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Watergate | A New History

by Garrett M. Graff

Simon & Shuster

Hardcover; photos; 795 pgs; $35,

Political journalist and historian Garritt Graff acknowledges that there are shelves of books and declassified government documents that chronicle Watergate saga that led to the downfall of Richard Nixon’s presidency. But, 50 years on, Graff debriefs on all of the untold tales of all the president’s men and women in his book ‘Watergate- A New History.

Graff is not only a veteran political reporter for Politico, The Washingtonian, CNN and New York Times he is a researcher who can stylishly weave together the many colliding political capers and dramas that swirled around Nixon with both journalistic and theatrical flair.

The book opens on Richard Nixon’s “last joyful day” in the White House- the day he and Pat hosted his daughter Trisha’s wedding in the White House. But the next day he groused that there was not enough tv coverage, that had it been a Kennedy wedding it would have been covered live on all three networks. The following day the wedding was covered on the front page, with a glittering photo of the event, but next to it ran the first installment of The Pentagon Papers that exposed the disastrous US policies that fueled the war for over a decade that had cost tens of thousands of American lives.

Even though the Pentagon Papers exposed the malfeasance and warmongering hubris of previous administrations, Nixon was obsessed with insider leaks to the press could potentially lead leaks about the first term of his own presidency. And what was being plotted for his second term.

Graff is methodical in his sourcing and granular its detail- both the established facts and disputed ones- newly revealed sourcing and, critically, exculpatory evidence that can now be collated into the voluminous Watergate lore.

 There’s deep background on known and unknown aspects of Watergate and the cast of infamous characters the short list being- Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy- the jailed off burglars being paid off to keep quiet, not to mention the Oval Office cabal of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean collaborating with the hard-drinking paranoid, vengeful Nixon.

Graff’s paints a dimensional portrait of a Nixon, the man and politician full of dualities and contradictions, but as he justified his actions and whose less self-destructive side led him to think of himself as the great statesman who had a positive agenda for cleaning up the environment, achieved détente with Russia and China, advocated for cancer research, and even for more women in the male dominated jobs in government. Graff reminds readers of his reasonable political agenda.

The overtures to bug the Watergate was ignited by Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist being surveilled. Nixon had considered J. Edgar Hoover useless to do his bidding. Graff goes into the shady dealings of Nixon’s landslide victory in 1968 dubbed, The Chenault Affair where Nixon’s engaged a society matron to in sabotage the Paris Peace talks until after his 1968 run for the presidency.,

Nixon who was vengeful, petty, insecure, and power greedy. And sabotage political opponents. Graff devotes a chapter early on detailing the Chennault scandal in which Nixon was engaged in clandestine overtures with the South Vietnamese government that would stall the Paris peace talks at the end of the Johnson administration. Johnson knew about it and tried to contain it, when he could have exposed Nixon in what would have, on the face of it been a treasonous offence.

Nixon’s fear of leaks over his impulses to ignore legalities. The formation of the Plumbers, not only to smear Nixon’s enemies, but using methods that were indisputable crimes. Sound familiar?

Graff dissects the events that led up of the break-in at the Watergate. Gives the backstory of the dupes and shady characters recruited by Nixon’s henchmen. The opening chapters dissecting Nixon’s obsessive tactics employed to blackmail, silence, and smear his real or perceived enemies.

Graff delves into fascinating episodes such as Nixon knowing that the aging J. Edgar Hoover was losing his iron grip on the FBI. Mark Felt aka Deep Throat, was Hoover’s heir apparent at the FBI. Or that Nixon and his inner circle figured it out early that he was feeding information to reporters. But Nixon thought it wouldn’t serve them to expose him but strategized how to sideline, and control him, knowing that he was waiting be named director.

John Dean’s image as the President’s lawyer of conscience who’s famous ‘There’s a cancer growing on the presidency’ account to the Ervin committee made him come off as a choirboy, as Graff reveals Dean’s testimony was a performative red herring to the Ervin Committee since he an active participant in the coverup from the start.

Graff tips his hat to the groundbreaking first line reporting by Woodward & Bernstein in cracking open the case, but he also dissects the faults and factual errors in their best-selling All The President’s Men and the blockbuster movie produced by Robert Redford.

And to fill in the areas that dropped off the radar, or were under seal, or hidden until years after Nixon was out of office. New details about the infamous showdown over the Nixon tapes, the Saturday Night Massacre, Executive privilege, Rosemary Woods contortions caused the 18-and-a-half-minute-gap,

At near 800 pages of reveals, Graff uncovers all of the political malfeasants, hubris, smear tactics and dirty tricks that became the Nixon administration’s brand. Watergate | A New History reads like a political primer that anticipated what the Republican party has now become, a secret, cut-throat, undemocratic, petrified institution cast with people who will do or say anything to stay in power.

