Recently Noted:
DIARY OF A DRAG QUEEN “I have never wanted to be a woman…” So begins Daniel Harris’s paradoxical memoir “Diary of a Drag Queen,” a witty, satisfying examination of gender and loneliness in the contemporary age. After his partner left him at the age of 45, Harris lights upon the idea that as a drag queen named “Denial” he might occasionally have success enticing an attractive man into his bed. (Stefen Styrsky)
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FAITH FOR BEGINNERS Travel can be a life-affirming experience, but not if your trip is a forced march. In Aaron Hamburger’s debut novel, Mrs. Michaelson has dragged her husband and son to Israel hoping her Detroit suburb’s Millennium pilgrimage will be inspiration for them both. Her husband is dying slowly of cancer, and her son Jeremy, an NYU student, recently placed either a suicide attempt or an accidental overdose under his belt, depending on whom you ask. Hamburger uses humor and insight to get to the heart of Mrs. Michaelson and son Jeremy as he follows them through a variety of tribulations. (Seth J. Bookey)
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FRANCIS BACON’s STUDIO Several years after Francis Bacon’s death in 1992, the executor of his estate, John Edwards, donated the contents of the English painter’s studio to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, the artist’s birthplace. Bacon’s studio is legendary, a maelstrom of photos, paint supplies, liquor bottles, destroyed and half finished paintings, and other detritus from his practice. The Hugh Lane, utilizing a massive team of experts and archeologists, cataloged and moved the studio piece by piece (down to every paint tube cap) from London to Dublin and reconstructed the space for public view. The book is an impressive documentation of both the move and the contents of the studio itself. (Lorne Colon)
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GORE VIDAL’S AMERICA Dennis Altman’s new book is particularly welcome for its warts-and-all treatment of the great man’s life and work. Altman’s book is unique in being a critical assessment of Vidal by a writer who, like his subject, is left-wing and homosexual, and who also has made major contributions to the literature on (homo)sexuality, sexual politics, and social change. (George De Stefano)
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LISTENING FOR THE OBOE “I think these sermons are for anybody who cares passionately about living a life of meaning in a world of despair,” commented Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum on her recently-published book of drashot, commemorating her first decade as senior rabbi of New York City’s Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the largest synagogue for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Jews in the United States or abroad. “Listening for the Oboe” compiles Kleinbaum’s and the congregation’s favorite sermons given by her between 1992 and 2003, in which she addresses issues as various as the impact of AIDS on the gay community in the early 1990s, the place of children in an LGBT synagogue, CBST’s solidarity with the African-American community on the subject of reparations, the challenges of negotiating the complicated space between democratic leadership and solid organizational structure, and the devastation of September 11, among other topics. (Eileen McDermott)
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LIKE A DOG RETURNS TO ITS VOMIT The Chapman brothers, enfants terribles of the Great Britain’s Young British Artist (YBA) scene since the early 90’s, have been consistent in their obsession with Francisco Goya. Years ago, they produced miniature models of each of Goya’s “Disasters of War” prints. Last year, they went a huge step further by actually altering—they call it “improving”—an original set of prints, drawing distorted clown and puppy heads over those of the victims. White Cube Gallery in London has published this book of recent 2D work by the brothers including their latest set of Goya print alterations. (Lorne Colon)
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