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Beneath the Skin: The Collected Essays
When John Rechy broke out in 1963 as the bestselling author of City of Night, his novel about the underworld of gay male prostitution, he became a source for provocative commentary on sex, homosexuality, and culturally transgressive literature for publications as varied as the New York Times, The Nation, the Advocate, and Forum. Beneath the Skin collects more than four decades of the author's outspoken essays—many never before reprinted and almost none ever appearing previously in book form. Rechy holds forth on topics ranging from the birth of the sexual liberation movement, the rise of Anita Bryant, and the emergence of AIDS to sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and last year's repeal of sodomy laws. Beneath the Skin also includes pieces on gay and lesbian authors such as Gore Vidal, Jack Kerouac, Christopher Isherwood, Carson McCullers, and Elizabeth Bowen, and non-gay figures like Philip Roth, William T. Vollman, and Joyce Carol Oates, as well as essays on Madonna, Tom Cruise, Eminem, Liberace, Marilyn Monroe, and the gay silent film star Ramon Novarro.
- GenresLGBTNonfictionEssays
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 4, 2004
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About the author
John Rechy
35 books217 followersJohn Rechy is an American author, the child of a Scottish father and a Mexican-American mother. In his novels he has written extensively about homosexual culture in Los Angeles and wider America, and is among the pioneers of modern LGBT literature. Drawing on his own background, he has also contributed to Chicano literature, especially with his novel The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez, which is taught in several Chicano literature courses in the United States. His work has often faced censorship due to its sexual content, particularly (but not solely) in the 1960s and 1970s, but books such as City of Night have been best sellers, and he has many literary admirers.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 23, 2022
JOHN RECHY’S OUTLAW SENSIBILITY
Beneath the Skin: The Collected Essays of John Rechy puts forty-six pieces of Rechy’s journalism under one cover. The essays are arranged chronologically from 1958 to 2004. Most of them include an informative and often witty “Postscript” written by Rechy for this collection.
John Rechy has always been a literary writer. The first two essays from early in his career show his already developed ability to vividly evoke sense of place. In “El Paso Del Norte” (1958), Rechy describes El Paso, Texas, where he was born in 1931 and grew up: “At sundown the fat sun squats on the horizon like a Mexican lady grandly on her front porch.” In “The City of Lost Angels” (1959), he evokes the city that features so prominently in his fiction and where he eventually made his home: “Southern California, which is shaped somewhat like a coffin, is a giant sanatorium with flowers where people come to be cured of life itself in whatever way.” These beautifully written essays take the reader into Rechy’s early life and world—as a Mexican-American he was an outsider—and set the stage for the following essays.
The linchpin essay of the collection is “The Outlaw Sensibility” (1991). Rechy believes that gay, feminine, black, and Hispanic sensibilities do exist. These sensibilities have in common an awareness of separation from the authoritarian mainstream. This awareness Rechy calls an “Outlaw Sensibility.” He prefers the term “outlaw,” instead of “outcast” or “exile,” which suggest acceptance of defeat or expulsion, respectively. The “outlaw” knows that mainstream mores are repressive and questions them. The homosexual, who comes from a heterosexual union and has to function in a heterosexual world, is an outlaw who learns at an early age to employ infiltration, sabotage, and camouflage to survive in the mainstream. Rechy’s examples of real-life outlaws are ones we might not have though of, such as Marilyn Monroe, “a masterpiece of the outlaw sensibility.” Much of Rechy’s work originates from this Outlaw Sensibility.
In “City of Night Remembered” (1984), Rechy tells the history of the writing and publication in 1963 of his first, and now classic, novel about a gay hustler’s travels around the United States. The book’s subject matter received notoriety with minor attention paid to its form and style and its literary quality.
“Fragments from a Literary Life” (2004) contains the following anecdote: In the 1980s, while hustling, John Rechy was kicked out of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles by a floor detective when getting out of an elevator to go to a man’s room. In 1997, in the same hotel, Rechy received the PEN-USA-West Lifetime Achivement Award, the first novelist to receive it. Also, in 1999, he received the Publishing Triangle’s William Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award. As Rechy says, “Posterity has a way of correcting literary misjudgments.”
“On Writing: The Terrible Three Rules” (2004) is Rechy’s rebuttal of writing rules that are taught in writing courses. Of Rule 1, “Show, Don’t Tell,” he writes: “Major nonsense.” Of Rule 2, “Write about What You Know,” he says, “Write about whatever the hell you want to write about.” To Rule 3, “Always Have a Sympathetic Character for the Reader to Relate To,” he responds: “Write about characters, good and evil, who fascinate.” In his Postscript to this essay, Rechy gives his one rule of writing: “There are no Rules of Writing.”
Rechy’s essays on George W. Bush are indictments of what he terms in the last line of the book “the grotesque banality of evil.” In “Beatin’ around the Bush” (2002), he writes: “I suspect that the reign of George Bush may auger the death of satire. Not even Swift could match the surrealism of this man’s moronic declamations and devastating power.”
