Overview

"WINNER! Independent Press Award: LGBT NonfictionDISTINGUISHED FAVORITE! NYC Big Book Award: LGBT NonfictionJack Fritscher, the founding San Francisco editor-in-chief of Drummer magazine and curator of the Drummer Archives since 1977, is the award-winning author of twenty books popular with readers and researchers including memoirs of his bicoastal lover Robert Mapplethorpe, his friend Larry (Leatherman's Handbook) Townsend, and his ""gentleman caller"" Tennessee Williams. His new Profiles is holistic gay history written by a New Journalist who lived the life. In essays, interviews, and photos, Fritscher's masterful writing sheds new Gay Pride light on authentic leatherfolk founders, icons, and superstars too often under-reported by gatekeepers of gay-history timelines: AIDS poet, Thom Gunn; race-sex-and-gender photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe; Society of Janus founder, Cynthia Slater; Mineshaft manager, Wally Wallace; godfather of gay writing, Samuel Steward; young Provincetown playwright, Tennessee Williams; filmmaker Wakefield Poole's art-director, Ed Parente; Old Reliable Video hustler-art photographer, David Hurles; leather fashion designer, Rob of Amsterdam; and the filmmakers of the 1975 classic Born to Raise Hell, Terry LeGrand and Roger Earl. With his first gay writing (on James Dean) published in 1962, Fritscher at 83 reaches across 60 years of gay life into his journals and heart to examine our lost midcentury world as he did in Some Dance to Remember: A Memoir-Novel of San Francisco 1970-1982 which The Advocate called the ""Gay Gone With the Wind."" GMSMA president-historian David Stein confirmed to the Leather Leadership Conference that ""Fritscher, one of the great Drummer editors, seems to have been everywhere and done everyone during the 'good old days' of leather culture."""

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9781890834616

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Reviews

San Francisco Magazine: Jack Fritscher is an icon and pioneer provocateur from San Francisco's sexual hey-day alongside sex idols Peter Berlin, Annie Sprinkle, David Steinberg, Rumi Misabu, and the Cockettes. Geoff Mains, author, Urban Aboriginals, in The Advocate: Jack Fritscher writes wonderful books...careful writing...a world of insight. Chuck Renslow, founder, Chicago Leather Archives & Museum and International Mr Leather (IML): Drummer was a map of leather culture; Fritscher and his book are unabashed and uninhibited tour guides. Charles Casillo, New York Native: Fritscher is intelligent, perceptive, sensitive, articulate - and a good writer. Nancy Sundstrom, ForeWord magazine, Fritscher is epicentric to gay literature...he is first and foremost an extraordinary American writer. He deserves a broad-based audience because his powerful and original voice rings in one's head long after the book has been completed. David Van Leer, professor, Lesbian and Gay Studies, University of California, Davis, and author of The Queening of America: Frit- scher is a key player in the masculinity of homosexuality...This is 'must reading' for those who want to know more about their past and those who simply want to relive the days when it was fun to be gay. Gay San Francisco is history for GLBT people who want to know the diversity of our gay roots. Joan Levin, Library Journal: Fritscher's brutally frank memoir of his ex-lover, confidante, and colleague, drawn from the author's personal documents, seeks to strip away the notoriety surrounding the defiant photographer Robert Mapplethorpe....In Mapplethorpe, Fritscher graphically portrays the masculine subculture of the homosexual community....Recommended for popular culture collections. Justin Spring, author, Secret Historian, Samuel Steward: A Biography: In Gay San Francisco, Fritscher has basically done all the research work that most academics won't do-thus ensuring that historians, critics, and anthropologists will cut and paste with delight in the years to come. San Francisco Chronicle: Jack Fritscher reads gloriously! Samuel Streit, Director, Special Collections, Brown University: ....Gay San Francisco is a remarkable history of a remarkable time in a remarkable place, combining contemporary documents, photographs and reportage with a first-hand and first-rate memoir that brings an unforgettable era back to life....

Author Information

"With his first articles on gay culture published in 1962, Jack Fritscher, the founding San Francisco editor-in-chief of the iconic ""Drummer"" magazine and the longtime keeper of the ""Drummer"" Archives, is the award-winning author of twenty books including high-profile eyewitness memoirs of his lover Robert Mapplethorpe, his friend Larry (""The Leatherman's Handbook"") Townsend, and his ""gentleman caller"" Tennessee Williams. Fritscher at eighty-three reaches across sixty years of gay history into his journals, heart, and memory for our lost midcentury world as he did in ""Some Dance to Remember: A Memoir-Novel of San Francisco 1970-1982."" His new ""Profiles in Gay Courage"" is holistic gay history-relevant to the present time-written by a keen eyewitness journalist. The masterful writing in this factual memoir of life with his friends is a treat for readers who wish to enjoy personal stories ticking behind famous names pegged on the gay history timeline."

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