The Body of Work
John Rechy's Sensual Poetics
Published on 17. June 2019
X, 335 pages
978-3-8253-7883-7 (ISBN)
Description
John Rechy, best known for the international bestseller 'City of Night' (1963), begins to publish explicitly gay short stories and essays on Chicano life in 'Evergreen Review' in the late fifties. In depicting the lives of hustlers and queens, Rechy's early fiction also provides the first affirmative images of transwomen in American letters.
'The Body of Work. John Rechy's Sensual Poetics' is the first book length study of the writings of this pioneer of both queer and Chicano literature. It argues that his work is shaped by two lines. The first line, shot through with loneliness and despair, is marked by a phrase that Rechy, a lapsed Catholic, uses throughout his oeuvre: "no substitute for salvation." The second line, a camp or sensual line, is first implied in the presence of drag and unfolds in a series of defiant gestures throughout Rechy's work. It emerges from moments of resistance and solidarity in pre-Stonewall America. The tension between these lines is constitutive of Rechy's poetics.
'The Body of Work. John Rechy's Sensual Poetics' is the first book length study of the writings of this pioneer of both queer and Chicano literature. It argues that his work is shaped by two lines. The first line, shot through with loneliness and despair, is marked by a phrase that Rechy, a lapsed Catholic, uses throughout his oeuvre: "no substitute for salvation." The second line, a camp or sensual line, is first implied in the presence of drag and unfolds in a series of defiant gestures throughout Rechy's work. It emerges from moments of resistance and solidarity in pre-Stonewall America. The tension between these lines is constitutive of Rechy's poetics.
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06/2019
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Universitätsverlag Winter
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Content
- Cover
- Titel
- Imprint
- Contents
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- 1 INTRODUCTION: HONEY, YOUR MUSCLES ARE AS GAY AS MY DRAG
- Review: The Body of Work
- Survey of Secondary Literature on Rechy's Work
- 2 THEORY: WRITING AND RELATING
- Writing as an Anti-Social Act?
- Henry Heifetz and the Anti-Social Writer
- Leo Bersani and the Anti-Social Thesis
- Lee Edelman and Anti-Relational Queer Theory
- Style and the Forging of New Relations
- Foucault on Relations, Modes of Life, and Style
- Foucault and the Ambiguity of Power in the Invention of Homosexuality
- Foucault, Deleuze and the Function of Literature
- Deleuze and the Politics of Literature
- The Minor: Infamous Men, the Lumpen, and the People to Come
- Deleuze and Guattari: Minor Literature
- The Lives of Infamous Men
- The Lumpen & Transgender History
- Rechy's Sensual Poetics
- 3 GROWING WINGS: "CITY OF NIGHT" (1963)
- Rage against the Helplessness of Man
- Queens and Militancy
- Unpredictable Patterns: Sexual Trauma and Minor Literature
- 4 A NEW FOCUS ON THE BODY: "NUMBERS" (1967)
- Fabulous Muscles
- Park Life
- 5 AT ODDS WITH GAY LIBERATION: "THE SEXUAL OUTLAW" (1977) AND "RUSHES" (1979)
- Between Non-Fiction Novel and Urban Pastoral: A Proliferation of Genres
- Bodybuilding and the Art of Living One's Life
- Rechy and S&M
- 6 THE GESTURES OF INFAMOUS PEOPLE: "ABOUT MY LIFE AND THE KEPT WOMAN" (2008)
- 7 CONCLUSION
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Backcover