Nixon’s tragic flaws are still fascinatingly Shakespearean in their complexities, even as his compulsions are the stuff of farce- unfortunately a comedy with tragic consequences for a democracy.

 

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biography, booksbooksbooks, Graham Greene

The Unquiet Englishman | A Life of Graham Greene

By Richard Greene

W.W.Norton & Company; 591 pgs; photographs

Graham Greene was one of the 20th century’s most successful novelists, from the droll theatrics of ‘Travels with My Aunt’ to his portrait of a soul-searching rebel priest in ‘The Power and Glory.’  Greene wrote characters that captivated readers for six decades.   

 The shortlist of his bestseller include– Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The Third Man, The Quiet American, Ministry of Fear, The Confidential Agent, The End of the Affair, Our Man in Havana- but that is only half the story of his prolific and adventurous life. Graham was a war-time journalist for LOOK magazine, a part-time British M15 spy, a playwright and screenwriter (often uncredited). And he was a self-styled diplomat who inserted himself in political hot spots around the world, exploits he copiously chronicled in letters and journals.

A new biography by Canadian writer Richard Greene brings new insight and analysis of Graham’s restless nature, his relationships and his creative life. The author had access to previously Greene’s private papers and dictaphone recordings. Graham even kept a copious log of his dreams because he admitted in his sort of autobiography titled ‘A Sort of Life’ he didn’t trust his memory.

Respected all over the world for his accomplishments on all these fronts, his career rarely gave him pleasure, he was in it for the adventure. He sought out adventure in political hot spots around the world, even often flirting with the idea that he would be happier if ‘the bullet’ would finish him off.   

As RG reveals, Graham’s restlessness and insecurities drove him to dangerous parts of the world in Latin America, Africa and Indochina where he got the inside track on corrupt regimes, spy networks, military leaders, and rebel enclaves. He even spent six weeks in a leprosarium in Africa for research for his novel A Burnt-Out Case, about a depressed architect. who exiles himself to the Belgian Congo before it became a Democratic Republic.

As assured as Graham was in his professional achievements, he suffered from manic depression, and from a young age, contemplated suicide. He was a heavy drinker and at various times he was addicted to opium. His marriage to Vivien was tumultuous, even though he was genuinely but he had casual and serious affairs that eventual caused their permanent separation, but they did not divorce.

Greene had a relationship with Catherine Walston and their affair lasted years, only splitting, sort of, when he fell in love with actress Anita Bjork, a star of Swedish theater and international cinema.   

 Meanwhile, his Greene’s relationship with his son Francis Charles and his daughter Lucy Caroline remained distant. His work keeping him abroad for long stretches, with him sending letters that didn’t make up for missing key events in their lives.  His daughter Caroline eventually moved to Canada and literally build a horse ranch. And even though Greene put up the money, when he finally visited her, she told him how hard his absences and reputation as a womanizer, drinker and political instigator had negatively impacted his family.  

Greene was equally critical of political ideologies as mechanism of power and corruption whether it was in communist, socialist, democratic republics or dictatorships. Greene chronicles Graham’s lifelong commitment of putting himself in ‘harm’s way’ to bring attention to human rights abuses around the world. In Haiti to research The Comedians, his scabrous depiction a corrupt Duvalier presidency. After the book’s became an international bestseller ‘Papa Doc’ admitted that he wanted to assassinate Greene, but was ultimately afraid of suffering international reprisals that might hurt Haiti’s tourism.

 The last two decades of his life, Greene didn’t slow up, but his heavy drinking, drug use, strained relationships and ceaseless globetrotting caught up with him. He had several serious health problems, but they slowed him down for as long as it took to get back to his hectic life of traveling and writing.

Richard Greene insights into Graham’s compulsive creative process is fascinating and authoritative and gives the background on the real people Graham knew whose character and deeds were the source of his most compelling fictional characters.

The author’s methodical and illuminating machinations of corrupt regimes- the setting of so many of Greene’s best novels- bring new insights into Graham’s exclusive access to top officials around the world.   This biography is a fine line a portrait and Richard Greene’s comprehensive research and understand of Greene’s body of work, is an authoritative, wryly observed portrait of the man, his work and his daring times.

