Category Archives: Uncategorized

Garth Greenwell and the books of his life 

Garth Greenwell was recently featured in the excellent The Book of my Life weekly column in The Guardian. Among other things, he talks about Saint Augustine, the author of Confessions (an “autofiction”), his favorite writer, WG Sebald’s The Ring of Saturn, which made him wanting … Continue reading

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Men

Some Men in London: Very good review of the excellent two-volume anthology by Peter Parker on homosexual life in England from 1945 to 1967, the year of the partial decriminalization of homosexuality in that country. Caillebotte: Painting Men: An extraordinary … Continue reading

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Best gay books of the 21th century 

As we approach the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, The New York Times published this summer a list of the 100 best books released in the United States since January 1, 2000, based on a survey of over 500 writers … Continue reading

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Queer Lives: Jean-Claude Berchet, 1939-2024 

A few days ago in Le Monde‘s obituary pages: Born in Nantua (Jura) in 1939, a former student of the École Normale Supérieure, Jean-Claude Berchet was the editor of the Mémoires d’outre-tombe in the memorable Classiques Garnier collection with its highly recognizable yellow … Continue reading

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Tonio Kröger 

“When, in 1931, Thomas Mann received a newspaper questionnaire asking about his “first love,” he replied, in essence, “Read Tonio Kröger.”” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker, Jan 24 2022) Tonio Kröger is a novella written in 1901 and published in 1903, shortly after … Continue reading

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Queer Lives: Bruce Bastian, 1948-2024 

Bruce Bastian, a Founder of WordPerfect, Is Dead at 76. (New York Times) Bruce Bastian was born into a Mormon family in Idaho. After training as a musician, he studied computer science and then founded a company in partnership with one … Continue reading

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Stanley Stellar and The Piers

I just discovered in the New York Times the photographer Stanley Stellar (At Frieze, Photographer of Gay Life Seeks ‘a Place in the Sunshine’). Born in 1945, he grew up in Brooklyn. In the 70s in the years before AIDS, … Continue reading

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Benjamin Justice and gay movies

The second volume of the excellent Benjamin Justice detective series by John Morgan Wilson, Revision of Justice, was published in 1997, just a year after the first volume, which had won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. The series is being reissued … Continue reading

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Lieutenant-colonel de Maumort

Some time ago, I read in the November-December 2023 issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review a short piece by Dale Boyer where he recounts how he stumbled upon a translation of the novel while browsing in a second-hand bookstore … Continue reading

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