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Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World
A landmark account of gay and lesbian creative networks and the seismic changes they brought to twentieth-century culture
In a hugely ambitious study which crosses continents, languages, and almost a century, Gregory Woods identifies the ways in which homosexuality has helped shape Western culture. Extending from the trials of Oscar Wilde to the gay liberation era, this book examines a period in which increased visibility made acceptance of homosexuality one of the measures of modernity.
Woods shines a revealing light on the diverse, informal networks of gay people in the arts and other creative fields. Uneasily called “the Homintern” (an echo of Lenin’s “Comintern”) by those suspicious of an international homosexual conspiracy, such networks connected gay writers, actors, artists, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, politicians, and spies. While providing some defense against dominant heterosexual exclusion, the grouping brought solidarity, celebrated talent, and, in doing so, invigorated the majority culture.
Woods introduces an enormous cast of gifted and extraordinary characters, most of them operating with surprising openness; but also explores such issues as artistic influence, the coping strategies of minorities, the hypocrisies of conservatism, and the effects of positive and negative discrimination. Traveling from Harlem in the 1910s to 1920s Paris, 1930s Berlin, 1950s New York and beyond, this sharply observed, warm-spirited book presents a surpassing portrait of twentieth-century gay culture and the men and women who both redefined themselves and changed history.
In a hugely ambitious study which crosses continents, languages, and almost a century, Gregory Woods identifies the ways in which homosexuality has helped shape Western culture. Extending from the trials of Oscar Wilde to the gay liberation era, this book examines a period in which increased visibility made acceptance of homosexuality one of the measures of modernity.
Woods shines a revealing light on the diverse, informal networks of gay people in the arts and other creative fields. Uneasily called “the Homintern” (an echo of Lenin’s “Comintern”) by those suspicious of an international homosexual conspiracy, such networks connected gay writers, actors, artists, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, politicians, and spies. While providing some defense against dominant heterosexual exclusion, the grouping brought solidarity, celebrated talent, and, in doing so, invigorated the majority culture.
Woods introduces an enormous cast of gifted and extraordinary characters, most of them operating with surprising openness; but also explores such issues as artistic influence, the coping strategies of minorities, the hypocrisies of conservatism, and the effects of positive and negative discrimination. Traveling from Harlem in the 1910s to 1920s Paris, 1930s Berlin, 1950s New York and beyond, this sharply observed, warm-spirited book presents a surpassing portrait of twentieth-century gay culture and the men and women who both redefined themselves and changed history.
440 pages, Hardcover
First published May 24, 2016
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June 12, 2021
-Engañoso en la cubierta, casi logrado a su manera en las páginas interiores.-
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. El libro Homintern (publicación original: Homintern. How Gay Culture Liberated The Modern World, 2016) recorre, tras presentar el ficticio concepto (pero no por ello menos “real”) del Homintern y situarnos al respecto de las visiones predominantes en el mundo sobre la sexualidad no heterosexual entre el siglo XIX y el XX, las primeras décadas de este último de la mano de las vivencias de personas con diferente fama e importancia en sus respectivas ramas de la sociedad y el arte, pero que en su gran mayoría no eran heterosexuales y por ello vieron afectadas, de distintas formas, su vida.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. El libro Homintern (publicación original: Homintern. How Gay Culture Liberated The Modern World, 2016) recorre, tras presentar el ficticio concepto (pero no por ello menos “real”) del Homintern y situarnos al respecto de las visiones predominantes en el mundo sobre la sexualidad no heterosexual entre el siglo XIX y el XX, las primeras décadas de este último de la mano de las vivencias de personas con diferente fama e importancia en sus respectivas ramas de la sociedad y el arte, pero que en su gran mayoría no eran heterosexuales y por ello vieron afectadas, de distintas formas, su vida.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...
September 9, 2016
I would have given Homintern two stars, but added one for the breathtakingly impressive volume of research and information. However, the problem seems to me that little of the vast content reveals what the subtitle promises: 'How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World.' Instead there's way too much of who did what and to whom — the 'who' in question seems like a litany of naming for name-dropping's sake — and not enough of exactly how they or their lifestyles, attitudes, or work influenced the modern world (or modernism, come to that), let alone 'liberated' it. It's only in the last pages that the premise is addressed and a credible thesis is put forward. That said, Homintern is not uninteresting to read, if you think you'd like a gay Hello! magazine from the late 19th/early 20th century.
