Gay Popular Culture
A Memoir of Essays and Interviews
Jack 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.”
REVIEWS
Bay Area Reporter by Hank Trout ( also PDF)
| CONTENTS: Profiles in Gay Courage | ||
|---|---|---|
| Robert Mapplethorpe: Fetishes, Faces, and Flowers of Evil | TEXT | |
| Cynthia Slater: Kink Queen of Folsom Street | TEXT | |
| Society of Janus: BDSM Boys and Girls Together | TEXT | |
| Samuel Steward: Secret Historian: The Talented Mr. Steward | TEXT | |
| The Mineshaft: Legendary Twentieth-Century Sex Club | TEXT | |
| Wally Wallace: Wally Wallace Tells All about the Mineshaft | TEXT | |
| Rob of Amsterdam: Leather Fashion Designer | TEXT | |
| Edward Parente: Wakefield Poole's Boys in the Sand and the NYT | TEXT | |
| David Hurles: Terror is My Only Hardon! | TEXT | |
| David Hurles: Call Him "Old Reliable" Because He Is | TEXT | |
| Thom Gunn: "Leather Poet Laureate" of Folsom Street | TEXT | |
| Tennessee Williams: "We All Live on Half of Something" | TEXT | |
| Terry LeGrand: Once upon a time there were no gay movies | TEXT | |
| Roger Earl: Born to Raise Hell: Two Filmmakers in Conversation | TEXT |
| CONTENTS: Profiles in Gay Courage | ||
|---|---|---|
| Robert Mapplethorpe: Fetishes, Faces, and Flowers of Evil | TEXT | |
| Cynthia Slater: Kink Queen of Folsom Street | TEXT | |
| Society of Janus: BDSM Boys and Girls Together | TEXT | |
| Samuel Steward: Secret Historian: The Talented Mr. Steward | TEXT | |
| The Mineshaft: Legendary Twentieth-Century Sex Club | TEXT | |
| Wally Wallace: Wally Wallace Tells All about the Mineshaft | TEXT | |
| Rob of Amsterdam: Leather Fashion Designer | TEXT | |
| Edward Parente: Wakefield Poole's Boys in the Sand and the NYT | TEXT | |
| David Hurles: Terror is My Only Hardon! | TEXT | |
| David Hurles: Call Him "Old Reliable" Because He Is | TEXT | |
| Thom Gunn: "Leather Poet Laureate" of Folsom Street | TEXT | |
| Tennessee Williams: "We All Live on Half of Something" | TEXT | |
| Terry LeGrand: Once upon a time there were no gay movies | TEXT | |
| Roger Earl: Born to Raise Hell: Two Filmmakers in Conversation | TEXT |