Città di notte

by John Rechy, Pietro Ferrari (Translator )

Una madre troppo amorevole e un padre balordo, musicista fallito, insieme alla tetra provincia texana, sono il retroterra da cui parte il protagonista di Città di notte, giramondo omosessuale, colto e spregiudicato, per conoscere se stesso, gli uomini, l'America. Attraverso la ventosa New York e l'equivoca Los Angeles, la solare San Francisco e la selvaggia Chicago, il giovane sì imbatte in ogni genere di emarginati. Dal timido signor King, che nasconde la sua vulnerabilità dietro una crosta di durezza, a miss Destiny, un travestito tragicomico nella sua impossibile aspirazione a un matrimonio in abito bianco, a Neal, profeta del sadomaso sempre a caccia di nuovi discepoli. Fino al gran finale del Mardi Gras, lo sfrenato carnevale di New Orleans, dove da tutti gli Stati Uniti convergono cacciatori di piacere e d'oblio. John Rechy descrive un mondo vitale e generoso fino alla dissipazione. Perché, come gli rivela una zingara: "II Mardi Gras non è solo un vecchio carnevale qualunque. Chi lo pensa ha capito tutto al contrario... le persone portano una maschera trecento sessantaquattro giorni all'anno. Al Mardi Gras mostrano la loro vera faccia... Streghe! Diavoli! Cannibali! Vampiri! Pagliacci... tutti quanti... solo alcuni, bada, sono... angeli!".

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Gay, Classics, Novels, Literary Fiction

395 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

John 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.

Reviews

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rechy's classic about the American gay underground of the 50's and 60's was admired by the likes of James Baldwin, Christopher Isherwood, and David Bowie, and rightly so: With an intense precision and the perceptive alertness of a psychologist, Rechy's autofictional account introduces readers to an array of male, genderqueer and trans hustlers (referred to as "youngmen"), their clients and their environment. Each character the protagonist, a sex worker himself, encounters opens a window to the life of this specific person, so the novel becomes a mosaic of stories about people who meet in gay nightlife settings.

Much like the author, our main character is Mexican-American and hails from El Paso. He flees his father's violent temper and his family's dire poverty to New York, to find out who he is: There is quite a lot of traveling and exploration of land and the self (On the Road was published six years before, a novel that redefined American frontier pushing), taking us to places like New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Much like the Beat poets of the time, Rechy lets the subaltern speak, he embraces the outcasts, and his protagonist sees himself in them: He seeks out the underground and the world of sex work because "there was a desperation that somehow matched - and justified - my own."

Many of the characters (all inspired by real-life people the author met while hustling) are haunting and highly memorable, like the old, sick professor who sends his male nurse to hire sex workers for him, men he has been cataloguing for years with pictures in an album as his "angels" - a devastating chapter showing a lonely, ailing man torn between being a highly respected scholar and an outcast due to his sexual preference. There is Miss Destiny, a trans sex worker whose gender identification is mostly beyond the people around her - and she really existed. There is the legendary Lance O'Hara, a sex worker who is losing his looks and has a history of making terrible decisions, but was also treated terribly by the world himself. There is the severely traumatized man who acts out his experiences in BDSM scenes and role playing while trying to make sense of what happened to him in the cruelest ways. There's the closeted, married gay man who feels trapped because he is afraid what his sexual orientation will mean for his children, and many other characters that make to intriguing chapters.

What's particularly interesting is how the categories of gender and sexual preference are treated in a time that lacked the vocabulary we have today and that was of course a lot more hostile to queer people: There's quite some contemplation in the dialogue regarding whether a man who is not bottoming is even gay, or if you're only gay if you don't get paid, and there are muddled concepts of transfemale, cross dresser / drag, as well as men enjoying a more female presentation - this is not a critique of the author, because when he made these people visible, they were not acknowledged by mainstream society. Rechy's main concern is also clearly not gender theory or sex ed, but to show his characters as deeply human, and also relatable in their trials and tribulations.