The book reviews by Rechy that are included in this collection are diverse, insightful, and entertaining. They range from reviews of novels by William Burrough and Joyce Carol Oates to reviews of biographies of Jonathan Swift, Sergei Eisenstein—and Liberace.
In the essays in Beneath the Skin, John Rechy powerfully writes about whatever the hell he wants to write about. He has been on the front lines all his life and has always delivered his observations as an artist. By articulating the Outlaw Sensibility, John Rechy has spoken for everyone who has ever been on the outside looking in. Only six essays have been singled out in this review. There are forty more, so grab this book and devour it from cover to cover. We’re due for another essay collection by John Rechy
Beneath the Skin: The Collected Essays of John Rechy puts forty-six pieces of Rechy’s journalism under one cover. The essays are arranged chronologically from 1958 to 2004. Most of them include an informative and often witty “Postscript” written by Rechy for this collection.
John Rechy has always been a literary writer. The first two essays from early in his career show his already developed ability to vividly evoke sense of place. In “El Paso Del Norte” (1958), Rechy describes El Paso, Texas, where he was born in 1931 and grew up: “At sundown the fat sun squats on the horizon like a Mexican lady grandly on her front porch.” In “The City of Lost Angels” (1959), he evokes the city that features so prominently in his fiction and where he eventually made his home: “Southern California, which is shaped somewhat like a coffin, is a giant sanatorium with flowers where people come to be cured of life itself in whatever way.” These beautifully written essays take the reader into Rechy’s early life and world—as a Mexican-American he was an outsider—and set the stage for the following essays.
The linchpin essay of the collection is “The Outlaw Sensibility” (1991). Rechy believes that gay, feminine, black, and Hispanic sensibilities do exist. These sensibilities have in common an awareness of separation from the authoritarian mainstream. This awareness Rechy calls an “Outlaw Sensibility.” He prefers the term “outlaw,” instead of “outcast” or “exile,” which suggest acceptance of defeat or expulsion, respectively. The “outlaw” knows that mainstream mores are repressive and questions them. The homosexual, who comes from a heterosexual union and has to function in a heterosexual world, is an outlaw who learns at an early age to employ infiltration, sabotage, and camouflage to survive in the mainstream. Rechy’s examples of real-life outlaws are ones we might not have though of, such as Marilyn Monroe, “a masterpiece of the outlaw sensibility.” Much of Rechy’s work originates from this Outlaw Sensibility.
In “City of Night Remembered” (1984), Rechy tells the history of the writing and publication in 1963 of his first, and now classic, novel about a gay hustler’s travels around the United States. The book’s subject matter received notoriety with minor attention paid to its form and style and its literary quality.
“Fragments from a Literary Life” (2004) contains the following anecdote: In the 1980s, while hustling, John Rechy was kicked out of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles by a floor detective when getting out of an elevator to go to a man’s room. In 1997, in the same hotel, Rechy received the PEN-USA-West Lifetime Achivement Award, the first novelist to receive it. Also, in 1999, he received the Publishing Triangle’s William Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award. As Rechy says, “Posterity has a way of correcting literary misjudgments.”
“On Writing: The Terrible Three Rules” (2004) is Rechy’s rebuttal of writing rules that are taught in writing courses. Of Rule 1, “Show, Don’t Tell,” he writes: “Major nonsense.” Of Rule 2, “Write about What You Know,” he says, “Write about whatever the hell you want to write about.” To Rule 3, “Always Have a Sympathetic Character for the Reader to Relate To,” he responds: “Write about characters, good and evil, who fascinate.” In his Postscript to this essay, Rechy gives his one rule of writing: “There are no Rules of Writing.”
Rechy’s essays on George W. Bush are indictments of what he terms in the last line of the book “the grotesque banality of evil.” In “Beatin’ around the Bush” (2002), he writes: “I suspect that the reign of George Bush may auger the death of satire. Not even Swift could match the surrealism of this man’s moronic declamations and devastating power.”
The book reviews by Rechy that are included in this collection are diverse, insightful, and entertaining. They range from reviews of novels by William Burrough and Joyce Carol Oates to reviews of biographies of Jonathan Swift, Sergei Eisenstein—and Liberace.
In the essays in Beneath the Skin, John Rechy powerfully writes about whatever the hell he wants to write about. He has been on the front lines all his life and has always delivered his observations as an artist. By articulating the Outlaw Sensibility, John Rechy has spoken for everyone who has ever been on the outside looking in. Only six essays have been singled out in this review. There are forty more, so grab this book and devour it from cover to cover. We’re due for another essay collection by John Rechy
August 15, 2007
I had such high expectations for the book, but the essays weren't gripping or even written in a way as to make the reader want more. It was actually dry and I found myself skimming more than reading. He was trying too hard.
May 4, 2008
B Some of the essays were not that interesting, and others--esp post 1990, anti-Bush and pro-gay/hustling essays were remarkable
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews