An invigorating tour of gay cultural influence during the 1800s and the place occupied by homosexual society within national...
Literary biographer Robb (Rimbaud, 2000, etc.) gives resonance and shape to homosexual life and love in 19th-century Europe and North America, “the obstacles it encountered and the societies it created.”
It certainly wasn’t the worst time to be gay, he writes. “Pliant attitudes to homosexuality in almost all its forms were prevalent throughout the Victorian age,” though pliancy generally consisted of a miserly acceptance that “seasoned, as it usually was, with distaste, pity or amusement . . . could be worse than open hostility.” Sexuality was not the dominant question, he contends; “the neighbors were more concerned about an influx of socialists and vegetarians.” Robb is not being flip but endeavoring to unearth the long continuity of gay culture. Nineteenth-century homosexuals, he remarks, “lived under a cloud, but it seldom rained.” (Oscar Wilde's travails were not the norm; his case went to court as the Dark Ages of the 20th century approached.) The gay community possessed “a highly politicized sense of its sexual rights, a calendar of events and anniversaries, its own villains and living legends, social clubs with international links, cafes and brothels, and well-established cruising grounds with organized patrols.” Robb does not paint a sexual utopia; he acknowledges the legal and medical establishments’ anti-homosexual ways, but points out that legal-medical persecution was casual and spasmodic. Much more vital and lasting was the gay presence in literature, religion, and “the art of living in the modern world,” from symbolism and allegory—Rimbaud to Hans Christian Andersen to Sherlock Holmes—to the tradition of sexually ambiguous messiahs. And though there was no gay-rights movement as such, sexual coteries and milieux “could turn shame into self-respect and fear into defiance.”
An invigorating tour of gay cultural influence during the 1800s and the place occupied by homosexual society within national and international settings. (16 pp. illustrations, not seen)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-393-02038-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
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
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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