You can hang out with all the boys

July 25, 2005 8:02 AM

youngman, there's no need to feel down.

Originally rejecting a ghetto-tag of 'gay writer', John Rechy's early work describes aspects of US gay subculture, pre-Stonewall, and pre-HIV, that was necessarily a closed book to outsiders at that point in time

Rechy is still writing, and today, his website features blog-like commentary and interesting thoughts on writing.
posted by PeterMcDermott (11 comments total)

Rechy's City of Night was a masterpiece. It's a hilarious, vicious, poetic, earnest, heartbreaking novel -- Rechy was the Thomas Wolfe (not Tom Wolfe) of the glory-hole set. I'd go so far as to say that City is the missing link between the Beat Generation and later punk-lit writers like Dennis Cooper (and, since I was Allen Ginsberg's teaching assistant at one point and also studied with William Burroughs, I know something of what I speak). The problem with Rechy is that none of his later books can hold a candle to it. I read about a dozen more, hoping to find a rekindling of that spark, but the later work seems a little banal -- overly vain and sex-obsessed, underlyrical -- compared.

But to create one masterwork is worthy of high praise. City of Night should definitely be read by more hipsters, and I think one of the reasons it isn't, frankly, is homophobia. Straight hipsters feel more comfortable relating to a hero like Jack Kerouac's Sal Paradise or Cody Pomeray (their homosexuality kept strictly on the DL) than a male hustler.
posted by digaman at 9:28 AM on July 25, 2005

I actually found The Sexual Outlaw at a yard sale when I was 14. I thought it was about something else. But I read the whole thing anyway. It was a riveting read. He's right not to ghettoize himself. He deserves to be read by all kinds of people. I'll have to read City of Night now.

Straight hipsters feel more comfortable relating to a hero like Jack Kerouac's Sal Paradise or Cody Pomeray (their homosexuality kept strictly on the DL) than a male hustler.


Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries features a lot of explicit (and occasionally hilarious) scenes involving male hustling. Just saying.
posted by jonmc at 9:38 AM on July 25, 2005

For sure. But didn't Carroll make it clear that he was "really" straight, whatever that means?
posted by digaman at 9:41 AM on July 25, 2005

jonmc, you really do need to read City of Night. When I first read it 20 years ago, I felt like I'd found the Holy Grail -- the Beat dharma-heir who everyone forgot.
posted by digaman at 9:42 AM on July 25, 2005

Speaking of male hustling, by the way, one little-known truth is that Neal Cassady, the real-life model for Dean Moriarity, Cody Pomeray, and other Kerouac heroes, and later the legendary driver of the Merry Pranksters' bus Furthur, also hustled in his youth. In fact, I believe that turning tricks with Justin Brierly, a well-known Denver patron-of-the-arts and mentor to troubled youths, was how Cassady ended up getting a tip to head to NYC, where he met Kerouac and walked into Beat/hippie immortality.
posted by digaman at 9:50 AM on July 25, 2005

I'll read it if you read Richard Price's Ladies Man (which, despite the title, is about the male libido, not just the straight male libido), his writing is similar to Rechy's in a lot of ways.

But didn't Carroll make it clear that he was "really" straight, whatever that means?

He was doing it to hustle for drugs. But he left plenty of room for ambivalence, and to even broach the subject in a non-hateful way was ballsy in those days and is still an eye-opener for many people now.
posted by jonmc at 9:52 AM on July 25, 2005

It's a deal. I've never heard of Price, and I'm psyched to read a good book.

I heard that in the film of the Basketball Diaries, Carroll's character was portrayed as less eye-openingly ambivalent, and the fags were made predictably more disgusting to cater to the prejudices of a mass audience.
posted by digaman at 10:02 AM on July 25, 2005

Thanks for the post.
posted by Rothko at 10:03 AM on July 25, 2005

I heard that in the film of the Basketball Diaries, Carroll's character was portrayed as less eye-openingly ambivalent, and the fags were made predictably more disgusting to cater to the prejudices of a mass audience.

That's saddening, since the early 60's urban underground that Carroll inhabited brushed right up against the gay urban underworld of the time. The movie actually took a lot of liberties. Quite frankly, just about every non-mainstream subculture (Beats, hippies, bikers, punks, etc) had contact with marginalized groups and had gay elements within them.

It's a deal. I've never heard of Price, and I'm psyched to read a good book.

You're on. I'll try an scrounge up a copy of Rechy. Let me know what you think of it.
posted by jonmc at 10:08 AM on July 25, 2005

City of Night should be available almost anywhere. I remember reading it in the early 70s, when the cool literati at our school were passing around Terry Southern's Candy, Farina's Been Down So Long and Rechy's book.

Forget the labels, it is a great book. Gloria Anzaldua also cites Rechy as an important Chicano writer.
posted by beelzbubba at 4:56 PM on July 25, 2005

Huh. I read "The Fourth Angel" in high school, and was very unimpressed. Perhaps I'll take a second look.
posted by mrgrimm at 6:17 PM on July 25, 2005