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4.49 AVERAGE
4.49 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Love! Queer history as illustrated fable? Yes please. Fascinating historical object that feels prophetic in numerous areas
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is beautiful. I have taken 15 pictures of pages in this book that I would love to have displayed somewhere. The message and the illustrations are just out of this world. Every gay needs to read this
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I feel like I came across this book at exactly the right time in my thinking. Self-published by Larry Mitchell in 1977, this book straddles the line between vignette, fairytale, and manifesto, presenting an emotive tour through 1970’s queer counterculture by way of fables, archetypes, and self-consciously direct metaphors that have the hazy, evocative quality of dreams. If you’ve watched Pink Narcissus, the aesthetic feeling is similar.
What we read, as much through indirect description that build to an understanding as any a-z plot as such, is a portrait of Ramrod, a terminally declining empire of men which has forever been unable to either absorb or rid itself of its congealed underclasses, the faggots, the queer men, the faeries, the queens, the women, which are presented with a sort of utopic solidarity which is as much aspirational as representational.
Events and snippets of events (often unmoored from time) are used as much to convey ideas as narrative direction. Different characters face difficulties within this oppressive world, anxiety, loneliness, longing, isolation, and at each turn the specifically queer-separatist core of this story drives the characters together to find the solution through one another. It is often incredibly moving, particularly being so far removed from the time in which it was written, even if it is, prosaically, somewhat simple and didactic. It is self-consciously a fairytale styled after children’s stories, and though its contents (which I will note are almost entirely sexually explicit) are anything but, you still get the feeling of losing yourself in this magical world of unselfish love which has carved out a community of its own, which will get its ass kicked again and again and will one day triumph.
Of course, I write this, and appreciate that this is the point; we can build that world, in which we do look after each other, in which love and intimacy and care are given freely and universally across our merry band of queers.
The imagery is very evocative, and there were a lot of well-crafted compound nouns that are incredibly deft. It’s the sort of book where it’s clear the easy-to-digest language was deliberate, and not a limitation of the author. It does what it sets out to do perfectly.
And that’s the key, isn’t it. This book came out at a specific time in history with a specific vision it wanted to communicate; a community that was pre-aids, post-60’s counterculture, and excited to plan for the world that could be built. It would have been utopic, a fantasy, and so it was written as such. The author did live for quite some time on a commune upon which many of the ideas are based, and it was messy and it was delightful and it was complicated and it was joyous, as these things often are. This is not the sort of exhaustive leaden doorstopper that political manifestos sometimes are, because it doesn’t answer every question, but it does what fairytales should; inspire you in the right direction of where to find those answers.
What we read, as much through indirect description that build to an understanding as any a-z plot as such, is a portrait of Ramrod, a terminally declining empire of men which has forever been unable to either absorb or rid itself of its congealed underclasses, the faggots, the queer men, the faeries, the queens, the women, which are presented with a sort of utopic solidarity which is as much aspirational as representational.
Events and snippets of events (often unmoored from time) are used as much to convey ideas as narrative direction. Different characters face difficulties within this oppressive world, anxiety, loneliness, longing, isolation, and at each turn the specifically queer-separatist core of this story drives the characters together to find the solution through one another. It is often incredibly moving, particularly being so far removed from the time in which it was written, even if it is, prosaically, somewhat simple and didactic. It is self-consciously a fairytale styled after children’s stories, and though its contents (which I will note are almost entirely sexually explicit) are anything but, you still get the feeling of losing yourself in this magical world of unselfish love which has carved out a community of its own, which will get its ass kicked again and again and will one day triumph.
Of course, I write this, and appreciate that this is the point; we can build that world, in which we do look after each other, in which love and intimacy and care are given freely and universally across our merry band of queers.
The imagery is very evocative, and there were a lot of well-crafted compound nouns that are incredibly deft. It’s the sort of book where it’s clear the easy-to-digest language was deliberate, and not a limitation of the author. It does what it sets out to do perfectly.
And that’s the key, isn’t it. This book came out at a specific time in history with a specific vision it wanted to communicate; a community that was pre-aids, post-60’s counterculture, and excited to plan for the world that could be built. It would have been utopic, a fantasy, and so it was written as such. The author did live for quite some time on a commune upon which many of the ideas are based, and it was messy and it was delightful and it was complicated and it was joyous, as these things often are. This is not the sort of exhaustive leaden doorstopper that political manifestos sometimes are, because it doesn’t answer every question, but it does what fairytales should; inspire you in the right direction of where to find those answers.
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
inspiring
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Rape
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No