Rechy captures the seediness of this arena of public streets, parks, and run-down movie theaters, and vividly depicts the tawdry side of the cities his character visits.
He creates hallucinatory passages of poetic stream of consciousness that capture the inner and outer world of his protagonist. While sex is omnipresent, he is suggestive, not explicit, in describing sex acts. He focuses more on the human emotions, interactions, and relationships.
Rechy has a knack for taking a scene of riveting crisis and expanding its moment of dramatic climax into a sustained meditation on the complexities of the subtle human interactions at play.
Among other topics, he explores the nature of masculinity and masks (projected personas), varied sexual drives, vulnerability, and the possibility of love.
Bold and inventive in style, City of Night is the groundbreaking 1960s novel about male prostitution. Rechy is unflinching in his portrayal of one hustling 'youngman' and his search for self-knowledge among the other denizens of his neon-lit world. As the narrator moves from Texas to Times Square and then on to the French Quarter of New Orleans, Rechy delivers a portrait of the edges of America that has lost none of its power. On his travels, the nameless narrator meets a collection of unforgettable characters, from vice cops to guilt-ridden married men eaten up by desire, to Lance O'Hara,…
This one-act stage play and the accompanying short story cover the same material, inspired by an actual murder trial. The conception and the execution of this story are absolutely brilliant.
The competing gender attitudes are at the heart of the story and constitute an early feminist study. The contrasting viewpoints and attitudes of the men in the story versus the women who see more clearly is what makes this story so powerful.
This is a small masterpiece. I can’t recommend it enough.
First performed in 1916, "Trifles", by American playwright, actress, and novelist Susan Glaspell, is widely considered to be one of the greatest works of American theatre. Written early in the feminist movement, "Trifles" is a one-act play that explores how women act in public versus how they are in private. Loosely based on the real-life story of the murder of John Hossack and the suspicion that fell on his wife as the possible murderer, Glaspell's play compares the official investigation of the murder by the men in charge with the unofficial investigation conducted by their wives. The wives find evidence…
Accurately described as melodramatic, the book is sensational and dramatic; it has exciting events and physical action (which Norris handles masterfully); it appeals to the emotions; and its plot is compelling. However, it also has vivid, well-developed characters.
Some may quibble with passages seen as “purple prose”. Maybe it is just the style of the era in which it was written (1901). But I was so taken with the many characters, the situations, and the overall story and plot that I had to forgive Norris’s use of such florid text. He did title the unfinished trilogy (of which this is book one) "The Epic of the Wheat," and just as one of the characters aspires to write a Homeric poem about the wheat industry, so does Norris. (Just as Melville wrote the epic of the whaling industry.) The story follows the seasons, from fallow winter, to spring planting, to summer growth, to fall harvest. I found it to be big and magnificent, as well as intimate.
I see parallels between the robber barons of his day and the tech oligarchs of our own. As in Norris’s story, many people today are being crushed and destroyed by “the system.” The novel is a tragedy, one heartbreak after another, but well worth the read.
Like the tentacles of an octopus, the tracks of the railroad reached out across California, as if to grasp everything of value in the state Based on an actual, bloody dispute between wheat farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1880, The Octopus is a stunning novel of the waning days of the frontier West. To the tough-minded and self-reliant farmers, the monopolistic, land-grabbing railroad represented everything they despised: consolidation, organization, conformity. But Norris idealizes no one in this epic depiction of the volatile situation, for the farmers themselves ruthlessly exploited the land, and in their hunger for larger holdings…
In 1923 when homosexuals had to hide their identity, Dr. Carl Holman's status with the respected clinic where he works is imperiled by pressures from the Ku Klux Klan, societal expectations to marry, and other forces beyond his control. As compassion impels him to treat unorthodox cases involving addiction, birth control, and child abuse, he must make difficult decisions about his professional and domestic affairs. Can Carl and those he loves find a way to live authentic lives in this hostile world?
