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| Book Recommendations. | | Date Created: Jul 22, 2004, 03:54 PM |
What I'm Reading...
I have a link to a briefly annotated book list on the right side of this page (it even a quick and dirty 5 star system of rating).
But occasionally, I thought I'd post longer stuff about books I'm reading here as well.
Brian's blog has a nice review of Ethan Morden's "How Long Has This Been Going On?" which I read several years ago, but recently re-read. I won't repeat Brian's review...but if you haven't read it, you should.
Also go out and read Michael Cunningham's "A Home at the End of the World" before you see the movie. I don't know what the movie is going to be like, but the book is wonderful and should be widely read.
Anyway... I just finished reading "Soul Beneath the Skin" by David Nimmons. If you read Brian's Blog, you'll see a review there. (And, of course, there are Amazon reviews as well.) Brian and I rarely read the same books (as he explains in his blog) but this was a quick read he recommended and I'm glad he did.
I've been thinking (I guess since I came out) about the concept of "the gay community" and whether such a thing exists. My primary interest in the book was to see if it provided additional evidence (or counter evidence) to the assertion that there is no such thing as "the gay community." There certainly is a large group of affluent, urban white gay men who dress the same, decorate their houses the same, listen to the same music, etc. I suppose that's a community, depending on one's definition. The problem is that I don't like the definition of community that would (only) include that stuff. If you expand to include deeper practices such as (as Nimmons contends) "an extremely low level of public violence, high rates of altruistic behaviour; robust sexual caretaking; friendship patterns of diffuse intimacies...etc." then you get (to me) to a more satisfying definition of community....and (I think) includes more than just affluent, urban, white gay men.
So...does a gay male community exist? I'm not completely convinced by Nimmons' arguments, but I think I'm closer to saying "maybe" than I was a week ago. In any event, it is nice to read something positive about gay men occasionally, other than we're just a bunch of fashion obsessed, body obsessed, drinking, dancing, drugging, oversexed vacuous people...which is all the gay press (and straight press) seems interested in reporting.
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