Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013, January 21, 2000, Page 38, Image 38

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    38 jfrat M f t January 21.2000
BOOKS
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Brian Jacques, author of the Redwall series, will be
signing copies of his books on February 6 ,1 2 - 2 pm .
Something for everyone
Get your copy of the new Redwall book,
Legend of Luke, signed by the author.
Just Out reviews recent nonfiction books,
from the sublime to the erotic
4807 NE Fremont Street - 284-8298
Portland's only independent children's bookstore
P ortland ' s ONLY iNDiPEttoittr • N oncommercial
L istener -S ponsored ( ommunitt R adio S tation
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UloM
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90.7 fH PORTLAND » 92.7 (OLUfillA 60 R 6 E « 100 J klLLAMtTTt VALUT
cThe imperial (Sovereign 9 ?ose Court
Proudly Presents...
O
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DO bite
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o
n
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night and ‘Debutante Dali
Saturday, January 29, 2000
Doors 5:00pm
Ball 6:00pm
Donation $5.00
Embers Avenue
110 NW Broadway
The Imperial Sovereign Rose Court is a
Non-Profit 501(c)4 Organization dedicated
to raising money for charities in and around
the greater Portland metropolitan area. F o r
more information, you may e-mail us at
isrc@aol.com or check out our website at...
www.rosecourt.org
A ssuming the P osition :
A M emoir of H ustling
By Rick Whitaker. Four Walls Eight Windows,
1999. $18 hardcover.
hilosophical Trick: Explicit Sex, Implicit Wis­
dom— I read this memoir last summer in
Room 11 at the W hite Horse Inn in
Provincetown, Mass., the same room where
eight years ago the author and 1 had a hot and
philosophically charged summer. His intensity
continues to echo in the pages of his new
meditation-cum-memoir, Assuming the Position:
A Memoir of Hustling.
After his lover dumps him, Rick Whitaker,
a successful Hunter College philosophy major
with his fingers in some of the East Coasts
most respected cultural pies, finds his fingers in
some of New York’s most respected men. Leav­
ing jobs with publisher Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
and the New York City Opera, Whitaker spites
his ex-lover by striding into the wilderness of
prostitution and drug addiction. From the
smoky pre-Giuliani New York City hustler bar
Rounds to a country house in Connecticut,
from the Carlyle Hotel high on crystal meth to
the calm vantage of sobriety, Whitakers words
reveal something of his soul, the soul of a hus­
tler, a verisimilitude of every soul.
Explicit in its simplicity and candor, Assum­
ing the Position interweaves philosophical tracts
of Wittgenstein, Leonard Woolf and Thoreau
with Whitakers contemporaneous impressions
recorded during his wild flight from, and into,
his darkest demons.
— Lake Pemguey
T he T rouble with N ormal : S ex P olitics
E thics of Q ueer L ife
By Michael Warner. Free Press, 1999; $23 hard-
cover.
and the
Definitely controversial, Warner’s book ana­
lyzes the relationship between conduct and sta­
tus, shame and stigma, identity and action, as
well as the underlying behavioral archetypes
that result in the pinning of shame on sexual
minorities.
Pointing out that “normal” is merely a sta­
tistical range, Warner emphasizes the transfor­
mative and educational force of freaks, fairies,
queers, prostitutes, trannies and others whose
sexual lives and experiences fall outside the sta­
tistical norm. Their life experiences, and the
cultivation of a respect for what is aberrant,
helps us to extend the possibilities of pleasures,
private and cultural. Warner reminds us that it
is the freaks on the fringe who make the Aber­
crombie & Fitch fags, bourgeois queers and
conservative homos seem so normal and rep­
utable.
In our quest for rights, Warner avers, the
queer movement has cowered from its historic
mission to dismantle the stigmatization of sex
and is instead playing along with the nation­
wide sex panic that is behind the desexing of
New York City and police traps of gay men in
parks and other public sexual venues.
Highly accessible, The Trouble with Norm al
is a welcome wake up call to all queers to
examine the principles by which we fight for
freedom and by which we live our lives. — LP
S omething for the B oys :
M usical T heatre and G ay C ulture
By John M. Clum . St. Martin's Press, 1999.
$26.95 hardcover.
recently watched a veteran show queen
friend of mine go into paroxysms of shock.
I
We were sitting with members of the current
London cast of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake,
the ballet that won three Tonys this past year
ay marriage fatigue. Aren’t there some
while on Broadway. No one in our après-show
other issues we could focus on for a while?
salon knew who Irving Berlin was or what he
Do you wonder why it seems that so many
contributed
to musical theater; nor did many of
of the headliner issues these days focus on mar­
them know the standards from Annie G et Your
riage, military and glossy media stars? Why,
Gun, nor the favorites from Kiss M e Kate. My
suddenly, are pop stars speaking for the gay
learned friend had been certain that
community?
20-year-old dancers would
For those of you who
know the details and high­
aren’t suffering from an
amnesia of queer history in
lights of a long and rich
these days of a bull
tradition in which they
market or relative
were now playing such an
success as the gay
important part. But they
niche market,
were just beginning to
Michael Warner’s The
learn.
Trouble with Normal:
Thankfully, John M.
Sex Politics and the
Clum’s Something for the
Ethics o f Q ueer Life
Boys: M usical Theatre and
reminds and instructs
G ay Culture provides a
us about the inherent
history lesson for serious
discriminatory aspects
Broadway aficionados
of legal marriage.
and culture mavens of all
To Warner, it seems
levels of theatrical expe­
curious that private
rience. T he book is part
individuals would strive
exploration, part history
so hard to have the right
and always a celebra­
effectively to invite the
tion. Clum outlines the
government into their
camp, sensuality and
lives. Sure, he recognizes
costume codes and
the rights and privileges
interprets gay plot lines
of marriage, but he is
that served as signifies
troubled by the intense
and expressions of
focus of resources on the
queer sensibility in
subject, which lesbian
American and British
comic Kate Clinton calls
theater from the end
"the mad vow disease."
of World War I through
the pres
e