The Gay & Lesbian Review, in its September - October issue, published a provocative paper by Larry Kramer, worth reading (Queer Theory's Heist of Our History). This is how it starts: "I do not understand why historians and academics, including many gay ones, refuse to believe that homosexuality has been pretty much the same since the beginning of human history, whether it was called homosexuality, sodomy, buggery, or had no name at all. Isn’t it time for us to put a stop to this nonsense that produces retrograde books." The piece, as stated in an author's note, is a compilation by the G&LR editor of two book reviews by Larry Kramer, previously posted on huffingtonpost.com and thedailybeast.com. The first book belongs to Kramer's 'retrograde category': The Overflowing of Friendship - Love between Men and the Creation of the American Republic, by Richard Godbeer, a professor of history and gender studies at the University of Miami (John Hopkins, 2009, 272p). Kramer's criticism is sharp. He adds: "Even Ron Chernow in Alexander Hamilton (2004) and James Gaines in For Liberty and Glory - Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions (2007), in laying out all the intertwining relationships between Washington, Hamilton, Lafayette, and John Laurens (Hamilton's great love), admit that they could have all been having sex." And recommends reading "the great, pioneering, Boston-based gay historian Charley Shively" on Washington, Lincoln and Whitman... The second book receives a thumbs-up: "Charles Upchurch, an assistant professor of history at Florida State University, has spent ten years of his life researching Before Wilde: Sex between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform (University of California Press, 2009, 288p), and it shows." Kramer makes it a tempting read.
2009.11.15
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