Boys in Berlin, girls in London, and sex all over.Isherwood: A Life Revealed By Peter Parker Peter Parker may refer to:
Weighing in at 2 pounds 12 ounces, you may want to wait for this definitive 832-page biography of queer literary giant Christopher Isherwood to debut in downloadable form before attempting to pack it. Better yet, read it at home just before a romp in perennially decadent gay Berlin. Isherwood rolled into town on March 15, 1929, enticed by W.H. Auden's accounts of the city's "comparative sexual freedom." Exhaustive descriptions of the gay scene there (which served as fodder later for Cabaret), as well as tantalizing tan·ta·lize tr.v. tan·ta·lized, tan·ta·liz·ing, tan·ta·liz·es To excite (another) by exposing something desirable while keeping it out of reach. peeks at queer communes in Greece and Portugal, provoke immediate and extended wanderlust. In 1949, Isherwood completed his South American travel diary, The Condor and the Cows (the former symbolizing the Andean highlands and the latter representing flat Argentina). "You make your readers smell South America," wrote one of his editors. "One can't give a travel book higher praise than that." Parker does a great job fleshing out some of the more colorful details that Isherwood, who was accompanied on the six-month sojourn by his lover, Bill Caskey, could not include in the book. "Porky pork·y 1 adj. pork·i·er, pork·i·est 1. Of or like pork: a porky flavor. 2. Slang Fat or corpulent. [i.e. Caskey] bears up boldly, and is very sweet," he tells a friend. "One or other of us is usually sick." Isherwood ushered in the modern idea of traveling openly with one's longterm partner, contrasting with the solitary ways of previous queer travel writers. The Dyke and the Dybbuk dybbuk In Jewish folklore, a disembodied human spirit that must wander restlessly, burdened by former sins, until it inhabits the body of a living person. Belief in such spirits was common in eastern Europe in the 16th–17th century. By Ellen Galford Seal, $12.95 Journey inside the mind of Rainbow, a modern-day London lesbian taxi driver who happens to be haunted by an ancient Jewish spirit intent on turning her into a "nice Jewish girl" in this absurdly hilarious tale that traces the cerebral corridors of its protagonist as deftly as it maps the physical geography of London. "From the parapets at Alexandra Palace we contemplate the distant ridge where London finally ends, and descend to watch a flotilla of ducks looking lost on the New River," narrates the dybbuk Kokos, the spirit taking up residence in Rainbow's soul. Chock-full of chutzpah chutz·pah also hutz·pah n. Utter nerve; effrontery: "has the chutzpah to claim a lock on God and morality" New York Times. , this 257-page treat is fully digestible digestible having the quality of being able to be digested. digestible energy the proportion of the potential energy in a feed which is in fact digested. digestible protein see digestible protein. on any grueling transatlantic flight. Foreign Affairs Edited by Mitzi Szereto Cleis, $14.95 Homoerotic ho·mo·e·rot·ic adj. 1. Of or concerning homosexual love and desire. 2. Tending to arouse such desire. Adj. 1. escapades are surprisingly well-represented in this collection of mostly heteroerotic travel tales. In one story, a gay man and his lesbian sidekick pick up a strange hitchhiker on a road trip to Roswell, N.M. In another, a gay man's return to Manchester, England, conjures up intense memories of a former lover. Along the way, editor Mitzi Szereto steers us toward a Louisiana B&B haunted by gay literary spirits and a Brussels bathhouse where "youthful men in thin terry-cloth towels pose, almost motionless, like perfectly arranged mannequins." Who knows? After reading these token titillations, you may want to peruse pe·ruse tr.v. pe·rused, pe·rus·ing, pe·rus·es To read or examine, typically with great care. [Middle English perusen, to use up : Latin per-, per- the straight (but not narrow) ones. |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion