The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from March 2008

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from March 2008

March-April '08: "the Sotadic Zone".(British explorer Richard Burton)
March 1, 2008... The "Sotadic Zone" was a coinage of the 19th-century explorer Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890), a British polyglot and writer of extraordinary accomplishment who was almost certainly gay, whose explorations took him to far-flung regions of the...

An open letter to Tom Brokaw on Boom!(GUEST OPINION)(Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today)
March 1, 2008... Dear Mr. Brokaw: I write with no small indignation at the total absence of any slightest reference to the gay movement for civil equality in your bestselling book Boom! Voices of the Sixties. Your book simply deletes the momentous events...

Fifty years ago, a Supreme Court victory.(GUEST OPINION)(ONE, Inc. versus Olesen)
March 1, 2008... This year marks a very important milestone in GLBT history. Fifty years ago, on January 13, 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its first ever pro-gay ruling in ONE, Inc. v. Olesen, a landmark decision that allowed a magazine for gays and...

Unreported passages.(Correspondence)(Arthur Cyrus Warner, Massimo Consoli and James Hemming)(Obituary)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... To the Editor: The last Gay and Lesbian Review had a list of obituaries of prominent Americans who died in 2007. Below are three significant deaths that were not included. Arthur Cyrus Warner died on July 22 at age 89. Educated at...

The homosexual imperative.(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... Dear Editor: To follow up on Dr. Roughgarden's views in "Nature Abhors a Category" in the January-February 08 issue: there have been a great many articles on the occurrence of homosexuality among humans and animals in general, but very...

Correction roundup.(Correction notice)
March 1, 2008... In the Jan.-Feb. 08 issue, the caption for a photograph of Gertrude Stein (accompanying a review of Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice) stated that the picture had been taken during World War II when Stein and Toklas were living in...

Not your father's BMW.(BTW)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Advertisers are masters of the double-entendre, but sometimes the sexual meaning is so obvious that it's hard to figure out what the "clean" interpretation would be. Such was the case for an ad that ran in various American newspapers this...

Race to the bottom award.(BTW)(Bulgarians' attitude towards homosexuality)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... We're a little late with the winner for 2007, but this year's award goes to the European Union country whose attitudes about homosexuality have progressed the least since the Middle Ages. And the winner is: Bulgaria. The Slavic countries have...

Larry Craig isn't done with dudes.(BTW)(Idaho's Gold Creek Ranch)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... The last time we visited the Idaho senator it was with the belief that he would soon resign from the U.S. Senate (this was last September), seemingly a foregone conclusion that the Senator unexpectedly forewent. And while Sen. Craig had to give...

Divine justice.(BTW)(Randall Terry)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... There are those who would say "There is a God!" on learning that Randall Terry--founder of Operation Rescue with a side career of attacking gay rights--has a son who's gay. It was last May that Jamiel Terry wrote a piece in Out magazine in...

Gaydar lightning round.(BTW)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... A BTW in the last issue ended with the semi-rhetorical question, "Do GLBT people actually look different...?" Studies were noted that point to measurable differences between gay and straight people's fingerprints, hair "whorl" patterns, and...

Jane Rule, pioneer of lesbian fiction, dies at 76.(In memoriam)
March 1, 2008... Jane Rule, who died of cancer on November 27, 2007, at her home in Galiano Island off the coast of British Columbia, will undoubtedly be best remembered for her first published novel, 1964's Desert of the Heart. The book was pioneering not only...

Finding Whitman: 'not what you supposed'.(ART MEMO)(Walt Whitman)
March 1, 2008... I was fifteen or sixteen, a sophomore in high school, and a full-flowered cretin in every subject but art and English, so it must have been my English teacher who had mentioned Leaves of Grass in passing. This was way back in the civilized...

The Marlowe in Edward II.(Christopher Marlowe)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... Christopher Marlowe's Edward the Second Adapted by Garland Wright Directed by Jesse Berger Red Bull Theater production Dec. 11, 2007-Jan. 27, 2008 AMONG THE GREAT "GAY" QUOTES is one attributed to the English dramatist-poet-spy,...

The horseman in King James I.(Essay)
March 1, 2008... FROM 1615 TO 1625, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham was the favorite and "sweet wife" of King James I. Villiers parlayed his homosexuality--not to mention his other talents, including a standout gift for horsemanship--into vast wealth...

Chambers.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... Chambers The house loved my mother. When she slammed a door, The walls shook just for her. They were sympathetic To her cause, made certain I could hear her sobbing Through their skin. Her tears would leak Through the floor,...

The lure of the 'Sotadic Zone'.(Gay Tourism: Culture and Context)(Excerpt)(Essay)
March 1, 2008... The following is excerpted from Gay Tourism: Culture and Context, published by Haworth Press, 2006. Reprinted with permission. TOURISM IS SHAPED by powerful popular cultural mythologies, and gay tourism is no different in this regard. For...

Islamic war zones I have visited.(Essay)
March 1, 2008... THE INITIAL IDEA begins with a spark, a curiosity. Sometimes it comes from deep inside, from a secret longing for strange lands I read about as a child in the art and archeology books my parents had stacked in collapsing piles in our living...

'Invertidos' in Afro-Cuban religion.(Essay)
March 1, 2008... ONE OF CUBA'S many paradoxes is the society's acceptance of homosexuality within the concept of santeria, a Yoruba-originated religion once considered primitive and deviant and now adopted as a national heritage symbol, a major aspect of a...

