Nostalgia and dissociation are the main themes in this not-so- diverse collection of essays by gay men who either had to leave their old communities or have adopted new ones. Twenty-seven gay male writers (editor Preston, Mark Thompson, Christopher Wittkes, and Andrew Holleran among them) from such varied areas as New Mexico, Nova Scotia, Key West, and Greenwich Village discuss the need ``of being supported and of belonging'' in safe locales. Most of them share a nagging dissonance between self- styled urbanity and a longing for their folksy family origins. These are the viewpoints of people so alienated and displaced that physical geography often takes a backseat to ``a territory of dreams''—an intellectual ghetto erected by men constantly forced to redefine and analyze who and where they are. The local color of the various towns is, therefore, irrelevant amid such gay global- village semiotics as mail-order porno, seaside cottages, tea dances, glory holes, brunches, and Judy Garland, all of which are recurrent motifs. Preston (ed., Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS) has included numerous pieces in which the ``Anglo'' culture of suburbia, malls, and picket fences is trashed—e.g., Thompson's ``meat loaf and mashed potatoes'' upbringing in Carmel, Cal.; Wittkes's ``boring suburbia'' of Manchester, Conn.; and the ``old mills and shade trees'' of George S. Snyder's Methodist roots in northeast Pennsylvania. Only Jesse Monteagudo's piece seriously addresses how ethnic minority communities can be equally homophobic. But despite the lack of any true intellectual variety, the book reveals how the imposed melancholia these gay men suffer can be a blessing in disguise since it enables them to perfect Proustian narratives in which the mind can override the limitations of place. Those already familiar with gay testimonial journalism will probably find few surprises here; still, a valuable foray into the art of ``emotional geography.''
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1991
ISBN: 0-525-93353-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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