The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture.

Almost anyone will tell you that many gay men worship Joan Crawford. But the great mystery of why we revere her--or Judy Garland or Bette Davis--is finally unraveled in this vital, entertaining collection of essays by journalist and cultural critic Daniel Harris.

"The Death of Camp: Gay Men and Hollywood Diva Worship, From Reverence to Ridicule," in which the author defines the attraction of gay men to cinema queens, kicks off a study of the historical development of drag, pornography, and romance, culminating in Harris's theory about the inevitable demise of gay culture. He shows us how the commercial co-opting by mainstream America of what were once offensively queer images and acts has blurred the lines between what was once clearly "ours" and "theirs" and has diluted gay institutions.

The death of gay culture isn't a new idea, but Harris provides fascinating details from the past that illuminate current gay trends, then he shows us how and why these trends cannot survive. His profile of The Hobby Directory (a quirky crafts publication of the late '40s that was actually a thinly disguised dating service for gay men) sets the stage for Harris's appraisal of today's gay "lifestyle magazines" and the state of homosexual romance ads. Harris's knowledge of early pornography and the evolution of men's underwear ads informs essays that explain how we've become a Calvin Klein nation. And the wonderfully candid "The Kitschification of AIDS" details the placement of AIDS in context with wholesome American pastimes such as shopping (for red-ribboned paraphernalia) and quilting (by creating panels for the AIDS memorial quilt).

Harris is certain to offend some gay activists and other governors of PC with his assessment of several sacred queer cows, a fact his publishers are probably counting on. Controversy is always good for book sales--witness the publishing successes a few years ago of Bruce Bawer and Andrew Sullivan--though it's hard to imagine exactly what any forward thinking homo could dispute here. Harris knows that, despite our sentimentality about and ownership of our rituals, their survival depends on the persistence of the oppression from which they originated. Antagonists would do better to criticize Harris's sometimes scholarly text and his occasionally encyclopedic footnotes, which in almost every case could have been grafted onto the completed essay.

But Harris's real achievement in penning Rise and Fall is in providing a crafty, compelling analysis of queer culture that neither condemns nor makes heroic our history. He knows that the demise of gay society is inevitable and presents our destiny with indisputable evidence--and a hopeful note: The death of a sensibility borne of exclusion, Harris believes, usually signals the death of that exclusion.