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booksbooksbooks, Lituanian-American artists, NewYorkUnderground, poets

I Seem To Live ~Vol. 1- 1950-1969

~The New York Diaries  Jonas Mekas~ with entries by Adolfas Mekas

~ book designers: Fabian Bremer, Pascal Storz ~ editor: Anne König

SPECTOR BOOKS 1000pgs. illustrated; photographs; archival footage

“Immigrants to America do not ‘adjust’ to America, They rather resign to it. They live in a state of resignation.” Jonas quotes Eduoard de Laurent’s as he records the realities of his and Jonas’ new life in America. Jonas chronicles ironies, hypocrisies, dangers and triumphs as he and Adolfas were creating New York’s avant-garde film world, that eventually went international.

~Previously on ‘I Seem To Live’

– Underground filmmaker Jonas Mekas lands at Rikers’ on obscenity charges for screening Flaming Creatures, establishes the New American Cinema Co-op, the nexus for dozens of underground filmmakers~ & more movie mayhem with Salvatore Dali, Orson Welles & but still lives on coffee & starves as he establishes the most cutting edge filmmakers of the 60s Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, Shirley Clarke, Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, Robert Frank, et. al.

~~upcoming in Part2 of Jonas’ diary~ A Song for Avila, St. Theresa ‘s roses on Time Sq. Roberto Rossellini, taking on the cops’ payoffs, film ‘Diaries’, the Warhol shooting, the birth of Wooster St. Cinematheque, Jonas’ j’accuse to the international festivals Jacqueline Kennedy’s favorite film~ Jonas Mekas’ Walden II.

Ostensibly a diary of filmmaker, film journalist Jonas Mekas ‘I Seem To Live’ a philosophical & artistic survival guide of a Lithuanian immigrant, a stranger in the strange land of New York City,  were he careened from assimilation to  self-alienated, observed, started an arts movement and completely assimilated. Part immigrant memoir, part art treatise, part philosophical manifesto of the arts vs. the world of commerce, politics and American culture.

Adolfas was back from the service and part of Jonas cast and crew for his movie Guns in the Trees, shooting on location in Manhattan, the New York countryside and New Jersey, encountering law enforcement, starvation, constant harassment by police in the city and in rural areas, for shooting without permits or on private property. Mekas’ film was re-released in New York in 2019 with a positive re-review in the New York Times.

He was also on the set of artist Robert Frank’s legendary avant-garde film ‘Pull Your Daisy’ written and narrated by Jack Kerouac. Mekas has unannounced poetry entrees including the brilliant poetic portrait of Peter Orlofsky.  (there is film of Orlofsky dancing with Nico at a VU performance with Jonas looking on has surfaced on YouTube).

Mekas may not bore his compatriots on the state of the film arts, but he records all his commentary throughout his dairies, he is, in retrospect among the most adroit observers of both commercial films in the US and the serious filmmakers and the entire post-WWII auteurs in Europe/

By the mid-60s Mekas was still running the Cooperative, planning the Cinemateque on Wooster St.  Raising money and networking for some 30 filmmakers, packaging the film ‘Expositions’ and getting them on the international film festival circuit, and still writing & editing Film Culture.

Mekas was not only major presence in the New American Cinema, he was becoming disenchanted by the whole subculture.   He had to remind the most successful directors – Jack Smith and Kenneth Anger that they were part of the collective and should not put themselves forward as representative of  NAC ourvre.

Mekas was starting to be resentful of being prevented from making his own film because he was so preoccupied with the constant demands of FC, NAC and running the Coop.

Still out of money to the point that he had to remind people that while he was working to get money for their productions, he was weak from not having enough money for food.  Still, he reports in diary, that “His colleagues who knew how he lived, treated me like I was independently wealthy.”

And Jonas was presenting Warhol’s early movies that were playing with every perception and satirical implications of ‘underground’ film. Jonas recognized that they were part of Warhol’s art revolution and living underground culture documented in ‘My Hustler’ ‘Naked Restaurant’ and Chelsea Girls.  Mekas also was involved with events with the Velvet Underground and hosted their first public performance at a convention of the American Psychiatric Association.

Jonas presented what ended up being ‘A happening’ at the Coop with Gato Barbieri’s quartet performing and Warhol’s gang, rockers, poets, literati, jazz luminaries and coffeehouse denizens. 

Meanwhile, he was also  on the scene in Europe. In London an independent film organization was forming and reaching out to Jonas to advise and collaborate as they got established.  He was more involved with the international festival circuit.  Despite complaining about being kept from making his own films as he tried to organize the co-op

He was honest with everyone around him, yet still carried everything on his shoulders to keep the underground film production, distribution expanding. He never abandoned artists he respected even if he knew they were taking advantage of his time, influence and not contributing in the spirit of the co-op.

