Throughout, Mulderig’s entertaining annotations explain the essays’ wide-ranging allusions and also highlight their gay subtext, which constituted a kind of private game that Steward played with his mostly oblivious audience of Midwestern dentists. We go along with him to a bodybuilding competition and a pet cemetery, and together we wander the boulevards of Paris and the alleys of Algiers. We hear of his stint as a holiday sales clerk at Marshall Field’s (where he met and seduced fellow employee Rock Hudson), of his roles as an opera and ballet extra in hilariously shoddy costumes, of his hoarding tendencies, his disappointment with the drabness of men’s fashions, and his dread of turning forty. In these essays we encounter such famous friends of Steward as Gertrude Stein, André Gide, and Thornton Wilder. In ‘ Philip Sparrow Tells All’, Jeremy Mulderig has collected thirty of these engaging but forgotten columns, prefacing them with revealing introductions that relate the essays to people and events in Steward’s life and to the intellectual and cultural contexts in which he wrote during the 1940s.
#SAMUEL STEWARD FIND A GRAVE SERIES#
Perhaps his oddest authorial role was as a monthly contributor between 19 to the ‘ Illinois Dental Journal’, an obscure trade publication for dentists, where writing as Philip Sparrow he produced a series of charming, richly allusive, and often quirky essays on a wildly eclectic assortment of topics. Samuel Steward (1909–93) was an English professor, a tattoo artist for the Hells Angels, a sexual adventurer who shared the considerable scope of his experiences with Alfred Kinsey, and a prolific writer whose publications ranged from scholarly articles to gay erotica (the latter appearing under the pen name Phil Andros). University of Chicago Press is releasing Philip Sparrow Tells All , a collection of essays from sexual renegade Samuel Steward, edited by Jeremy Mulderig: The book presents an authentic portrait of a notable American artist that is compelling reading for the general reader as well as scholars interested in twentieth-century American music, American studies, gay rights, and civil rights. In addition to analyses of Eastman’s music, the essays in ‘ Gay Guerrilla’ provide background on his remarkable life history and the era’s social landscape. These episodes are examples of Eastman’s persistence in pushing the limits of the acceptable in the highly charged arenas of sexual and civil rights.
Eastman’s provocative titles, including ‘ Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger’, and others assault us with his obsessions. Eastman tested limits with his political aggressiveness, as recounted in legendary scandals he unleashed like his June 1975 performance of John Cage’s Song Books, which featured homoerotic interjections, or the uproar over his titles at Northwestern University.
His music, insistent and straightforward, resists labels and seethes with a tension that resonates with musicians, scholars, and audiences today. Ĭomposer-performer Julius Eastman (1940-90) was an enigma, both comfortable and uncomfortable in the many worlds he inhabited: black, white, gay, straight, classical music, disco, academia, and downtown New York. Music aficionados rejoice! This month, University of Rochester Press is releasing Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music by Renée Levine Packer and Mary Jane Leach, an overview of the life and work of the postmodern composer Julius Eastman.
Winter is here, bringing with it a slew of new books to enjoy. New in December: Samuel Steward, Ann McMan, Renée Levine Packer and Mary Jane Leach
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