The real star is Rechy's language though, which is poetic without glossing over the stark realities he depicts: The tone of "City of Night" frequently reminded me of Last Exit to Brooklyn, which was in fact published one year later, but also shows the underbelly of 1950's America in evocative, haunting images and relentless plotlines. Rechy's classic is a masterclass in conveying a milieu and a time by providing telling details and creating a pervasive atmosphere. Great, great writing.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just saw in the NYTimes that Grove is putting out the 50th anniversary edition - my heart stopped for just a second, and even as I'm writing this my stomach has that forbidden fruit feeling of something thrilling and frightening this way coming. (It's the same feeling I got well into my adult years when driving into NYC - an-tici-pation.)

In 1963 I was a 17 years old and a totally alienated wanna-be hipster/beatnik reaching out for anything dark and maybe beautiful. I saw the American dream as a klieg-lit freak show, and wanted nothing more than the shadows. City of Night was a primer, and a baby step into the world I was actually going to find myself in a few years later.

I don't know how this book holds up, but it gets its five stars for the impact it had on me way back then. I'm glad to see it's still available, and amazed that its reissue has caused me such a visceral reaction on this fog-bound, living-room comfortable, cozy and warm Thanksgiving morning.

[Travis Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure exactly what I expected from this novel, but it wasn't that it would break my heart so very many times over. Wow. I get why James Baldwin was such a fan.

[Sir He-Man · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly gripping and evocative. The ending was so incredibly touching. The book is filled with moments that perfectly capture the alienated gay culture of the 60s in an at times shocking way. In addition to the sullen and often mellow persona of John's personality, there are also moments punctuated here where drag queens just bring it ON. Colorful personalities bloom everywhere around him. This book is made of awesome and the prose is nothing less than gorgeous. A lot of this reminded me of Jack Kerouac, if he was more refined and could concentrate better. This is more streamlined than Kerouac's work, and though both shared a love for the scope of the American road and cityscapes, this is a memorable book for being one of the first to openly depict the often over or underlooked gay scene that was so consistently marginalized. So when the gushing honesty of its characters overflows onto the page, do not be surprised to find yourself in awe of what this book actually accomplishes.

[Kinga · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this gay cult classic accidentally and went into it without knowing its status or significance. Though, the latter became apparent as I read.

Published in 1963, it’s a picture of the underground gay culture pre-Stonewall, filled with excellent sociological observation and a cast of colourful characters (even if some of them become a little on the nose – I’m looking at you, Nazi masochist with daddy issues).

The character’s journey of wanting love but fearing it and running away from it wasn’t maybe as ground-breaking but his circumstances must’ve been a novelty for a 1960s reader (obviously those readers who didn’t live those circumstances themselves). The public loved the book, but many reviewers were condescending and treated the author as some idiot-savant, denying the book a true literary value that comes from careful consideration, or even straight-out denying the existence of John Rechy.

The narrator of the book never admits to himself he is gay, and in self-delusion insists he only turns tricks for money, and like many others in his position, fully believes one day he will abandon this life and start a wholesome heterosexual existence – the only place where real love is possible. Meanwhile he performs the fantasy of masculinity for his clients. Of course, he keeps returning to this demimonde in every city he goes to – New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, but never allowing himself true intimacy with another human being. He reacts with anger and contempt for anyone who attempts to get close to him.

The reader gets a glimmer of hope that the narrator can free himself from his all-consuming self-loathing and get a happy ending of sorts if only the post-orgasm shame could be overcome. At least we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that the author of this semi-autobiographical novel found love and happiness in the end.

Read this book if you’re tired of the polished, Mad Men-like vision of the 50s in America.

[Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

City of Night, as I remember it, is a powerful, dead on depiction of the gay underworld of the late 50's, early sixties. For a young gay man, and occasional trick turner, it was a book that spoke to my experience in a world that did not want me to be.

There is a particular scene in the book that stays with me still. During a Mardi Gras celebration, the protagonist (we never know his name) leaps on to a float carrying a beautiful young drag queen (Kathy, and her hustler lover (Jocko) and asks Kathy why she is smiling.

"Because I'm going to die", she says.

I've never forgotten that particular moment in the book. The whole of the book is encapsuled in that book- the tawdry glitter, the desperation under the affirmation of self.

I once met Mr. Rechy at gay fund raiser and tried to speak to him about the why of the story and the why of that particular scene. He was taciturn, almost rude. Later I decided it was that I was too gushing in my praise and it made him uneasy. Maybe he was just tired of explaining it to idiots. I was so young, then.

One thing I did learn from the book (and from my own experiences) is that tricks and Johns need each other and yet are so often contemptuous of each other.

This is a perfect book for those who have known only After Stonewall. It is a history of the shadows gay people had to wrap around themselves.

I know that my words here are not a review, proper. I don't have the background to comment on pure literary merit. It is, however, what it is.

[Hux · Rating 4 out of 5]

If someone told me they were writing a novel about the seedy underbelly of 1950s American life, the pimps and whores, the drugs and drag queens, the nihilism and cynicism of the post war era, and they asked me to come up with a title for that novel. I'd probably think of something really cliched like: City of Night.

And yet, until very recently, I had never heard of this book, it's title almost too familiar, too obvious to be a real book. Having finally discovered it, I must say I loved it. It tells the story an unnamed narrator from El Paso, Texas who, having abandoned his parents (his relationship with his father especially strained) goes to New York. Here, he very quickly falls into becoming a sex worker and begins to learn about the world he now inhabits (with the help of a fellow rent boy called Pete). Rechy splits the book into sections that are general experiences and then sections where he tells us about a specific person he has met. He then moves to Los Angeles and does the same (detailing his encounters and experiences). Then again in San Francisco, then Chicago, and finally New Orleans. Throughout the book he never seems to have any particular goal or objective, only his confused experiences as a male prostitute and the people he meets along the way. It's fascinating to read (published in 1963 but detailing life in the early 50s) and paints a revealing picture of a time and a scene that hardly seems possible.

The amount of drag queens and transexuals he meets is eye opening. The progressor who likes to take pictures, the guy who likes BDSM, the failed movie stars (for me, the best part of the book was the period in L.A), and the straight, married men exploring (or denying) their sexuality. It's all very interesting and well presented by Rechy, a world which comes alive and feels very real.

Then we have Rechy's writing style. There's no doubt he was influenced by Celine (it felt very reminiscent of Journey) but also the beat writers of the era are noticeable. Rechy doesn't use apostrophes which doesn't matter except for the times he uses the word he'll which obviously become hell. Otherwise, you barely notice. And then there's all the dashes, ellipses and brackets. It all works well and creates a vibrant style that I personally enjoyed a lot. Occasionally, he can overdo it with adjectives but mostly it's very effective and often quite beautiful to read.

About him, in the fringes of that world which Lance had ruled unquestionably -- and sometimes mercilessly with the disdain of those who know that beauty rules anarchy -- the extras had existed to carry his legend into the bars -- because that world of bars, extending like an underground from New York to Hollywood with fugitive stops in other cities, is a world of whispers deliciously recording each conquest, each new skirmish of its stars -- but, also... a chorus waiting eagerly in the wings to enter and announce a new downfall.

The only criticism would be that Rechy essentially repeats himself. There are only so many times you can hear about queens, youngmen, hustlers, and scores, before concluding... haven't we already done this? As such, the book slightly outstays its welcome and drags on longer than it needs to. And the cod psychology at the end (like a teenage therapy session) isn't remotely required but I guess it was all the rage at the time (my father didn't love me so I sought out male attention etc). But again, it's a small detail and overall, I loved the book. It was just the kind of seedy exploration of murky nightlife, of the sickly underbelly of traumatised youth and gay sexuality that deserved (and earned) the title: City of Night.

[ALLEN · Rating 5 out of 5]

CITY OF NIGHT is what you get when you cross headlong, Beat Generation writing with a young man's emerging sense of self as gay -- and it's a shocking and wonderful meld indeed. This 1963 novel stunned readers when it first appeared: the narrator whose father's friends demanded he "give them a thousand," his youth as a hustler, the lurking, intense romanticism of various American "entertainment districts." The novel combines an understanding not only of the insistent drumbeats of gay sexuality and male emotion but also the orange-drink-and-popcorn-scented center of the seediest American cities, ca. 1960. It can be read as "gay lit," of course, or simply as Americana, hot and heavy. I think it succeeds on both counts. John Rechy went on to write many other books, most notably THE SEXUAL OUTLAW, but in my opinion this one is his best.

[John Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has got to be a 5! Now I'll go away and try to tell you why.

OMG what a ride!

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave it four stars... so you know I enjoyed it. But that doesn't mean I don't have a song and dance to tell you about it now. Let's commence shaking tailfeathers on this, but only one apiece. I don't want any injuries.

Now, let's... talk... GRAMMAR. It's a freaking important part of our language. It can change entire meanings of phrases and sentences. But there are those that like to give you that "I'm an artist and it's how I form my craft" line. When really it's turd. And you do NOT want to see how some of us form that art.

I digress. What I meant to say was that Senor Rechy walks the fine line of those that can pull this off and those straight blow it. I understand the stream of conscience writing style, I mean I'm from Kerouac's hometown for godsakes! But don't pussyfoot around it! You can't just whimsically use commas and apostrophes one second and throw them to the wind the next. Gotta pick a side of the fence homey.

That being said, one very important note I'd like to bring attention to in this is that it is the first book I've ever read with the phrase "sunbleached pubic hair" in it... I know you're shocked that I haven't dug that one up before... I didn't say I hadn't WRITTEN the phrase, just that I hadn't read it elsewhere. Pick up those dropped jaws kids. Which is maybe why I give Mr. Rechy bonus points.

OR, perhaps because I really enjoyed his language and prose throughout it. I may never have been a transient male prostitute in my life (yet), but something rings true and warm in my soul with such quotes as: "The heart is deceitful above all things". I'm not lying that is BRILLIANT. I honestly just may have it tattooed on me. His life may not be your cup of tea, but I guarantee that everyone finds a way to relate to the life lessons he learns.

To the protagonist, the end of youth is a kind of death. And he spends his life running from that death. Held jobs, but the street lured him back every time. Sure he could work a 9 to 5... so why keep returning to the streets... for me it's crack, but for him, it's much more... it's that early-life crisis we all have after college and when we're supposed to settle down and marry and have a family. Except usually we just go to Vegas and get a lil buckwild and a lil over it. It's never so easy for everyone. But everyone wants a taste of that sinister life. It's their draw to Mardi Gras and Vegas. They just want a taste of the city of night but not to reside there. However, some people are just drawn to it like some are drawn to be artists or engineers. It's a trade those who aren't a part of don't understand.

But then that all comes tumbling down when he's questioned why he does it by someone who knows all too well: to avoid his worst fear of having to love someone. I will admit that thought is horrifying. Just THINK of all the x-mas and anniversary and valentine's day gifts. Good god. Bloodsuckers.

Digressing again, he's deathly afraid to place himself in a vulnerable situation... as I feel we all honestly are. You don't want to leave yourself exposed to hurt, but it's the only way you can truly fill that void of loneliness. Instead, he fills that need w people who want him, but only in brief interludes so to never chance having to reciprocate emotions.

All and all this book carries much more weight than the premise of it seems to entail. Which is why I gave it four stars. But work on that grammar homey. I'm only letting it slide once before I hi-five your face.