Of the avant-garde filmmakers who were being seduced by making it big, he was just as wary.  He saw the hubris of redundancies of so called ‘underground’ films.  The pitfalls of being outrageous for outrageous same.  Meanwhile, he rejected any notions of censorship as nothing more than.

He was busier than ever. Only managing to schedule an hour or two a day to write and film his own projects. He had convictions and integrity and passion for the art form as being by design experimental, socially relevant and anti-Hollywood.

What he admired about Hollywood were the cinematographers, actors, writers  and directors who realized their vision despite the studios.  His admiration extended to such film heavyweights as Howard Hawks, Hitchcock and Welles. But mostly dismisses Hollywood as products of commercialism and trended public taste.

Jonas also is harsh to European cinemas, especially film festivals criterea for prize winners. He participated in festivals under certain conditions that supported the filmmakers. He was invited to be on festivals juries, which he turned down on principal, because judging ‘best’ films was not just absurd to him, but designed for exploitation.

Even as he was a revered film journalist for Village Voice, he was venomous to film ‘critics’ specifically and in general questioned the whole journalistic field as irrelevant to the understanding of the art of cinema. Meanwhile, he continued to work on his film projects. He was in demand internationally as a lecturer on film arts and NAC initiatives and expositions.

Jonas applied for and was awarded a $40,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to (he lobbied for $55,000) for the purchase and renovation of was to be the Wooster St. Cinematheque, that would be a film center that would not only preserve and present NAC and avant-garde films properly, but would not be subject to any industry rules. It would be a nexus for The Film Culture community and Coop operations.

After a year renovations on the two floors the Cinematheque would occupy, the city kept closing it down for minor violations, but the real reason was that Mekas refused to pay L & I officers payoffs. Mekas even filmed them making their shakedowns, but the fix was in with judges, officers and city cronies.

As fines and shutdowns mounted up Mekas wrote of the Kafka-eque situations and some of his most beautifully poetic passages (as well as rage against the machine) fill these pages.

Jonas continued work on “My New York (or American) Testament with his later films “Walden II” “Diary” and “A Song for Avila” which he describes so movingly in his diaries. However distracted by his pioneering efforts for vanguard film arts and on behalf of the Coop’s roster of filmmakers, Jonas proved he had as much say artistically, and vitally always challenged himself not to become what he despised in the film industry, whether it was out of Hollywood product created by producers or if it was an equally exploitive arthouse film.

 Jonas as a Lithuanian refugee poet and now in print is his epic prose poem is finally in ‘I Seem To Live.’

click to go to part 1 of ‘I Seem to Live’ review~ https://alternatetakes2.wordpress.com/2020/03/23/booksbooksbooks-32/

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Antigay ministries, booksbooksbooks, GLBTQ International issues, Investigative reporting

Spiritual murder in the Cathedral or Holy Hypocrisy Batman!

In the Closet of the Vatican

 by Frederic Martel

US publication, Bloomsbury (Feb. 21)

~note fr Lew: this is an excerpt from my lengthier essay on this title~

Frederic Martel has written several books on GLTBQI issues, but his latest ‘Sodoma’- English edition titled ‘In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy’ has garnered immediate international headlines.

Frederic Martel

The book has been published in 15 countries simultaneously and has been translated into eight languages. And interest in the book was further ramped up because it was released the same week pope Francis convened 200 Church leaders from around the world to discuss clerical sexual abuse. GLBTQ activists and abuse victim groups were rightly skeptical of Francis’ ability to effect ‘zero tolerance’ policies since the conference ended with no significant church policy changes.  The issues continue to be heirarchal turf wars about keeping the system of coverups and the Catholic downlow closet in place.

Martel makes it clear up front that his book is not about the vast epidemic of pedophile priest abuse, although he detailed how systemic cover-ups are often in play, ‘Closet’ busts open the web of deceit the Church propagates regarding the ranks of gay priests-estimated to be at 80%- counting both celibate and practicing.  His main thesis focuses on what he views as the rank and file clergy continue the official propaganda of hate speech and hostility to GLBTQ rights and visibility, as they ramp up official condemnations with the intent to demonize homosexuals.

Meanwhile, grabbing that same week with the Cardinals, was the revelation that Australian Cardinal Pell, one of the most powerful men in the Vatican, had been convicted in December of child sexual abuse.