The fight and flight of Reinaldo Arenas.(Biography)(Essay)
March 1, 2008... BEGINNING ON APRIL 20, 1980, thousands of Cuban emigrants began sailing in hundreds of small boats from Cuba, to seek greater freedom in Florida. Among them were significant numbers of what the Castro regime labeled "social misfits," including...

The world: courtesy of Hanns Ebensten.(INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM)
March 1, 2008... FROM h000is first trip down the Nile at age six, when he sat on the knee of the famous Aga Khan, Hanns Ebensten was captured by a wanderlust that carried him through his long life. His love of adventure and intrepid spirit led him to remote...

Desire is back in China.('Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality and Public Culture' by Lisa Rofel)(Interview)
March 1, 2008... AN ANTHROPOLOGIST and a China scholar, Lisa Rofel has written several ethnographies on contemporary Chinese culture and politics. Her most recent book, Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality and Public Culture, published last...

Spain's prolonged road to freedom.(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... "Los Invisibles": A History of Male Homosexuality in Spain, 1850-1940 by Richard Cleminson and Francisco Vasquez Garcia University of Wales Press 311 pages, $85. IN THE 19TH CENTURY, historians broadly agree, huge changes occurred...

The Silence.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... The Slience What I have left to say is what Rimbaud had to say from Africa. I am in Africa. I'll write of financial hardships, my health, the miserable weather, sparse geographic details, the nature and politics of the natives....

Life of the 'Marvellous Party'.(The Letters of Noel Coward)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... The Letters of Noel Coward Edited by Barry Day Knopf. 780 pages, $37.50 NOT MANY PEOPLE write real letters now, so those of us who like to read them--for their informal tone, their jokes, their opinions, their gossip--have to go...

How pulp fiction fueled gay rights.(Out in Paperback: A Visual History of Gay Puls)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Out in Paperback: A Visula History of Gay Puls by Ian Young Lester, Mason & Begg 79 pages (illustrated), $29.95 IN 1969, in my small Montana hometown, I spotted a paperback novel on a drugstore bookrack that I knew I had to buy....

On the Longing of Early Explorers.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... I would prefer one hour of conversation with a native of terra australis incognita to one with the most learned man in Europe. --Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, ca. 1740 Before satellites eyed the earth's whole surface through the...

The puzzling return of a vitriolic rant.(The Third Sex)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... The Third Sex by Willy Translated by Lawrence R. Scher University of Illinois Press 140 pages, $35 IF HENRI GAUTHIER-VILLARS (1859-1931), a prolific theater critic and jack of all literary trades who published much of his work...

Discordia in Florida.(From May to December)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... From May to December by Pat MacEnulty Serpent's Tail. 310 pages, $14.95 (paper) WHILE THE PLOT of Pat MacEnulty's latest novel does recount events chronologically over a six-month period from May to December, the title simply...

Slut for a soul on ice.(Selfish and Perverse)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Selfish & Perverse by Bob Smith Carroll & Graf. 376 pages, $26. STAND-UP COMEDIANS, because their success usually relies on being able to think in short, epigrammatic bursts, rarely venture into the realm of more extended prose...

Darwin and difference.(The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory by Kenny Fries Carroll & Graf. 206 pages, $14.95 IT'S TOO BAD that Kenny Fries new book isn't longer. The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory is so...

Here at the GCN.(An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News by Amy Hoffman University of Massachusetts Press. 166 pages, $22.95 CURRENTLY THE EDITOR of the Women's Review of Books and a long-time political activist, Amy Hoffman has...

Takes on TV's treatment.(Media Queered: Visibility and Its Discontents)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Media Queered: Visibility and its Discontents Edited by Kevin G. Barnhurst Peter Lang Publishing Group. 298 pages, $89.95 ($32.95 paper) IN APRIL 1954, Los Angeles television station KTTV aired a segment called "The Sex Variant in...

Way down on Bourbon St.(The Dust of Wonderland)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... The Dust of Wonderland by Lee Thomas Alyson Books. 316 pages, $24.95 FROM THE START of The Dust of Wonderland, whose tone is established in the introduction's stalking scene, this tale is nothing if not unsettling. The reader is...

Sons and lovers.(Light Fell)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Light Fell by Evan Fallenberg Soho Press. 240 pages, $22. EVAN FALLENBERG'S Light Fell is a slight, disarming novel about a gay man's effort to reconcile with his five sons on his fiftieth birthday. Told episodically and in...

The Sixth Form.(BRIEFS)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... The Sixth Form by Tom Dolby Kensington. 352 pages, $24. Tom Dolby's second novel, The Sixth Form--the title refers to the senior year at Berkely, a Massachusetts boarding school that furnishes the book's setting--has Ethan Whitley...

At the Bottom of the Sky.(BRIEFS)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... At the Bottom of the Sky Peter Dube DC Books, 112 pages, $16.95 Peter Dube's latest book will provide an appropriate introduction for those unfamiliar with his work (notably his last novel, Hovering World). The author has named...

Conferences/events.(Bulletin Board)(Brief article)(Calendar)
March 1, 2008... True Colors: A Global Perspective Conf. will take place March 14-15 in Storrs, CT. Mission is to create a world where people of all sexual orientations and gender identities are valued and affirmed. For more info, go to: www.ourtruecolors.org....

The men of the 50's, naked and in-depth.(Comin' At Ya!: The Homoerotic 3-D Photographs of Denny Denfield)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Comin' At Ya!: The Homoerotic 3-D Photographs of Denny Denfield Edited by David L. Chapman and Thomas Waugh Arsenal Pulp Press 208 pages (illustrated), $27.95 THIS NEW BOOK of photographs is remarkable in a number of ways. First,...