[Federica ~ Excusetheink · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Imprigionati! in qualunque fato assurdo la vita abbia scelto di intrappolarci...
[...]
E facce spettrali, parole spettrali, stanze spettrali mi ossessionano: Città unite dal vuoto emotivo che si fondono nella città-di-tenebra, in una vasta distesa pianeggiante, nella città della notte dell'anima. [...]
La Terra ancora inesplorata che magari non esiste e che per troppa paura non potevo neanche tentare di scoprire.
La vita che congiura per intrappolarci!
E mi sento intrappolato in quel mondo che, ora lo so, mi ha cercato senza tregua come un'ombra cerca la sua sorgente nella luce scintillante del sole...
Quel mondo che ho amato e odiato, quel sommerso mondo grigio; questo mondo non diverso dal vostro... Oltre il buio e la solitudine d'ombra ho cercato come voi di trovare un surrogato di Salvezza. E la solitudine e il panico hanno qualcosa a che vedere con questo: con l'eccesso. Qualcosa a che vedere con questo spettacolo: tutti che cercano di toccare e rinunciano, si arrendono, trovano soltanto surrogati effimeri così da giustificare la lotta senza senso verso la morte..."

Mi sfuggiva il titolo originale de La corsa di Billy, l'ho digitato su Google che mi ha suggerito Città di notte. Mi ispirava troppo per far sì che lo dimenticassi, acquistato su Vinted la mattina stessa.
L'argomento è la prostituzione maschile nell'America degli anni '50-'60, e già qui molti storcerebbero il naso non vedendoci altro che lussuria e degrado. Non ci è dato sapere quanto sia frutto dell'immaginazione e quanto invece sia realtà, ma anche stavolta si prende un abbaglio se diamo ascolto al sentito dire anziché affrontare il racconto. Forse un po' lungo, al suo interno c'è letteralmente un carnevale di personaggi e le loro storie... le loro solitudini...
È proprio questo a colpire. Dal mio punto di vista però un incontro in particolare permetterà di rivedere il romanzo da un'altra prospettiva e capirlo nella sua interezza. Molto è addirittura scritto in tempo presente e passato persino nella medesima frase... perché Rechy l'ha sentito? La scrittura è così meravigliosa che è impossibile credere in un asino. La gente teme gli intellettuali da sempre...

Sembra incredibile ma qui sesso ce n'è in misura ristrettissima. Al suo posto c'è la vita che dopo averci sollevati per il bavero ci dà il numero di schiaffi da lasciarsi i palmi insanguinati.
Hanno tradotto altri due suoi libri. Non mancherò di leggerli.

[David Gallagher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more - I really did. Having been born post the AIDS/HIV discovery era, I was always fascinated by the kind of lifestyle previous to that, and at the same time, felt repulsed by it to a certain degree.

The first chapters of this book are remarkable. Simply magnificent. The memories of childhood the narrator describes are so evocative and realistic it's unbelievable. Many quotes to remember and many things to delve into and take from. The language is the kind of language I always loved - the language I wish I could manipulate the same way Rechy does. He can actually touch the words, feel them, weigh them, know their texture and taste. Rechy doesn't know what dashes or apostrophes mean, but that's exactly what sets him apart: he denies playing by the rules and he structures a whole different universe in which he is the king. Even if he tries too hard to prove he deserves the crown.

But what didn't appeal to me in this book is the majority of the stories. I feel there are many we could have done without. The characters - despite their proximity to realism - feel contrite (today anyway) and don't make the gay community look beyond what the stereotypes for it say. It's depressing and heavy and a spoonful down your throat. I loved the beginning and ending sequences and the sentence which ends this book is simply brilliant.

But at the end of the day, I think Rechy himself describes my feelings for this book in his last paragraphs: And what has been found? Nothing. A circle which winds around, without beginning, without end.

[Matthew Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazingly overdone. It's one of those books that I read really, really slowly just because I didn't want it to be over. Emotionally I think it touched on a lot of stuff I related to (and haven't read about before), to the point where I was willing--happy, even--to overlook things like the description of a hot dog cart as a relic from Hell.

[Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book and it's extremely overrated, drags on for way too long and should have been edited more, and Rechy's narcissism and snobbery shows through the fiction. There are better Rechy books out there such as Numbers. This book is not one of his best, and unfortunately people fluff it as though it is his best, and most people do not read any of his other novels.

[Maximiliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

El mejor libro que leí en mi vida, lejos.

[Jim Grimsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I picked this book to write about this morning, I noticed that a lot of my friends have written about it, which is natural, since this is an iconic gay male novel, born out of an era in which writing of this blunt honesty was nearly impossible. This is the kind of book that Grove Press was known for, edgy and hard. It is also the kind of book that people speak of as hard, edgy, frank, which means that the writer treats sex in a particular way; at least I find that to be true most of the time. There are not a lot of parallels to this book; it is reminiscent of other writers who deal directly with erotic matter, but it is born out of one man's hard-won experience. The ideas about gay sex that Rechy wrote about fell out of fashion in the aftermath of HIV; he was an advocate for hustler sex, anonymous sex, public sex; the world he writes about is that night-driven world that gay people occupied in that same era. It is a hard era for people to comprehend and is easy to dismiss as a time when men were closeted and full of self hatred. The fact that the closets and the self hatred were the natural outgrowth of trying to find intimacy in the shadows and corners of the world is harder to see. Rechy does not write about those ideas. He simply presents the world of the hustler, the world of the drag queen, the scenes of gay bars in New Orleans, with the sensibility of a natural inhabit of all these milieus. He does so with force and brilliance and a good strong dose of messiness. The writing is extravagant, self-involved, and true. It's almost pointless to call this book a classic; it is a singular novel that only got itself born because of the force of the writer and his unswerving vision. He wrote many other novels, most of them not successful; but a few of them are essential - Numbers and The Sexual Outlaw come immediately to mind. Much as I love this book, I have never been able to face rereading it. I suppose I don't want to spoil my first impression of it, when everything Rechy had to say was vital to my understanding of myself.

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this back in the day, when I was too young to appreciate it. Rechy never seized my imagination as much as some other writers did (Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs) but this text continues to astonish. If you dare to pick it up.

This one I often re-read, just a page of two at random. And that is enough. When a page or two is enough— is that a good book, or a bad one? This is both at once.

[Jacob · Rating 2 out of 5]

I honestly struggled to just get through it to the end. The beginning was great and I was hooked for about 100 pages... and then it started to feel REALLY repetitive. I started to lose focus just because the stories all felt the same, I couldn’t keep any of the characters in order and by the last 60 pages I started to gloss over just to finish.

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this because David Bowie cited it as one of his favorite books in an interview, and Bowie's got some good taste (did you know "Wham, bam, thank you mam" is a reference to a Charles Mingus song?) This book is basically a queer take on 'On the Road', featuring Rechy going around the big country hustling himself and writing about it in detail. He's incredibly laid back and observational about the whole thing, whether he's trying to milk money off a rich client in Los Angeles or watching a drag queen kick the shit out of a heckler in New Orleans. Lou Reed definitely read this book at some point, since the lyrical sensibility matches up perfectly. Someone's going to make a movie out of this one day.

[Matthew Marcus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bits of this book are certainly 4-star, a few chapters may even merit 5, but the overall journey through the nocturnal world of 1960s America's gay hustling scene, over almost 400 pages of small print, was just a little too arduous for my liking. The largely passive narrator acts as a device for hearing out the stories of various characters from this furtive sexual underworld, a few of which are incredibly poignant; but there are longueurs too across the many months and miles, and any resolution of the central character's emotional gridlock caused by craving and fearing love in equal measures is only hinted at by the end.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to believe I never read this classic gay novel. Written in 1963, author Rechy delves into the lives of hustlers, drag queens, and other queer folk living on the fringe of society in the early 1960’s. What a triumph to witness this pre-Stonewall world based on Rechy’s own experiences. The glamour, the hierarchy, the daily drudgery of life. People trying to figure out their place in the world and others lost. All converge on major cities around the U.S. and seen through the eyes of the unnamed narrator. So happy I finally read City of Night.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before there was "Midnight Cowboy" this classic came along about male prostitution that never sinks into sleaze. Forty five years ago John Rechy wrote about homosexuality with a compassion that America didn't have for gays. "City of Night" runs for almost 400 pages but you'll never get bored because it's so well written.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 'classic' but I treat it as something sacred - my perspective may be slightly different because I live in and grew up in the UK and Ireland and, although this novel had hostile reviews in the USA in the UK it received very thoughtful reviews from publications like 'The Spectator' (imagine the 'National Review' giving the work a positive review?!) Sunday Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Times Literary Supplement - it doesn't mean things were better in the UK, but they were different. 'Homosexuality' was never quite as frightening, nor as taboo, nor had medicine or psychiatry dominated the discussion over here as it did in the USA - it just wasn't feared in the same way. There are parts of this novel which are powerful, but it has great longueurs where it is over written and way too long. I found the 380 pages of the hard back version tough going because it was repetitive and never seemed to go anywhere - except different places to say the same things again.