Vatican officials had to know Martel’s reputation as a gay journalist, yet he gained exclusive press access inside the Vatican, where frequently was on the inside for research and interviews. Is this book part of an internal insurrection against grotesque hypocrisy that would point to a new era of recognition of same-sex unions and non-condemning acceptance of homosexuals? The official signs are not good.

Martel is exhaustive in his sourcing, in total, having interviewed 1,500 seminarians, priests, bishops, monsignori, prelates, nuncios, and other church officials to reveal the inside politics.  He exposes the elaborate ‘system’ of gay priests who keep the closet door sealed shut, so they can live double lives on the officially sanctioned downlow. .

In his forward, Martel also explains that it is not his intent or mission to out clergy, or even judge them, but to expose the ‘system’ that fosters lies, foment homophobia and fuels the culture of intimidation, harassment, lies, sedition and antigay vs pro-gay factions that have reached an all-out internal war for generations. 

At the same time as they put forth the Catholic Church official view that homosexuality is an ‘intrinsic disorder’ and vehemently oppose same-sex marriage, LGBTQ equality and most egregiously publically equate homosexuality with pedophilia. 

There have been criticisms that the book has no index, or research appendix, but Martel’s source citations and  bibliography can be accessed online codex. But no one is officially refuting the veracity of his findings.

Martel’s sometimes gossipy style and wry, sometimes campy asides have brought criticisms as well. He is not above mocking so many hypocrisies about priests living the double life and publicly are rabid homophobes judging gay people who are out and just living their lives honestly. Meanwhile in private that same cleric can be a seminarian cruising, ugly couture wearing, T-spilling, not so private but otherwise officially reigning raging queens in bad, & expensive dresses.

The network within the Vatican and diocese around the world that props up a system that tolerates and even encourages sex between priests in “the luminous world of interior cruising, with its worldliness, its subtleties, its games,”….more dazzling and radiant, the version of caps and cassocks.”  Martel reports in one of hundreds of eye-witness accounts in the book.

The other great aspect of this book is that Martel also investigates the often destroyed careers of gay priests who refused to go along with the rules of the Vatican closet. Martel’s first chapter (‘Domus Sanctae Marthae) tracks the spiritual journey of former gay priest Francesco Lepore, a Latin scholar and devout gay priest and the courageous stance he took with Pope Francis when on the fast track in the Vatican, essentially working side by side with Francis. But when Lepore was subjected to the mafia tactics within the hierarchies and toxic politics within the Vatican, he wanted out and refused to be what was expected of him and entrenched in the institutional hypocritical status quo within the Vatican- a self-loathing gay priest who was encouraged to be on the downlow, while being officially homophobic.

Lepore rejected the Church’s conditions that would have advanced his career goals at the expense of his spiritual integrity. In telling his story he goes to the heart of Martel’s book and rejected the institutional toxic environment. He triggered an investigation by searching for gay websites on the Vatican computer which he knew would cause his superiors to interrogate him. When that happened he wrote a letter to Francis, pronouncing his truth and informing him that he was leaving the priesthood.

As hazy and contradictory as Francis has been on the Church’s current view of homosexuality in public, Martel reports that at his 2014 Synod to Church leaders he spoke of the grotesqueness of clergy protecting pedophile priests as part of their own elaborate cover to remain in the closet.  Martel defends Francis will to dismantle ‘the system’ though it is hard not to wonder why Francis is so schizophrenic about it in public. As recently as this month a rabidly homophobic cardinal blamed pedophile sexual abuse crimes within the church because of GLBTQ culture, openness and pro-gay civil-rights.

But, as the author reveals, Francis’ famous “Who am I to judge,” was far from a papal edict to stop judging the GLBTQ flock. Martel dissembles the comment for its ultimately benign context and effect.  As much as Martel respects Francis, he dissects his ‘Machiavellian’ moves and contradictory statements about gays.  Privately liberal, but still sticking to the church’s draconian condemnations. Meanwhile, he also can take advantage of it as a political football, like any other politician. He is surrounded by gay clergy for instance, but when France put forth an out gay ambassador to the Vatican, the pope lobbied Hollande to nominate a heterosexual. France stuck by their gay ambassador and the post wasn’t filled.

The Vatican closet wars rage on and Martel has plenty of shade to throw even as he turns a spotlight on the political hubris, intrigue, corruption, folly and intramural sex that exists in the Vatican and the Catholic Church diaspora since for centuries. Nevermore politically charged than it is now, with front page sex scandals and financial crimes peeling away faith in the institution worldwide. Still, there is a lot of blind faith and the church policies can cause a lot of confusion, harm and homophobia particularly as there is a real-time international threat, both politically and culturally, against the human rights and very lives of GLBTQ people.

~Stay tuned~

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booksbooksbooks, poetry

Revisiting British poet Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn | New Selected Poems

Edited by Clive Wilmer

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

https://us.macmillan.com/fsg/

British poet Thom Gunn was recognized as a unique talent from his very first collection “Fighting Terms” which was published while he was still studying at Cambridge in the early 50s. Gunn bucked the poetry trends of the time of deconstructed free verse. He made his name as a contemporary classicist and avoided what Gunn referred to as “confessional” free verse of famous contemporaries Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and Robert Lowell, among others.

Even as he resisted “dramatizing” himself as so many other poets did in his era, he was, without doubt, a visceral poet who chronicled his life and times.

The full range of Gunn’s aesthetic is explored in- Thom Gunn – New Selected Poems, chosen by his lifelong friend and poet colleague Clive Wilmer who along with selecting the perfect poems that represent different aspects of Gunn’s best work, Wilmer writes an in-depth biographical essay and backstories of his creative journeys.

Gunn’s style was one of an ‘anonymous’ poetic auteur, closer to Elizabethan masters John Donne, Dante and Shakespeare. Gunn literary persona was reserved, objective and philosophical. A wry and compassionate observer, he used both naturalized meter and lyrical syntax and aspired to achieve clarity through “imagery and discourse.”   He grew up in England during WWII and Gunn later wrote that a key motif was that of a soldier.   

Gunn: “I was 16 at the end of WWII, so my visual landscape was full of soldiers. Of course, I became a soldier for two years  in the national service so that was another kind of soldier.”

Gunn would let long periods go by before he assembled a collection of poems he judged as worthy of publication.  Later in his career, Gunn also embraced free verse, but never abandoned structure and never repeated himself.  

It is apparent that obvious that Gunn was not living in some literary ivory tower, he was engaged with the world, and primarily the gay world as the main theme, less obliquely than other famous gay poets.

It was no accident that Gunn eventually met and befriended British expat Christopher Isherwood in California, along with becoming an intimate friend, Gunn admired Isherwood’s ‘transparency’ of his writing.

After falling in love with a handsome dramatic actor at school who was straight, they became friends and colleagues.  Gunn soon fell in love with Mike Kitay, who became his lover and lifelong companion even when they were no longer sex partners.   Gunn and Kitay left England to live the gay life in San Francisco.

“The Hug” a very private remembrance of sleeping with Mike Katay, couldn’t, in fact, be a more intimate self-portrait and completely universal in its impact.

He observes and documents life in San Francisco and the gay and straight street life.

“The Difference” is an equally intimate scene of a brief encounter with a trick, that is given equal philosophical importance. Especially in a time of grief, as his world was under attack from an unknown pathogen and a rabidly anti-gay government who did not care how many  GLBT Americans suffered or died.

Gunn never wrote with more craft, passion, and artistry as he responded to what was happening to his gay brothers during the AIDS epidemic. In the midst of the AIDS crisis, Gunn produced his most significant work.

Gunn became a writer warrior and his poetry in the AIDS era was the work of an ‘artist as a witness’ to his life and perilous times. He was among the earliest major writers to use their medium to report the impact of AIDS on gay America with his collection “The Man With Night Sweats.” These poems are among some of the most powerful literary work by gay writers documenting the personal loss and social impact on the gay community.

Gunn wrote many elegies for friends who had died of AIDS, of the impact of the epidemic in San Francisco. Gunn stated that he never felt that there was really a gay ‘community’ until he saw how GLBT people came together to help each other from the beginning of the epidemic, creating services to care for HIV/AIDS patients and grassroots support networks and AIDS activism. Wilmer writes that Gunn, from a literary standpoint, rose to the occasion and also produced the most powerful and well-crafted verse of his life.

Indeed, the poems and elegies written during this period are profound, well-crafted and most vitally exemplar of an artist as a witness to history. 

Poignantly, during the AIDS crisis, Gunn writes ‘The Gas-poker’ a poetic verite of his mother’s suicide, which took place when the poet was just 15.  He and his brother rushed to save her in a barricaded room, after they read her suicide note, tried to break down a door to get to her, but it was too late. 

His literary accolades include fellowships from the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Levinson Prize, the W.H. Smith Award, the Sara Teasdale Prize, et. al. Wilmer’s volume is a rediscovery of this gifted British poet whose work belongs in the pantheon of vital gay American literature.

Gunn, Wilmer reports, was also a beloved and respected professor at the University of California-Berkeley. Still, in the US Gunn enjoyed the academic or popular success he previously achieved in England.  This volume goes a long way in correcting that.

