Adam in the Morning At one in the morning, 28 June 1969, the New York policemen from the 6th Precinct, led by Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, on Christopher Street in the West Village in New York. This was normal. The cops had raided the same bar earlier that week, and they had raided three other bars in the weeks before. What was unusual that night was that, … [Read more...]
My books, money, value, the somber truth
I read an article on Slate today on writing and money, and it compels me to respond. The point of the article is the fact that so few writers actually make any money at their writing. Just about all writers are supported by doing something else, like teaching, and yet it seems that just about everybody is confused about what confers worth on a book. Do sales confer worth? Do reviews? Publishing … [Read more...]
The political novel: 3
At the time I started writing my first gay political novel, I had only been out for 24 months, and I was steeping in the literature of gay political theory. The weekend that Charles Howard was murdered (July 7, 1984)—he was the man on whom Bernie Mallett of Ceremonies was modeled—I was reading John D’Emilio’s, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United … [Read more...]
And I alone am escaped to tell thee
Elie Wiesel, who died this week, said in his Nobel Prize speech, “I have tried to keep memory alive […] I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.” But it’s worse than that. If we forget what has happened to us, we forget what we have done, and we can’t know ourselves. The Federal Writers Project of the Works Project Administration of … [Read more...]
Iridescent history
Last week I bought and watched Margin Call, directed by J. C. Chandor and starring Kevin Spacey and Too Big to Fail, from HBO, directed by Curtis Hanson and starring William Hurt. I started watching a Showtime series, Billions, going back to S1:01, starring Paul Giametti and Damian Lewis. The Big Short, directed by Adam McKay and starring Christian Bale and Steve Carrel, opened in the Loewe’s … [Read more...]