Passport is always up to date with the hottest new publications from LGBTQ+ authors on love, life and adventure. Grab one of these thrilling narratives, biographies, or guides at your favorite bookstore and pack them in your carry-on for your next flight.
If Lil Nas X shot a bit of his DNA into a pop music version of 23andMe, the results would unquestionably trace back to Little Richard, whose first hit song’s original lyrics, replaced with nonsense syllables on the record, were “Tutti Frutti, good booty/If it don’t fit, don’t force it /You can grease it, make it easy…” British journalist Jon Savage does right by the 20th century elders of today’s unabashedly uncloseted pop scenesters in his forthcoming The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture, 1955 -1979 (Liveright. $35. x.com/jonsavage1966). Focusing primarily on music, but folding in movies, fashion, and other media, Savage, whose perspective is distinctly British, details a repeated pattern of opposing pressures: Queer artists pushing to express themselves, and distressed gatekeepers pushing back; the gays only gradually gaining ground. Savage offers a valuable contribution to cultural history in exploring the tenuous position of queer talent managers, record company employees, and entertainment journalists working behind the scenes. And when writing about the careers of oft-covered personalities including David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Sylvester, he tightly weaves his observations into the context of the gay rights movement, drawing fresh, nuanced connections. The book should also raise the profile of performers whose queer context has been underappreciated, including Dusty Springfield and seminal 1950s crooner Johnny Ray.
Mean Boys (Bloomsbury. $27.99. geoffreymak.com) is the hard-hitting debut book by queer Chinese American writer Geoffrey Mak, whose vivid, impressionistic writing has previously been published in The Nation, Artforum, and Interview. Combining searing autobiography with bare-knuckled cultural criticism, Mak, whose father was an evangelical minister, examines the near omnipresence of toxic masculinity in contemporary culture. He unpacks bro-ish bad behavior beyond its expected realms (church, sports, corporate life) finding it insinuated in superficially more accepting arenas: the art world, the fashion scene, gay sex and, most powerfully, within his own self-perception.
The LGBTQ community has long claimed Bert and Ernie as gay, but we now have definitive documentation about one of the original Muppeteers. Author Jessica Max Stein’s Funny Boy: The Richard Hunt Biography (Rutgers University Press. $34.95. jessicamaxstein.com), celebrates one of the original five members of Jim Henson’s legendary troupe. Only 18 when he signed on as a Muppeteer in 1969, Hunt originated “The Muppet Show” characters including Scooter, Janice, Beaker and Statler and during the program’s first season shared the role of Miss Piggy with Frank Oz. Stein captures the creative process behind many Muppet milestones along with plenty of personal anecdotes; while guesting on the show, Rudolf Nureyev, brazenly flirted with Hunt. Max honors Hunt’s long-term relationship with painter Nelson Bird and close friendships with collaborators in the entertainment world, including Mark Hamill, who he met fresh off his breakthrough in “Star Wars.”
Gay eminence Edmund White, now 84, continues his lifelong streak of prolificity and profligacy with a memoir whose sub- title hits like an undercut, philosophically: The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir (Bloomsbury. $27.99. bloomsbury.com). Ever the provocateur, White pushes back against prudery, and challenges readers to consider how they define some rather important terms. In a foreword, he writes: “I’m at an age when writers are supposed to say finally what mattered to them—for me it would be thousands of sex partners.” Whilst wondering “What is love?” readers will enjoy juicy anecdotes from White’s fruit- filled life (not to mention a handful of hetero efforts). From call boys with hearts of gold, lead, and every element in between, to a “”sweet but tiresome slave” who was “almost inert” in bed, to “the great love of my life” who we learn had a large penis “which slanted off to one side” (how discrete not to share whether it pointed right or left!); White writes with both wry distance and still-resounding pleasure. Having lived balls-deep in gay sex for the past seven decades, White enriches his spicy dish with real insight about the cultural and attitudinal shifts within (and about) the gay community over the course of his lifetime. Here’s one for somebody who’s naughty and nice.
From its first refrain, Cole Porter energizes his 1934 classic “You’re the Top,” with a spree of namedrop superlatives: “You’re a Bendel bonnet / A Shakespeare sonnet / You’re Mickey Mouse…” While the Bard and the rodent remain familiar, you may be less acquainted with Bendel. Well, make amends before they take away your gay card, and pick up former InStyle editor Tim Allis’ Henri Bendel and the Worlds He Fashioned (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press. $34.95. bit.ly/bendelgram). A talented milliner and dressmaker, Bendel (1868-1936) was perhaps even more skilled at salesmanship and merchandising. Born and raised in Louisiana, he built a personal brand, lending his name to the luxury department store he founded in Manhattan; the first American retailer to import Chanel. With Southern charm, a keen eye for fashion, and famously traffic-stopping window displays, Bendel, who was Jewish, ensorcelled Vanderbilts, Whitneys, and other members of the uptown aristocracy despite the era’s antisemitism. After a brief marriage at age 25 (his wife died just a year later), Bendel built an unusual extended family, sharing a home with his half-sister, her two children, and his two longtime male companions. Author Allis’ book, extensively illustrated with vintage fashion sketches, photographs, and news clippings, focuses primarily on Bendel’s self-invention as a tastemaker and retail mogul. Alas, Bendel left behind little record of his private life, so there’s no telling if Cole Porter was right.
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