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booksbooksbooks, GLBTAQ activists, GLBTQA History, Harvey Milk

The Children of Harvey Milk 

By AndrewReynolds

Oxford University Press

Harvey Milk was on the San Francisco board of supervisors and was the most high-profile openly gay elected officials in the world when he was gunned down in his office 40 years ago this month.  In his taped notes about his candidacy, Milk predicted he might be assassinated and stated that he was not just a politician but part of a movement of gay Americans “yearning to be free.” And indeed, Milk’s rallying cry all gay people to be out and visible, then and now, has inspired GLBTQueer citizens in the US and around the world.     

Andrew Reynolds’ The Children of Harvey Milk chronicles the private and political journeys of two generations of pro-GLBTQ activists who Milk has inspired.  They are legislators, parliamentarians, judges, government officials, and citizen activists making the difference and on the front political lines to continue the fight for LGBTQ rights, facing the current threats of a worldwide uptick of government-sanctioned antigay crusades.

 As many advances that have been made in the quest for GLBTQ equality and representation, there has been an equally forceful, violent and disturbingly effective campaign by homophobic politicians, and evangelical ‘missionaries’ – who export their brand of anti-gay hate.-all have blood on their hands.   

GLBTQ people are routinely imprisoned, brutalized and murdered in dozens of oppressive regimes all over the world and Reynolds’ investigative analysis is a prescient reality check.

In Pakistan, Reynolds reports, only 2 percent of the population ‘accepts’homosexuality.  In Russia, Vladimir Putin is basically trying to eliminate gay visibility and there have been countless purges, imprisonments, and murders.

Similar ruthless methods are taking place in various forms in the African, Caribbean, Asian and Arab countries.  Reports of routine stonings, imprisonment, and torture of gay men and women in Iran and Saudi Arabia.  In South Africa, grotesque crimes as raping lesbians to ‘convert’ them into heterosexual are culturally tolerated, many such attacks end in murder. And NATO largely remains silent about this human rights issue.

But Reynold profiles of the pro-gay global movement gives much reason for hope.  The amazing journey of South African activist-politician  Zakhele Mbhele, for instance, the first out gay man elected to the South African Parliament in 2014.

The recent pro-gay reversal of a resurrected a 153-year-old law that re-criminalized homosexuality in India, which amazingly just weeks ago, was decriminalized, and GLBTQ India has been re-liberated. Michael Cashman became known in Britain as the first out character Colin Russell in the 80s on the hit BBC soap opera EastEnders Cashman became Member of the European Parliament for the WestMidlands, 1999-2014, now in the House of Lords and the Labour Party’s representative on LBGTQ issues worldwide.

And in the US Senator Barney Frank’s historic rise to the US Congress, a closeted politician who made history when he was outed in a gay sex scandal and didn’t resign, but became a leading advocate for the advancement of gay rights bills in Congress.  Sarah McBride a community activist also making history as the first transgender woman to speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 and now is planning to run for office in her home state of Delaware.

But the attacks and hate crimes against GLBTQ Americans are at record highs across the US.  And officially starting with the President’s actions against GLTBQ  Americans.  When Trump didn’t get away with kicking transgender military personnel out of the military, he is trying to erase the identity of an estimated 1.4million transgender American by fiat that a person genitalia at birth defines their sexual identity for the duration of their life.

Reynold’s cites this alarming research concerning transgender and non-binary sexuality in the US- 82% of transgender Americans have considered suicide to escape the hate and oppression they face every day. 

“The Children of Harvey Milk” is a vital almost up to the minute barometer of where LGBTQ civil and human rights stand. Reynolds is professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina and founding director of UNC LGBTQ Representation and Rights Research Initiative, a global think tank focused on gay politics. 

His style is one based on meticulous research, and thorough sourcing,  a bit heavy going at times, but this is vital documentation of the gay civil rights movement in our perilous times.  That it comes out on the 40th anniversary of Harvey Milk’s death honors the work of a transformational politician and testament to his enduring legacy. 

This review first appeared in my column with New York Journal of Books

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Gods and Kings The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano by Dana Thomas
Penguin Press

Even if you don’t follow the world of high fashion, Dana Thomas’ dual biography of British designers John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, is one of the nonfiction titles of the year. Thomas probes the torrential world of haute couture as she chronicles the lives of fashion superstars whose meteoric careers read like a modern Faustian tale of tragic dimension.

