John Rechy
Autor(a) de City of Night
About the Author
Rechy is an important gay writer also linked to the Beat Movement, whose work has been recognized by a number of prestigious grant nominations or awards, including one from the National Endowment for the Arts. He grew up in El Paso, Texas, in a poor, Mexican American family. Because of his poverty mostrar mais and his ethnic heritage, he learned very early in life to feel himself an outsider, which was intensified by his later experiences as a gay hustler traveling America in search of his social and sexual identity. He came to popular and critical attention with his first published novel, City of Night (1963), which was a bestseller and was nominated for the International Prix Formentor. A fictionalized account of his travels, the novel focuses on the people whom the unnamed narrator encounters on the hustling scene in a number of cities, including New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Together, these cities make up the titular "city of night," or, as Rechy writes, "the city of night of the soul." A state of mind rather than a particular place, this "city"---modern America---is where hypocrisy and homophobia are reconciled with the fact of homosexuality in various forms, and poverty may be more spiritual than material. The book owes something to two classics: Jack Kerouac's Beat novel, On the Road, which celebrates countercultural alternatives to middle-class culture and lifestyles, including bourgeois marriage and family life, and Djuna Barnes's modernist novel Nightwood, which explores a tragic gay "nightworld" as a symbol of the modern urban wasteland. Rechy addresses similar themes in a later work that is equally well known, The Sexual Outlaw (1977), which he has described as an experiment with the novel form. Ostensibly a documentary of the life of a gay man, the book is also a critique of American values and morality. Commentaries throughout the text are really journalistic essays that expose the double standards and double binds of a "closeted" culture, in which many fear to be openly gay because of homophobic reprisals. Rechy has suggested that all of his work (which includes plays, essays, and reviews, as well as novels) articulates the need to preserve gay "difference," which he associates with "abundant sexuality," in the face of increasing "heterofascism." (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Image credit: from author's website
Obras por John Rechy
The Sexual Outlaw: A Documentary: A Non-fiction Account, with Commentaries, of Three Days and Nights in the Sexual… (1977) 298 exemplares
A quarter ahead 2 exemplares
An interview 1 exemplar
Associated Works
In Search of Stonewall: The Riots at 50, The Gay and Lesbian Review at 25, Best Essays 1994-2018 (2019) — Contribuidor — 74 exemplares
Take My Advice: Letters to the Next Generation from People Who Know a Thing or Two (2002) — Contribuidor — 45 exemplares
Rediscoveries II: Important Writers Select Their Favorite Works of Neglected Fiction (1988) — Contribuidor — 30 exemplares
Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas-Mexican Literature (Southwestern Writers Collection) (2006) — Contribuidor — 27 exemplares
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Nome legal
- Rechy, John Francisco Flores
- Data de nascimento
- 1934-03-10
- Sexo
- male
- Nacionalidade
- USA
- Local de nascimento
- El Paso, Texas, USA
- Locais de residência
- Los Angeles, California, USA
El Paso, Texas, USA (birth) - Educação
- Texas Western College (BA)
New School for Social Research - Ocupações
- novelist
playwright
teacher - Organizações
- United States Army
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Southern California - Prémios e menções honrosas
- Publishing Triangle (Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement ∙ 1999)
PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award (1997)
Robert Kirsch Award (2017)
Los Angeles Review of Books/UCR Creative Writing Lifetime Achievement Award (2016)
ONE Magazine Culture Hero Award (2006)
Lambda Literary Visionary Award (2018) (mostrar todos 9)
Lon Tinkle Lifetime Achievement Award (2020)
UCLA Medal (2019)
Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature (2014)
Membros
Críticas
Listas
Prémios
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Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 28
- Also by
- 11
- Membros
- 2,443
- Popularidade
- #10,498
- Avaliação
- 3.7
- Críticas
- 23
- ISBN
- 108
- Línguas
- 7
- Marcado como favorito
- 8