This illustrated feast frames Fire Island not simply as a queer sanctuary, but as an incubator of queer style across the 20th century. Dempsey, president of the Fire Island Pines Historical Society, is an engaging guide to a vibrant history: Readers learn that Oscar Wilde is said to have visited in Cherry Grove in 1882; same-sex couples danced at Duffy\u2019s in the 1930s (\u201cafter the hotel\u2019s owners went to bed\u201d); and in 1952 Lone Hill was rebranded as Fire Island Pines, with lots advertised for as little as $275. Pilgrims followed, including W.H. Auden, Frank O\u2019Hara, and Andrew Holleran (whose 1978 novel, Dancer From the Dance, supplies the perfect metaphor: \u201cnothing but a sandbar, as slim as a parenthesis\u201d). At its best, the book links libido to the aesthetics of sun, sand, sea, and skin: Richard Meyer writes about the artistic and sexual m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois of Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret French (aka PaJaMa); Philip Gefter tells of a shy but excitable Richard Avedon gradually shedding his clothes; and Fabio Cherstich provides a vivid account of David Hockney\u2019s 1975 summer sojourn, including a page from his scrapbook for host Arthur Lambert. The second half widens the lens: Andy Warhol\u2019s diaries; Sam Ashby\u2019s queer cinematic history (\u201ca fantasy of a fantasy\u201d); Ksenia M. Soboleva on lesbian absence; and a conversation between photographer Lola Flash and poet and actress Pamela Sneed about grief in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. But while the 1980s haunts the edges, the thesis holds: As Thomas Mann wrote in Death in Venice, \u201cWe artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This illustrated feast frames Fire Island not simply as a queer sanctuary, but as an incubator of queer style across the 20th century. Dempsey, president of the Fire Island Pines Historical Society, is an engaging guide to a vibrant history: Readers learn that Oscar Wilde is said to have visited in Cherry Grove in 1882; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5967"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}