Thomas opens the book with the infamous spectacle of John Galliano’s 2011 downfall, that was caught on tape and made international headlines. The drunk and viscous Galliano was seen hurling anti-Semitic and misogynist epithets against Geraldine Bloch, (curator at the Paris’ Institute of the Arab World) who was dining at a nearby table with her boyfriend on the terrace of the Paris cafe La Perle. Under French law, Galliano was arrested and charged with a hate crime and the tape went viral on the internet.

At the time Galliano was head designer at the house of Dior. Dior was part of a design conglomerate owned by financier Bernard Arnault. When the story broke, Arnault but stood by Galliano, just suspending him from operations, but, days later, fired him, when previous racial slurs made by the designer resurfaced in the tabloids. Galliano’s flameout was just a year after Alexander McQueen committed suicide at the height of his own success. McQueen’s manic nature, drug use and pressures of the industry all co-factors in his spiral down.

McQueen was from a proud working class Londoner family with proud Scottish heritage. Galliano family moved from Gibraltar to England when John was six, but his mother kept Spanish-Moroccan culture alive in their London home, which became part of this design DNA. Both men identified as gay at a young age and were bullied in school and both developed combative personalities to activate when necessary. They became more driven in their careers.

Both designers made their names right out of the design schools they attended. Galliano in the 80s and McQueen in the early 90s and were quickly scouted by industry movers. Thomas structures the book, theatrically, around their important collections and shows that defined their careers.

Galliano created theatrical spectacles to showcase his collections, which were sensations in the industry, even his designs had little ready-to-manufacture and wear potential. McQueen was considered more of a master craftsman from his Seville Row training and refined in Milan. At 23, McQueen designed a ‘new silhouette’ for both sexes with his ‘bumster’ line. He also devised such high concept, often politically editorial shows that it alienated buyers even as it dazzled the art and even pop culture world.

Their stories merge when John is hired to at Givenchy in Paris, to rebuild the house with fashion forward ideas while maintaining its elegant standard with more youthful and affordable ready-to-wear collections.

Even with dicey receptions to his runway shows, Galliano was so successful rebranding the company that Arnault moved him to the couture Olympus as head of Dior and lured McQueen to become head of Givenchy.

McQueen was more of a hands-on artisan, often in the production rooms sewing next to the ateliers. Galliano was more of a theatrical wizard with an inspired eye who delegating designer who appropriated high fashion artistry from past eras and re-envisioning.

Both were spinning out new collections, sometimes maniacally and often with their egos on overdrive with brilliance and self-medications. Thomas brings the magic and mayhem of this world vividly alive on the page. Her detailing about design craft and the way she critiques the fashion shows is top drawer fashion writing.

McQueen was producing work that met the artistic expectation that were also translating into sales and across the board media attention. The all-powerful Anna Wintour, who previously was appalled by McQueen’s personality and viewed his talent with skepticism, now was not only in the front row of his shows also wearing his couture.

Meanwhile, after Galliano staged his biggest fiasco aptly titled The Train Wreck, the most expensive Dior show ever, in its wake, rumors were floated that McQueen would be replacing him at Dior. The fashion luminaries of the era – Vivien Westwood, Valentino, Versace, Saint Laurent, and Lagerfeld – move in and out of the story. Rising stars like Tom Ford, who was revitalizing Gucci, are in the wings adding to the industry intrigue.

Thomas chronicles the pressure nonstop shows and endless cycle of creating new collections, at the insistence of the corporate bosses. Galliano was becoming increasingly furtive and eccentric. At one point he was brought into Arnault’s office for an intervention and ripping his shirt open and saying “does this look like the body of a drug addict?” He was also becoming more unreachable after the sudden death of his industry confidant and otherwise unpopular personal assistant Steven Robinson.

McQueen was also spiraling downward with heavy drug use and going AWOL before shows, often with his latest lover, since his two main relationships had already become casualties to the demands on him. McQueen was shaken to the core when his close friend and early champion, fashion editor Isabella Blow committed suicide.

McQueen was showing scary signs of deep depression and in the midst of preparing a major show, his mother Joyce died of cancer, and he was inconsolable. Days later he took his own life.

Dana Thomas could have relied on so much surface reportage and still had a great book. True to fashion ‘Gods and Kings’ has unavoidable episodes of industry hubris, not to mention, drug and club benders, toxic models and cameos of the titans of the field ( Just to hear about Nuclear Wintour, for instance, is gossip gold.) Admirably, Thomas never leans on the backstage drama to carry the book. And No matter how dramatic, scandalous or titillating Dana Thomas reports and illuminates with a steady hand, journalistic skill and craft that is finely cut for this or any other season.