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On Christopher Street
Life, Sex, and Death after Stonewall
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Michael Denneny
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2023
About this book
Through the eyes of publishing icon Michael Denneny, this cultural autobiography traces the evolution of the US’s queer community in the three decades post-Stonewall.
The Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s have been captured in minute detail, and rightly memorialized in books, on tv, and in film as pivotal and powerful moments in queer history. Yet what about the moments in between—the tumultuous decade post-Stonewall when the queer community’s vitality and creativity exploded across the country, even as the AIDS crisis emerged?
Michael Denneny was there for it all. As a founder and editor of the wildly influential magazine Christopher Street and later as the first openly gay editor at a major publishing house, Denneny critically shaped publishing around gay subjects in the 1970s and beyond. At St. Martin’s Press, he acquired a slew of landmark titles by gay authors—many for his groundbreaking Stonewall Inn Editions—propelling queer voices into the mainstream cultural conversation. On Christopher Street is Denneny’s time machine, going back to that heady period to lay out the unfolding geographies and storylines of gay lives and capturing the raw immediacy of his and his contemporaries’ daily lives as gay people in America. Through forty-one micro-chapters, he uses his journal writings, articles, interviews, and more from the 1970s and ‘80s to illuminate the twists and turns of a period of incomparable cultural ferment.
One of the few surviving voices of his generation, Denneny transports us back in time to share those vibrant in-between moments in gay lives—the joy, sorrow, ecstasy, and energy—across three decades of queer history.
The Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s have been captured in minute detail, and rightly memorialized in books, on tv, and in film as pivotal and powerful moments in queer history. Yet what about the moments in between—the tumultuous decade post-Stonewall when the queer community’s vitality and creativity exploded across the country, even as the AIDS crisis emerged?
Michael Denneny was there for it all. As a founder and editor of the wildly influential magazine Christopher Street and later as the first openly gay editor at a major publishing house, Denneny critically shaped publishing around gay subjects in the 1970s and beyond. At St. Martin’s Press, he acquired a slew of landmark titles by gay authors—many for his groundbreaking Stonewall Inn Editions—propelling queer voices into the mainstream cultural conversation. On Christopher Street is Denneny’s time machine, going back to that heady period to lay out the unfolding geographies and storylines of gay lives and capturing the raw immediacy of his and his contemporaries’ daily lives as gay people in America. Through forty-one micro-chapters, he uses his journal writings, articles, interviews, and more from the 1970s and ‘80s to illuminate the twists and turns of a period of incomparable cultural ferment.
One of the few surviving voices of his generation, Denneny transports us back in time to share those vibrant in-between moments in gay lives—the joy, sorrow, ecstasy, and energy—across three decades of queer history.
Author / Editor information
Michael Denneny is a longtime book and magazine editor who played an outsized role in promoting openly gay writers from the mid-1970s onward. In 1976, he cofounded Christopher Street magazine, one of the first gay literary magazines. He is now a freelance editor and consultant living in New York City.
Reviews
“Because of his pivotal role in creating modern gay literature, Denneny has perhaps done more than any other single individual to actually create contemporary gay literary culture. On Christopher Street shows that there was a first-rate intellect behind his more familiar role as publisher and editor. While this volume is an important window on the recent past, it also demonstrates the extent to which one man’s lively and humane intellect influenced the creation of contemporary gay culture.”
— David Carter, author of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution“On Christopher Street offers a remarkable glimpse into the first decades after the Stonewall Riots, a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a new culture in formation. A valuable and thoughtful account of a foundational moment in American cultural history.”
— David K. Johnson, author of The Lavender Scare“There simply is no other person in the LGBT community who has been as pivotal for LGBT publishing, from newspapers and magazines to books. This important book is a testament to the history of our community.”
— Mark Segal, founder and publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News and author of And Then I Danced"Michael Denneny’s memoir-in-essays On Christopher Street illuminates various aspects of gay life in the past half-century. . . . The book’s primary focus is the state of the burgeoning gay literary scene and its public and critical reception. In
preserving articles as they appeared at the time, the book revives the atmosphere, hopes, fears, ambitions, and challenges of the nascent community, as experienced by Denneny as a gay man living and working in New York. It also exposes the flawed, underdeveloped personal perspectives that Denneny spent subsequent years grappling with and refining."
— Forewordpreserving articles as they appeared at the time, the book revives the atmosphere, hopes, fears, ambitions, and challenges of the nascent community, as experienced by Denneny as a gay man living and working in New York. It also exposes the flawed, underdeveloped personal perspectives that Denneny spent subsequent years grappling with and refining."
"As a founder and editor of the wildly influential literary journal Christopher Street and later as the first openly gay editor at a major publishing house, Denneny critically shaped publishing around gay subjects in the 1970s and beyond. At St. Martin’s Press, he acquired a slew of landmark titles by gay authors—many for his groundbreaking Stonewall Inn Editions—propelling queer voices into the mainstream cultural conversation. . . . On Christopher Street revisits that heady period to map out the cultural forces, geographies, and storylines of LGBTQ in those decades. Through 41 micro-chapters, Denneny draws on his journal writings, articles, interviews, and more from the 1970s and ’80s to put us there in this formative and also tragic time."
— Queer Forty"As the queer community has survived countless attempts at suppression and elimination, this book offers not only a historical account of the political environment of the 1970s-80s. It also showcases tried and true forms of activism and rhetoric, ones that have kept and continue to make our survival possible."
— Out in Jersey"If you love reading about gay life, you owe a debt to Michael Denneny."
— PassportTopics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
vii -
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Preface: Becoming Real
xi - Part 1 Morning in Gay America 1970– 1980
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Introduction
1 -
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Christopher Street Magazine
5 -
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Dead Souls at The New Yorker: a puzzling case
15 -
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Lovers: the Story of two Men
20 -
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“Everything Is Only Ten Years Old” a Conversation with Felice Picano
27 -
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Decent Passions: real stories about love
45 -
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Blue Moves: conversation with a male porn dancer
55 - Part 2 Beginning to Count Ourselves 1980– 1983
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Introduction
75 -
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Archeologist of the Present: Michel Foucault in New York City
77 -
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Gay Politics and Its Premises: sixteen propositions
83 -
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Sixteen Propositions: an exchange
105 -
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Scaring the Horses; or the Question of Gay Identity
114 -
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Who Are We? What Do We Want? How Best Might We Get It?
128 - Part 3 The State of the Tribe: 1983– 1987
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Introduction
135 -
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Gay Pride and Survival in the Eighties
137 -
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The State of Gay Criticism
140 -
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Oedipus Revised: David Leavitt’s the lost language of cranes
153 -
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Paragraph 175, or How Dark Can It Get?
163 -
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A Culture in a Crucible
173 - Part 4 Workaday Publishing, or Hegel’s Ernst 1985– 1988
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Introduction
177 -
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Further Down the Road
179 -
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The Universal Voice of Gay Writers
184 -
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A Conversation with Allen Barnett
188 -
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How to Review a Gay Novel
202 -
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Chasing the Crossover Audience and Other Self- Defeating Strategies
204 -
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Editing Fiction and the Question of “Political Correctness”
215 - Part 5 On the Raft of the Medusa: 1988– 1990
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Introduction
225 -
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The Death of a Generation
227 -
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An Intellectual Ambush
230 -
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A Quilt of Many Colors: Primary discourse and the creation of a gay culture
235 -
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Preaching to the Choir
258 -
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The Present Moment
262 -
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A Letter to Ed White, 23 December 1990
267 - Part 6 In the Gathering Darkness an Age of Heroes: 1991– 1996
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Introduction
271 -
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Eulogy for Allen Barnett: 1955– 1991
273 -
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Honoring Richard Rouillard
277 -
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Eulogy for Randy Shilts
280 -
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Necessary Bread: gay writing comes of age
283 -
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Stonewall: from event to idea
289 -
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Three Takes on John Preston
292 -
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Food for Life: a dinner party in two hours
310 -
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Turning . . . Turning: the Boys in the Band
313 -
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A Mouthful of Air: the case of Larry Kramer
319 -
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Key West Seminar
334 - Part 7 Reconsiderations: 1996– 2014
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Introduction
339 -
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Hymn to the Gym
341 -
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AIDS Books: where we’ve Been, where we’re going: a publishing perspective
346 -
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Affectionate Men
350 -
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Last Letter to Paul Monette
353 -
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Afterword: Looking Back
357 -
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Appendix A: Out magazine
377 -
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Appendix B: A few words about Christopher street’s finances
379 -
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Appendix C: The Stonewall Inn Editions Michael Denneny, general editor
382 -
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Acknowledgments
387
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
February 6, 2023
eBook ISBN:
9780226824628
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780226824628
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
