I read this book years ago when it was the first edition. It really spoke to me about some feelings I thought were really personal but turned out to be fairly common.
I read it again years later and it was a good read again. It has some really useful lessons and ideas I think.
I’m really curious if anyone else has read it, particularly someone younger than 40, and what they thought about it. If you haven’t read it I would recommend giving it a go if you can find it, I’m going to give it another read now it’s popped into my head.
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I haven’t read it, but thank you for sharing. I’ve placed a hold for the e-book with my library.
I’m heading to my library today to check it out too. If you remember let me know what you thought of it, be good to know what others think!
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Thanks for your reply, it seems like there are still some parts of it that have relevance which is interesting to hear.
Yeah I don’t believe the author claims it’s universal experience, more like some strong trends they’ve noticed working with their clients. I see it myself in a lot of gay men that I’ve known as well with pride and brittle egos. But again it’s not universal.
That’s an interesting point about the inherent bias in there. His clients are defintely going to be from a very specific demographic, I don’t fall into that and neither do most people I know who’ve read it and we’ve all got something from it.
Good to know that there’s still some relevance!
Do you think things are different for Gen Z, especially they live in a non-shithole area?
I have some younger cousins that are in my old high school and they said that there are many openly out gay kids and a GSA (or whatever it’s called now I can’t remember). Those kids have boyfriends and girlfriends and go to dances and whatever and no one really cares, It’s fine.
When I was in the same high school, this was around 2005, there was maybe a handful of out kids and they were like the effeminate drama kids that were obviously gay and there was no GSA.
Well I’m really not sure tbh and I’m kind of curious if the stuff in the book applies to people younger than me, and also if there’s different stuff going on now.
Some of the things in the book are insidious and a bit harder to see straight away so they may well be lurking around still.
It’s good to hear that it’s different from my time. I’m from the UK and when I was at school they had a law called Section 28 which prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality”. No one was ever actually prosecuted under that law but it did make a whole lot of teachers very worried about discussing gay things. It had a pretty bad effect on me (I’m fine now!) and was only repealed in 2003.
Thank you for the reccomendation. I have not read it yet but I have now added it to my ever growing wishlist!
I really should start reading more lgbt books. I think my next book will be “Giovanni’s room”, by James Baldwin.
Oh I’ve not heard of that, what’s it about?
I haven’t read it yet, but from some reviews I have read, it is a must read. This is copied from amazon:
From one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century comes a groundbreaking novel set among the bohemian bars and nightclubs of 1950s Paris, about love and the fear of love—“a book that belongs in the top rank of fiction” (The Atlantic). In the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. David is a young American expatriate who has just proposed marriage to his girlfriend, Hella. While she is away on a trip, David meets a bartender named Giovanni to whom he is drawn in spite of himself. Soon the two are spending the night in Giovanni’s curtainless room, which he keeps dark to protect their privacy. But Hella’s return to Paris brings the affair to a crisis, one that rapidly spirals into tragedy. David struggles for self-knowledge during one long, dark night—“the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.” With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin’s now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a deeply moving story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.
Sounds dramatic! I’ll have to check it out, thanks for the tip 👍
