A Queer Reader - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565842103 ISBN 13: 9781565842106

Publisher: The New Press, 1994

Synopsis

A Queer Reader is a rich and provocative collection of writings about male homosexuality―a gay version of Bartlett's Quotations, with authors ranging from Plato to Andy Warhol. Arranging entries chronologically and drawing on sources from the Satyricon to Gay News, from Michelangelo&squo;s sonnets to a speech in the House of Lords, from sexually explicit graffiti found in Pompeii to a Playboy interview with David Bowie, Patrick Higgins uses novels, biographies, autobiographies, histories, and ephemera to present gay history as never before.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Higgins lectures in history at New Hall, Cambridge.

Reviews

Although the subtitle suggests that Higgins, a lecturer in history at Cambridge University, has compiled a Bartlett's for gay readers, his book is much richer than that. It focuses not on memorable one-liners (though those abound) but on sustained anecdotes from literature, biographies, lyrics, dialogue from plays and films, and so on. Ovid, Michelangelo, Whitman and others praise homosexual love, but Higgins balances the picture by also citing denouncers. Linked series of quotations create thumbnail "biographies" of such figures as Oscar Wilde, W.H. Auden and Tennessee Williams. Chapters are organized chronologically, leading the reader from antiquity to the present: essays that begin a chapter are informed and accessible, putting the quotations that follow into historical context. This absorbing book rewards both casual and sustained attention.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Boasting "contributors" that include Liberace, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Diderot, and Barbara Pym, this "compendium of quotes by and about gay men throughout the ages" attempts to tell the story of male homosexuality. Betraying a peculiarly British bent, Higgins, a lecturer in history at Cambridge, has assembled an eclectic mishmash from a wide variety of sources, from Plato's Symposium through the London Gay News. "The Power Behind the Mask," an awkward and defensively written critique of "homosexual history," is followed by short excerpts (five words to two pages) from novels, speeches, histories, biographies, and ephemera, all of which fail to coalesce. The index includes personal names but no titles, places, or subjects, and complete citations for sources are inconveniently listed in fine print in the acknowledgments, frustrating further research. This mistitled collection is not recommended.
James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1565842103
• ISBN 13: 9781565842106
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Higgins Patrick