Overview

An exploration of artistic freedom, survival, and the hidden places of the imagination, including James Baldwin in Provence, Josephine Baker in Paris, Kevin Killian in San Francisco, and E. M. Forster in Cambridge, among other groundbreaking queer artists of the twentieth century. Nothing Ever Just Disappears is radical new history of seven queer lives and the places that shaped these groundbreaking artists. At the turn of the century, in the shade of Cambridge's cloisters, a young E. M. Forster conceals his passion for other men, even as he daydreams about the sun-warmed bodies of ancient Greece. Under the dazzling lights of interwar Paris, Josephine Baker dances her way to fame and fortune and discovers sexual freedom backstage at the Folies Berg�re. And on Jersey Island, in the darkest days of Nazi occupation, the transgressive surrealist Claude Cahun mounts an extraordinary resistance to save the island she loves, scattering hundreds of dissident artworks along its streets and shorelines. Nothing Ever Just Disappears brings to life the stories of seven remarkable figures and illuminates the connections between where they lived, who they loved, and the art they created. It shows that a queer sense of place is central to the history of the twentieth century and powerfully evokes how much is lost when queer spaces are forgotten. From the suffragettes in London and James Baldwin's home in Provence, to Kevin Killian's San Francisco and Derek Jarman's cottage in Kent, this is both a thrilling new literary history and a celebration of freedom, survival, and the hidden places of the imagination.

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9781639365555

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Reviews

"""Nothing Ever Just Disappears is about what happens to a house or a room, or a whole town or city, when it is transformed by a powerful sensibility. With originality and subtlety, Diarmuid Hester examines how the gay imagination deals with place and with displacement, allowing for mystery and a kind of magic.""--Colm Tóibín, New York Times bestselling author of Brooklyn ""A personal and historical engagement with the places where queer art and culture have thrived. A consistently engaging book, rich in interest for cultural history buffs and warm and poetic in personal observations. An evocative reminder that it matters where we live--and where art is made.""--Kirkus Reviews ""Fascinating journeys into LGBTQ+ courage. Nothing Ever Just Disappears is structured around eight different locations, most visited by the author, and leads the reader through 'the queer spaces of the 20th century.' Hester is attentive to atmosphere, as influenced by both culture and community, and how it acts on individual lives, sometimes expanding horizons and sometimes restricting them. Nothing Ever Just Disappears celebrates the courage it took for these queer people merely to exist, and exist honestly, in a hostile world.""-- ""The Guardian"" ""A charming, playfully challenging companion on a dreamy quest through lost landscapes of defiance, imagination and desire.""--Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award ""A moving, erudite book. Writing against the tide of erasure, Hester takes us on a journey through time, over land and sea, and casts an empathetic and sharply humorous eye on this pantheon of queer figures. A hymn to the importance of community and place, this is a vital public history of queer life that is both intimate and wondrously radical.""--Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide ""Diarmuid Hester has written a book I have always wanted to read. An exploration, celebration and reclamation of queer lives within their spaces and landscapes, it roams from the cloisters and locked gates of Cambridge to the hilly streets of San Francisco, the apartments of New York City and the nuclear desert of Dungeness's shingle-shore, where Derek Jarman created a world on the margins and of the margins. Hester is a fizzingly brilliant writer, and with its fusion of personal testimony, reportage, cultural history and literary criticism, this book will surely find a wide readership.""--Robert Macfarlane, author of The Lost Words and Underland ""Diarmuid Hester's beautifully written psycho-biography explores obscure corners of places as sites of hidden queer histories. His portraits of writers and activists from E.M. Forster to Josephine Baker, London's queer suffragettes and Kevin Killian are haunted and haunting. Totally riveting.""--Chris Kraus, acclaimed author of I Love Dick ""Hester's book is insightful, delightful, and enlightening: an essential entrant into the queer canon.""--Isabel Waidner, author of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility and Sterling Karat Gold ""The time has certainly come for a large-scale study of Dennis Cooper, and Wrong is a major achievement that satisfies in every respect. Hester's ferocious sleuthing conveys us to whole new areas of understanding about Cooper, and makes the definitive case for Cooper as both modern day Rimbaud and Sade.""--Kaplan Harris, coeditor, The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley Praise for Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper:"

"""Nothing Ever Just Disappears is about what happens to a house or a room, or a whole town or city, when it is transformed by a powerful sensibility. With originality and subtlety, Diarmuid Hester examines how the gay imagination deals with place and with displacement, allowing for mystery and a kind of magic.""--Colm Tóblín, New York Times bestselling author of Brooklyn ""A charming, playfully challenging companion on a dreamy quest through lost landscapes of defiance, imagination and desire.""--Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award ""A moving, erudite book. Writing against the tide of erasure, Hester takes us on a journey through time, over land and sea, and casts an empathetic and sharply humorous eye on this pantheon of queer figures. A hymn to the importance of community and place, this is a vital public history of queer life that is both intimate and wondrously radical.""--Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide ""Diarmuid Hester has written a book I have always wanted to read. An exploration, celebration and reclamation of queer lives within their spaces and landscapes, it roams from the cloisters and locked gates of Cambridge to the hilly streets of San Francisco, the apartments of New York City and the nuclear desert of Dungeness's shingle-shore, where Derek Jarman created a world on the margins and of the margins. Hester is a fizzingly brilliant writer, and with its fusion of personal testimony, reportage, cultural history and literary criticism, this book will surely find a wide readership.""--Robert Macfarlane, author of The Lost Words and Underland ""Diarmuid Hester's beautifully written psycho-biography explores obscure corners of places as sites of hidden queer histories. His portraits of writers and activists from E.M. Forster to Josephine Baker, London's queer suffragettes and Kevin Killian are haunted and haunting. Totally riveting.""--Chris Kraus, acclaimed author of I Love Dick ""Hester's book is insightful, delightful, and enlightening: an essential entrant into the queer canon.""--Isabel Waidner, author of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility and Sterling Karat Gold ""The time has certainly come for a large-scale study of Dennis Cooper, and Wrong is a major achievement that satisfies in every respect. Hester's ferocious sleuthing conveys us to whole new areas of understanding about Cooper, and makes the definitive case for Cooper as both modern day Rimbaud and Sade.""--Kaplan Harris, coeditor, The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley Praise for Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper:"

"""The time has certainly come for a large-scale study of Dennis Cooper, and Wrong is a major achievement that satisfies in every respect. Hester's ferocious sleuthing conveys us to whole new areas of understanding about Cooper, and makes the definitive case for Cooper as both modern day Rimbaud and Sade.""--Kaplan Harris, coeditor, The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley Praise for Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper:"

Author Information

Dr. Diarmuid Hester is a writer and academic based at the University of Cambridge. He is a radical cultural historian and an authority on sexually dissident literature, art, film, and performance. Diarmuid is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in English at the University of Cambridge, and a research associate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, the Irish Times, gorse, n+1, The New Inquiry, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the author of Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper (University of Iowa Press, 2020).

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