A Great Gay Book

March 4, 2024
Artist Fitzgibbon debuts with an insightful collection of essays, interviews, fiction, and artwork from Hello Mr., a queer magazine he founded in 2013, which ran for 10 issues before shuttering in 2018. Highlights include an interview between novelists Garth Greenwell and Hanya Yanagihara about how gay life has been sanitized in popular culture for the sake of “acceptance and visibility” and the challenges of pushing those boundaries in art; musician Ben French’s rich, ecstatic “Slutboys,” which celebrates gay sex (“Turn up for the holy glory only found in dive bar glory holes”); and “Blurry Soles,” in which journalist Mathew Rodriguez draws surprisingly tender links between his foot fetish and his anxieties about having diabetes. “The prospect of losing your foot when you have a foot fetish is, I guess, nature’s little homophobic joke,” Rodriguez quips, then reminds himself that “what makes gay sex great” is its embrace of “parts that other people might turn away.” The stylistically diverse contributions are linked by a preoccupation with the question of whether increased mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ people must come at the expense of what makes the community unique. It’s an illuminating snapshot of the changing face of queerness. Photos.

June 7, 2024

Amid the current climate of LGBTQIA+ repression and oppression, this title provides an essential counter-narrative to reactionary forces while simultaneously encouraging new ways of thinking. Edited by artist, activist, and Hello Mr. magazine founder Fitzgibbon, this collection of essays, interviews, artwork, poetry, and stories furthers collective understanding of queer life through the particularities of its contributors. Their contributions vary in topic, from Derek Charm and Steve Orlando's comic "Violets," touching on the intergenerational aspects of queer survival; to Davy Pittoors's "Queering Space," interviews with artists about heteronormativity, domesticity, and creation, to Daniel Shea's "Screen Test," a photographic study of the male form. Some of the offerings are sexually explicit. The majority of contributors are creatives and men, which could limit the book's scope, but as readers work their way through the richly designed pages, they will not encounter one long narrative, no singular argument. Instead, they will encounter the multiplicity lying underneath the term queer. This title offers readers a means to envision new ways of imagining the lives of queer people. VERDICT For librarians interested in expanding their LGBTQIA+ studies, literature, or arts collections, this book serves as a valuable source to complement existing scholarly works.--Nick D'Andrea

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