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On 10/24/2021 at 2:41 PM, Lucky said:

Alpha, by David Phillips, will destroy your image of Navy SEALS, and probably the Navy itself. Eddie Gallagher, a SEALS Chief in Mosul, killed a captive prisoner for no apparent reason, the book says. His fellow SEALS turned him in and alleged that he also shot civilians when on patrol.

Long story short, Trump came to his defense! But the Navy had already fucked the case up badly. Reading about that was so disheartening. You'd think there would be one aspect of the military you could look up to with pride. It ain't the SEALS and it ain't the Navy.

The book is very well-written and almost becomes a page turner. I read it straight through.

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I'm reading that now. Thanks for sharing and making us aware of this book and the events it tells. 

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Gertrude Lawrence: A Biography

By Sheridan Morley

Ms  Lawrence was the original star of "The King and I"  on Broadway. She was often Ill during "The King and I"  missed performances and then suddenly died unexpectedly.

 

 

Earlier in New York Gertie Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie appeared on Broadway in topical reviews, which were more well known in London. Gertie was a Brit: Bea was born in Canada

 

Lillie and Lawrence

Lawrence and Lillie

If you haven't seen them

You're perfectly silly

Edited by WilliamM
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@Danny-Darko, your mention of several books by Tennessee Williams (memoirs, poems, notebooks) prompts me to pass along a recommendation I received from the friend (a former poster here) who introduced me to this forum. At the time, I think I was reading the excellent biography of Williams by John Lahr (son of the Cowardly Lion) and I was told that I had to read Tennessee Williams' Letters to Donald Windham, 1940-1965, a book published in the mid-1970s. 

I haven't often read books of letters, and--much as I admire Williams--didn't think I'd read that one, but a week or so later a copy arrived in the mail. (So apparently when he said I had to read it, he meant had to.) I have just now pulled it off the shelf behind me. Several pages are turned down at the corners to help find letters I've read many times because the sexy, evocative prose is like poetry ...

1940: " ... I lean over him in the night and memorize the geography of his body with my hands--he arches his throat and makes a soft, purring sound. His skin is steaming hot like the hide of a horse that's been galloping. It has a warm, rich odor. The odor of life ..." 

1942:  " ... I think for a good summer fuck you should cover the bed with a large white piece of oil-cloth. The bodies of the sexual partners ought to be thoroughly, even superfluously rubbed over with mineral oil or cold cream. It should be in the afternoon, preferably soon after lunch when the brain is dull. It should be a bright, hot day, not far from the railroad depot and the scene of the fornication should be a Victorian bedroom at the top of the house with a skylight letting the sun directly down on the bed. On a table beside the bed should be a pitcher of ice-water and a bottle of sherry wine and plenty of cigarettes and a portable radio ..."

More turned down pages to re-read now, so I'll leave it there.

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53 minutes ago, Whitman said:

@Danny-Darko, your mention of several books by Tennessee Williams (memoirs, poems, notebooks) prompts me to pass along a recommendation I received from the friend (a former poster here) who introduced me to this forum. At the time, I think I was reading the excellent biography of Williams by John Lahr (son of the Cowardly Lion) and I was told that I had to read Tennessee Williams' Letters to Donald Windham, 1940-1965, a book published in the mid-1970s. 

I haven't often read books of letters, and--much as I admire Williams--didn't think I'd read that one, but a week or so later a copy arrived in the mail. (So apparently when he said I had to read it, he meant had to.) I have just now pulled it off the shelf behind me. Several pages are turned down at the corners to help find letters I've read many times because the sexy, evocative prose is like poetry ...

1940: " ... I lean over him in the night and memorize the geography of his body with my hands--he arches his throat and makes a soft, purring sound. His skin is steaming hot like the hide of a horse that's been galloping. It has a warm, rich odor. The odor of life ..." 

1942:  " ... I think for a good summer fuck you should cover the bed with a large white piece of oil-cloth. The bodies of the sexual partners ought to be thoroughly, even superfluously rubbed over with mineral oil or cold cream. It should be in the afternoon, preferably soon after lunch when the brain is dull. It should be a bright, hot day, not far from the railroad depot and the scene of the fornication should be a Victorian bedroom at the top of the house with a skylight letting the sun directly down on the bed. On a table beside the bed should be a pitcher of ice-water and a bottle of sherry wine and plenty of cigarettes and a portable radio ..."

More turned down pages to re-read now, so I'll leave it there.

Thank you Whitman! I will look for it. 

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On 12/3/2021 at 11:51 AM, Whitman said:

@Danny-Darko, your mention of several books by Tennessee Williams (memoirs, poems, notebooks) prompts me to pass along a recommendation I received from the friend (a former poster here) who introduced me to this forum. At the time, I think I was reading the excellent biography of Williams by John Lahr (son of the Cowardly Lion) and I was told that I had to read Tennessee Williams' Letters to Donald Windham, 1940-1965, a book published in the mid-1970s. 