Although trumpeted as a 'gay' novel it is really a novel of a world and way of thinking, acting and behaving that the 'gay' movement was about to consign to the rubbish bin of history. That was the world of drag queens, trade and johns in a fabulously complex ritual performance of rigidly confined roles which allowed for no deviation and in which the cruelties of of queens, trade, johns etc. towards each other merely reflected and amplified the persecution that straight society was inflicting.

This novel depicts a world that was created in response to oppression, although it has roots going further back it is very much a creation of post WWII USA society and circumstances. Although I can see elements that are familiar there is no way the world Rechy describes could be translated to London, let alone Paris, Berlin, Rome or Amsterdam at that time. In the UK class would have made impossible any similar society or relations. Rechy is also depicting a world that was just on the point of disappearing. He mentions throughout that there are 'gay' men who are out looking for sex with each other outside of the 'fairy/queen, trade, john' dynamic and world that he is inhabiting and describing. Rechy's world is perhaps the most obvious, but it is only outsiders and maybe those entering the 'gay' world for the first time, who imagine that they actually reflect what being homosexual/gay/queer is, was, has, or will be. This novel was published only three years before Stonewall and by the time Edmund White, and others, in the late 1970's and early 80's were describing the 'gay' world, the one that they discovered when they first went out into the 'gay' world, the worlds of 'City of Night' was as vanished and near forgotten as that of pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, and as unlikely to be resurrected. They needed to explain all of it to their readers because almost all of it it had been rejected by the first post-Stonewall generation as a way of life, acting and thought that had been imposed on them by their persecutors.

But this is what makes City of Night so interesting, and why Rechy is, despite my earlier complaints, such a good writer. He is not trapped by the cliches and stereotypes and he writes movingly, and beautifully about many of those queens and the 'youngmen' who could sell their bodies only so long as they were young, but more importantly as long as they didn't appear to enjoy it. The tales of these 'youngmen'* who had to put on a performance of dumb masculinity is perhaps the most tragic thing in the book. Also, unstated because American literature and society didn't, and maybe still doesn't, think about the poor and disadvantaged that they exploit, there is throughout the novel a portrait of poor men and women on the very lowest level of economic life who have no rights, receive no respect and are outside of any 'community', they are simply the exploited. They are the ones who fought Stonewall, filled out the early marches, and while making up the statistics for campaigners all too often died alone and forgotten when AIDS hit. Being poor is still the greatest mortal sin.

There is a great deal in this novel as long as you don't sentimentalise it or the period it describes. It is an important book but I cannot imagine rereading it any time soon.

*Rechy's spelling.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh the places I go in My Big Fat Reading Project! At #7 on the 1963 bestseller list, this novel was a ground breaker in gay fiction. I had never heard of it but my cohort in the Literary Snobs reading group knew all about it. In some ways it was unlike anything I have ever read while in other ways it felt familiar compared to some of the Beat fiction I have read.

Largely autobiographical, the story follows a young man through his peripatetic nightlife as a hustler in the dark streets of El Paso, Times Square, Pershing Square (in Los Angeles), the French Quarter of New Orleans, and the Mission District of San Francisco. His lonely, frenetic existence is portrayed as a search for identity and connection but the milieu in which he searches is a desperate world of disconnection and confused identities, made up of hustlers, queens, secret slumming homosexual men, and sad women, a few of whom are lesbians. In fact, there are few women in the book and those few seemed like stereotypes.

What was brought home to me is how horrid life could be for gay people in mid-twentieth century America. So much secrecy, confusion, guilt and personal disintegration was necessarily their plight. Though the endless rehashing of similar scenes got to be too much for me as a reader, I wondered if life is much better for gay persons in our present time.

I can't really know because I am heterosexual and though I have gay friends there is a reticence between us when it comes to talking about sexual orientation. Is that my doing? I want to ask about or discuss what that aspect of their lives is like but I feel shy about doing so. I was raised to be homophobic and confess that it took some doing to get over that prejudice. Mostly, it took reading books.

So I thank the writers who have opened their hearts and minds in their novels and memoirs, their essays and poetry. I don't mean to sound disingenuous, but like someone who hated a certain food as a kid but grew up to like it, I can barely remember what it was like to harbor that homophobia in the past. Yet, I feel more comfortable with olives than I do with my fellow human beings whose sexual orientation is different from mine.

In any case, City of Night was a wild, sometimes uncomfortable read that brought me more understanding of what is means to be human. It also made me sorrow for the ways we mistreat each other.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a massive, sprawling, and exhausting (in the best possible way) novel. This is one of those which will pick you up, spin you around, chew you up and spit you back out.

I'm unsure how in my collection of gay literature canon I somehow glossed over this novel until now. I'm glad that in this year's endeavor to "re-read my mothers" of gay literature a friend made me pick it up. City of Night follows an unnamed hustler as he bounces through the queer underworlds of America's so-called "cities of night": New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans. Written in a Beatnik-esque stream-of-conciousness that at first feels a bit like affectation, the distinctive voice develops into an accurate syntactical depiction of our restless narrator, who is always searching, searching, searching for the indefinable something, called sometimes love, sometimes desire, sometimes validation of existence. While the places he speaks of so intimately may have aged away (I believe a good among of the account was drawn from Rechy's own youth), the scenes he describes and the palpable emotion never will.

[Matthew Gallaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for anyone interested in 1950s/60s "underground culture" (for lack of a better term, or sort of the opposite of straight, white, heteronormative Mad Men). The book is about a mostly gay hustler who drifts through the major U.S. cities and in the process manages to dissect quite a few stereotypes that are still very pervasive on the gender/sexuality front and also manages to invent a new language to describe what feels like a new world. Lonely, punishing, and transcendent.

[K.M. Soehnlein · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that feels both of its time and very much ahead of its time.

[Anthony Salazar · Rating 2 out of 5]

This would have been good if the author deleted half the novel.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Epic and meticulous lightly fictionalized study of gay night life and the hustler lifestyle in the 50s and 60s -- big cast of memorable characters, gorgeous and unsettling writing, concretely structured (in interesting tension with the sprawl of so many scenes), hardened yet tender protag. Took me forever to read but I loved dipping into this world a little bit at a time.

Tons of transmisogyny -- this novel is really a study in that too, in the ways in which it documents (somewhat anthropologically) gay/drag/trans tensions and femmephobia within the gay community. These in-community aggressions are not as carefully criticized as they are in, say, Giovanni's Room (published 7 years earlier), though the narrator is more observant and curious, and much less judgmental than David in G's Room.

[Simon Hollway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set before my time but I was blown away by the language, the ghetto pattois, the polari, call it what you will. That cool, hip and wantonly slick and sleek flow of words, I had never encountered before. What a loss! Much of the vernacular did fill in some missing blanks and made me understand many terms still floating about on the modern scene. Wow! Such beautiful, evocative dialogue. Never fear though. That slacker mentality is thankfully back in its mischievously muted manner - 'It gave me the feels' being one of my current favourites. City of Night should be enshrined in a time capsule and revisited every 20 years by successive generations.