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City of Night (Rechy, John)
by John Rechy
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Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN13: 9780802130839
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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John Rechy, recipient of the Publishing Triangle’s William Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award, wrote City of Night in 1963. This radical and daring work, which launched Rechy’s reputation as one of America’s most courageous novelists, remains the classic document of the garish neon-lit world of hustlers, drag queens, and men on the make who inhabited the homosexual underground of the early sixties.
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| What's With Rechy? |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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This is the third of Rechy's books I've read in the past month or so and I'm finished with him. I just don't care for his style of writing I guess. Now I'm the first to enjoy a book with gay content, including spicy sex scenes and so forth, but his writing and characters bring me down, leave me feeling dirty and almost depressed about the gay world and activity and how they behave. Is he a friend or foe of gays? It's hard to tell as he is so condescending and derogatory of them. No romance, no love, no tenderness---only people with warped minds, into kinky and multiple, multiple partners, unhappy, unfulfilled and ashamed. I don't want to read about people like this or be reminded of all the unhappiness and misery in the world. He has such a negative take on everything. I don't think anybody in his books laughs or smiles, feels good about themselves or isn't without some kink in them. True life? Maybe, but I don't need to read about it. He makes it all so dirty and filthy.
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| Overblown and Vacuous |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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I can understand the literary frenzy when CITY OF NIGHT made its debut... Courageous author breaks cultural barrier with unflinching look at gay subculture. Rechy's prose sure fits that era's highfaluting lit style -- overwritten, stream of consciousness, uncompromising, "deep", etc. Highly esteemed by cultural sophisticates, chichi media, and undergraduate college professors as a "classic" -- in the same mold as ON THE ROAD and FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. I remember having to suffer through this type of pretentious drivel during English 101 classes, but with CITY OF NIGHT, I had a choice -- and couldn't finish 100 pages.
Self-indulgent prose, unlikeable characters, empty plot lines, overwrought/meaningless monologues, metaphorical nonsense -- I gave it two-stars only because it took a lot of balls to come out with such a depressing slice of your life.
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| on the road with john rechy |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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i have never read or, for that matter, heard of john rechy prior to reading a review of his latest book. after doing a bit of research, i found that this is his most well known book. i must admit, it was well worth the time and research. i love this book! it's very sad, often funny and always insightful. the author has a nice way of observing situations and moving through their center to gain some understanding of the characters motivations, his own reactions and motives and, thereby, ours. this isn't always evident at first and often will take time to reveal. he has a great way of relating events in his early life to later events and discerning the pattern there. something we all should have done, should be doing, hopefully, in our own lives. get this book!
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| LOOKING FOR LOVE |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Rechy, John. "City of Night", Grove Press Reprint, 1994
Looking for Love
Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
John Rechy's "City of Night" is one of the classics of gay literature and I am amazed that reading it again now I find that it still mesmerizes as it did when I read it the first time in 1963 (I really am an old person it seems). When it was first published in '63 it was a national best seller and it caused uproar as well as ushered in a new age of gay literature. Rechy's account of the big city and its underworld of male prostitution sent waves through society. His unflinching view of "Youngman" (as his main character is called) and the world of hustling and drag queens and all kinds of men were shocking and honest. Our narrator traverses the United States and gives us an unforgettable picture of gay life. Written in the slang of the period, it is an authentic look at the world of twilight men with extreme clarity and realism minus self-pity and sentimentality. Rechy passionately tells the truth and in doing so liberated many who had up until this point lived in the shadows of a larger society.
When I first read this book I had to hide it for I was afraid that someone might discover y secret. By the time I finished it, I did not much care who knew about me--I felt liberated. Rechy's story of the world was one that I had always hoped existed but I was not man enough to go and look for it. By chance, I sat back yesterday and reread the book. For the second time, I could not stop reading and when I closed the covers I could not help think about how far we have come. I am sure that whoever read "City of Night" in the year of and the years after its publication finally felt that he had something to identify with. The novel has lost none of its power some thirty-four years after it was written. Rechy shows his love for his language in his writing and he wastes no words in telling his story. Even with the many metaphors ad poetic style, Rechy manages to clearly and honesty portray what gay life was like back "in the day".
I felt like I had been hit by a train as I read. I felt as if I was living the situations I was reading about and it fascinated me. Rechy shows great generosity for the human race as he tries to understand and then explain to the reader about those men that were (and still are in many cases) on the fringe of society--sexual minorities, hustlers, bums, drunks, drag queens, junkies. He gives an unforgettable portrait of the "love that dare not speak its name".
The vividness of gay life that Rechy paints was new to many people in the 60's and I was walking next to the author as he took me on a tour of it. "City of Night" is something more than just a gay novel; it is a look at a world within a world.
The main character is an embodiment of an everyman. He sees all, does everything and learns nothing from it, His behavior is arbitrary; he has no motivation ad he makes nothing happen--everything, instead, happens to him. His subculture is one of oppression ad internalized homophobia (didn't we once hate ourselves and lurk in the shadows of the night?).Rechy opened societal eyes and as much as we have changed, we really see that we haven't really changed that much. I know this sounds contradictory but this is the only way I can put this. On one hand, things appear better, on the other, things have not really changed that much. We, gay men, are still confused and still suffer from mental turmoil. Many of us are out but many still hide. We need to open our eyes and realize that if we really want change, we must become more aware of whom we are and accept that. We must never forget that we are human and we are important and we all want to be loved.
Rechy's story is sad but beautiful. Some of us still hate ourselves for being gay like "youngman". Many of us, like him, still live on the fringe of society and we all have one thing in common--the desire to be loved.
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| A Night Without End |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Someone once remarked that great artists remake the same works over and over, likening them to musicians who play variations on the same riff.
John Rechy would fall into this category of literary artist.
Take his first novel, for instance: CITY OF NIGHT. After one has read this novel and gone on to Rechy's other works, one sees the same themes and concerns sounded again and again in almost the same register - the note of erotic desperation played in high lyricism and despair. Still, he's such a virtuoso with this instrument, and tells such a compelling story, one doesn't mind.
CITY OF NIGHT, as noted, is the book that got the ball rolling for Rechy. It's a stark, unsentimental portrait of a male hustler's sojourn through the underbellies of numerous big towns - NY, LA, Chicago, and New Orleans. The section in New Orleans, with its depictions of "floods" of people during Mardi Gras racing ahead of impending doom, is eerily prophetic of the recent fate of that great city.
Although the point of view is first person, Rechy also incorporates the voices of the men and women the protagonist encounters in his carnal odyssey - the fellow hustlers, the scores, the drag queens, the closet cases, etc. - and the song they sing is usually one of vast loneliness and unfulfilled desire.
This is a seminal work but not without flaws. At times Rechy's prose bows to the worst inclinations of creative writing class cliches - comparing buildings and trees to giants, for instance, and waxing more than a little purple at times. One wants to shout, "Please, sir, you ARE a good writer. No need to show off." Also, one cannot help but tire at times of the repetitiveness of the unnamed narrator's adventures, but that may be Rechy's point about this kind of life.
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