I haven't often read books of letters, and--much as I admire Williams--didn't think I'd read that one, but a week or so later a copy arrived in the mail. (So apparently when he said I had to read it, he meant had to.) I have just now pulled it off the shelf behind me. Several pages are turned down at the corners to help find letters I've read many times because the sexy, evocative prose is like poetry ...

1940: " ... I lean over him in the night and memorize the geography of his body with my hands--he arches his throat and makes a soft, purring sound. His skin is steaming hot like the hide of a horse that's been galloping. It has a warm, rich odor. The odor of life ..." 

1942:  " ... I think for a good summer fuck you should cover the bed with a large white piece of oil-cloth. The bodies of the sexual partners ought to be thoroughly, even superfluously rubbed over with mineral oil or cold cream. It should be in the afternoon, preferably soon after lunch when the brain is dull. It should be a bright, hot day, not far from the railroad depot and the scene of the fornication should be a Victorian bedroom at the top of the house with a skylight letting the sun directly down on the bed. On a table beside the bed should be a pitcher of ice-water and a bottle of sherry wine and plenty of cigarettes and a portable radio ..."

More turned down pages to re-read now, so I'll leave it there.

Sweet Bird of Youth~ TW~

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Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan by Clay Blair, Jr.

United States Submarine Operations in World War II by Theodore Roscoe

Balanchine's Apprentice: From Hollywood to New York and Back by John Clifford

George Hearst: Silver King of the Gilded Age by Matthew Bernstein

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From the River to the Sea by John Sedgwick, about the wars between the 19th century railroad barons to get control of the southern routes between the Mississippi and California. Colorful secondary characters include people like Horace Tabor and Baby Doe, and Queen Palmer, wife of Civil War General William Jackson Palmer, founder of the Denver&Rio Grande RR. It's as entertaining as it is informative.

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On 12/19/2021 at 6:06 AM, TumYum said:

Not to shit on something you are hopefully enjoying, and knowing nothing about the book, I'm 100% sure that this reviewer either has not read one of the seminal books he namechecks, or if did read them he didn't understand them.  How else to explain comparing a self-help book to two masterworks of (gay) literature?

"Downs’s spry self-help manual is called The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World. It is becoming a touchstone in gay culture just as Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin was in the 30s, Larry Kramer’s Faggots in the 70s and Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story in the 80s. "

 

Oh well.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I finished Alexander Cheves' "My Love Is a Beast: Confessions" over the weekend; he formerly had a column in The Advocate and writes a blog; I can't find his ad on Rent.men right now; I am still processing what I have read, but it is an account of his journey so far as a young gay man from rural Georgia.

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Last night I finished John Rechy's About My Life and the Kept Woman: A Memoir. I read his bestselling novel City of Night when it came out in 1963, and like many people I recognized that it was mostly autobiography masquerading as fiction. This memoir, written when he was in his 70s, to me reads like a novel masquerading as autobiography, i.e., the story line is too neat, and I have trouble believing some of the incidents and people are real. The memoir ends in the 1960s, and the second half is about his life as a hustler in LA, NO, and NY, and the writing of his first novels about that subject, but the first half of the book is about his childhood and youth in El Paso. He grew up in the Mexican community there, the youngest child of a Mexican mother and an Anglo father, hence his Scottish name, which often camouflaged his self-identification with his mother's family. I had a personal reason for wanting to read that half of the book.

In 1968, I shared a two-person office at work for one year with a new hire. Patricia was a pretty blonde in her late 20s, an Anglo from El Paso married to a handsome young Mexican economist who was rapidly rising in academia. In a conversation in the office one day, somehow the subject of Rechy came up. To my surprise, she said that she had known Rechy well when both of them lived in El Paso. At that point I was not yet out at work, so I was cautious about pursuing the topic. We were friendly but not really close colleagues for many years after that, but I became aware as years passed that the starry-eyed romance of her early marriage had gradually changed as she had three children in five years. and she and her husband moved into middle age. One day she startled me by revealing that her husband, who made frequent business trips to Mexico, had a kept woman there. She was obviously angry about the amount of money he spent on the woman's support, but what really surprised me was that Patricia had no intention of leaving him, and that her children accepted the situation. The marriage lasted until their deaths a decade ago, only a few months apart.

The title of Rechy's memoir was what caught my eye, and I read it in hopes of understanding the culture of El Paso which produced Patricia. The "kept woman" in the title turns out to be a relation of Rechy's by marriage, and a symbolic figure through the entire book. It did help me to understand Patricia's marriage, but as I read, I found myself also having flashbacks to my own "starter marriage" in my early 20s, to a partner who was himself a product of small towns in west Texas at the same time as Patricia. I have driven through El Paso a number of times over the years, but the next time I will see it with a different perspective.

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