Beyond Queer

1996 anthology
0-684-82766-2LC ClassHQ76.3.U5 B49 1996

Beyond Queer: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy is a 1996 anthology edited by Bruce Bawer.

Summary

The book is an anthology of essays on gay politics. Contributing writers are:[1]

  • Bruce Bawer
  • John W. Berresford
  • David Boaz
  • Stephen H. Chapman
  • Mel Dahl
  • Yaakov Levado
  • David Link
  • Carolyn Lochhead
  • Daniel Mendelsohn
  • Stephen H. Miller
  • James P. Pinkerton
  • Jonathan Rauch
  • Thomas H. Stahel
  • Andrew Sullivan
  • Paul Varnell
  • Norah Vincent
  • John Weir

Publication history

Beyond Queer was first published in 1996 by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.[2]

Reception

Beyond Queer was a finalist at the 9th Lambda Literary Awards in the nonfiction anthologies category.[3] Booklist called it one of the "outstanding anthologies" of 1996, saying that it "marks the end of radical dominance in gay politics and culture" and "the beginning of a pragmatic and democratic approach to gay issues".[4] Ron Hayes, writing in The Palm Beach Post, called it "complex, unsettling and thought provoking" and maintained that "No straight person who reads these essays will ever assume all gays are liberal again. And no gay person will ever assume that all conservatives are his enemy, either."[5]

To read the essays in Beyond Queer, wrote Joseph Bottum in the Weekly Standard, "is to experience, again and again, this sense of language broken loose, words unmoored from meaning". Bottum argued that the book's contributors fail "to understand the internal logic of the forms of life to which they demand admittance"; they "want... the tradition without the discipline, the gravity of dogmatic religion and conventional marriage without the duties and surrenders that create gravity. They want, in other words, a reformation of language to purchase for them the fruits that require a reformation of life."[6]

References

  1. ^ Bawer 1996, pp. v–viii.
  2. ^ Bawer 1996, p. iv.
  3. ^ Feminist Bookstore News 1997.
  4. ^ Seaman 1997.
  5. ^ Hayes 1996.
  6. ^ Bottum 1996.

Bibliography

Books

  • Bawer, Bruce, ed. (1996). Beyond Queer: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy. New York, NY: The Free Press. ISBN 0-684-82766-2.

Periodicals

  • Bottum, Joseph (24 June 1996). "Bawer Beyond Belief". The Weekly Standard. Vol. 1, no. 40. pp. 38–39. ISSN 1083-3013.
  • "9th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Finalists". Feminist Bookstore News. Vol. 20, no. 1. 1997. p. 51. ISSN 0741-6555. JSTOR community.28036380.
  • Hayes, Ron (25 August 1996). "The Death of Gay Stereotypes". The Palm Beach Post. p. 6J. ISSN 1528-5758.
  • Seaman, Donna (1 January 1997). "Editors Choose: The Art of the Anthologist". Booklist. Vol. 93, no. 9–10. p. 808. ISSN 0006-7385.