wtf, dudebro? Although it’s not impossible to imagine a scenario in which a straight-guy literary critic does not expose himself as a moronic dudebro as he mocks other straight guys by writing 1) “Lev Grossman fellates Updike with a knowing look as Updike cradles his bald head in a […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Drivel, Gay, Quotes, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | 2 Comments
Tags: Cocksuckers, Dudebros, Literary Critics, Post-gay, Rules, Straights
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
On David Foster Wallace
In which The Gay Recluse remembers David Foster Wallace. When we turned 28 or 29, our friend Marla gave us a copy of Infinite Jest. We spent the next month or so locked in our room reading it, pretending to be sick and not going to work. To say it was Pynchonesque doesn’t really do […]
Filed under: Addiction, Pessimism, Ruins, Search, Sickness, Writers-American | 5 Comments
Tags: David Foster Wallace, Death, Heroes, Infinite Jest
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 becomes increasingly obsessed with birds. It was raining pretty hard, but we still had places to go. Even if we knew that somewhere, someone was sleeping. I hope you love birds, too. –Emily Dickinson
Filed under: Animals, GWB Project, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Birds, Emily Dickinson, Rain, Sleep
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
On How Incredibly Fucked Up: Book of Closet Cases Wins Lambda Literary Award for Men’s Fiction
In which The Gay Recluse is rather perturbed. Hey, apparently all it takes to win a Lambda Literary Award for Men’s Fiction — even if you’re not gay! — is to write a seriously homophobic treatment of a teen romance, get a bunch of testimonials from important straights, and put a smokin’ hot cover on […]
Filed under: Competitions, Conspiracy, Drivel, Gay, Language, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | 4 Comments
Tags: Andre Aciman, Gay Voice, Homophobia, Lamda Literary Awards
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
The Gay Recluse 