April 6, 2020
For anyone whose idea of gay history begins with Stonewall, this is a massive, wide-ranging tour of late 19th and 20th century gay and lesbian cultural life up through the years of political activism and the HIV/AIDS crisis. If you had ever been exposed to the myth that "there just weren't gay people" at a certain time, something I certainly heard from older adults in my youth, this dispels that notion. Just as well it fills in the gaps thoroughly, providing a glimpse at popular, literary, political and cultural figures who illustrate the color, expressiveness, and difference of opinion about what it meant to live openly (or not) as a sexual minority through the World Wars, economic depression, or Cold War witch hunts that served as the tumultuous background to internationalist 20th century culture.
The bibliography is deep and impressive, and that the author glides from one figure to the next likely will be exhilarating for those more knowledgeable about the eras discussed and probably eye-opening and inspiring to other readers who are interested in knowing more about lesser-known voices from the internationalist, mostly Western world. For others, depending on your level of interest or patience with trivia and unfamiliar biographical detail, it may at times grow wearisome. I found Homintern astoundingly rich with entertaining quotations.
I highly recommend this to those who want to take a queer tour through the earlier 20th century especially. I can see it potentially used in whole or in part as assigned course reading for classes on cultural and literary history or gender and sexuality studies. This is a tremendous book that points out that queer culture and its influences have been with us for quite some time, setting the scene for gay liberation and the modern LGBT rights era.
The bibliography is deep and impressive, and that the author glides from one figure to the next likely will be exhilarating for those more knowledgeable about the eras discussed and probably eye-opening and inspiring to other readers who are interested in knowing more about lesser-known voices from the internationalist, mostly Western world. For others, depending on your level of interest or patience with trivia and unfamiliar biographical detail, it may at times grow wearisome. I found Homintern astoundingly rich with entertaining quotations.
I highly recommend this to those who want to take a queer tour through the earlier 20th century especially. I can see it potentially used in whole or in part as assigned course reading for classes on cultural and literary history or gender and sexuality studies. This is a tremendous book that points out that queer culture and its influences have been with us for quite some time, setting the scene for gay liberation and the modern LGBT rights era.
September 11, 2016
Terrific amount of research - hence the three stars. Quite difficult to read straight through, due mainly to the sheer density of facts & names on the page at any one time - but this is definitely a book to keep and use as a work of reference. The subtitle feels like a marketing hook tacked on by the publisher - the book doesn't concern itself with the 'how' so much as the very copious 'what'. Explication, not analysis.
June 23, 2019
This is a book that balances intelligence and wit. The title combines Comintern and homosexual and refers to a belief that the Arts are run by gay conspirators. Using this as a starting point, Woods provides his view of what gay men and women have contributed to world literature. Homintern rattles through history, from well known events, such as Wilde's trial, to less known, such as minor, but comical, novelists. As an Emeritus Professor of Gay and Lesbian Studies, the theory of same sex desire obviously enters the picture, but even here Woods manages to bring "science" alive with anecdotal humour. Throughout Homintern, Woods writes with an eye for the bizarre. So, his story of Lorca's fleeting to visit to England and his confusion over place names and advertisements: he left believing that many villages were called Bovril. Another notable thread in Homintern is Woods' moral sense, towards sexual exploitation in Italy and Morocco and towards mendacious aspects of criminalisation that caused many grief and misery.
The only odd note in the book is how the visual arts wanders in: Barthe (sculptor) slips into the Harlem Renaissance, Bacon and Philpot (painters) slide with Beaton (society photographer) into the eccentric, English pastoral. All produce fine tales to tell, but why not Minton into the English scene, or Platt-Lynes (photographer) into the Kirstein scene alongside Bernstein? And if gay painters are to be included why not the most significant of them all, from a gay perspective, Vaughan?
This a minor quibble, though, about a wonderful book that was a delight to read.
The only odd note in the book is how the visual arts wanders in: Barthe (sculptor) slips into the Harlem Renaissance, Bacon and Philpot (painters) slide with Beaton (society photographer) into the eccentric, English pastoral. All produce fine tales to tell, but why not Minton into the English scene, or Platt-Lynes (photographer) into the Kirstein scene alongside Bernstein? And if gay painters are to be included why not the most significant of them all, from a gay perspective, Vaughan?
This a minor quibble, though, about a wonderful book that was a delight to read.
July 3, 2016
Free early reviewer copy. This book is very hard to classify. It’s a gossipy, tidbit-strewn account of how gay, bisexual, and lesbian people influenced culture, and each other, across Europe and Russia and with a few jaunts to the US and the Mediterranean, from roughly Oscar Wilde’s time through about the 1960s. In other words, it's a grab bag of high culture creators. Mostly the book focuses on literary works, dance, and painting/sculpture, with a bit of film. Woods argues that gays and lesbians (the only categories widely recognized during most of the relevant period, though often under other names) were in fact more likely to have international links and commitments than heterosexuals, in part because, for example, Oscar Wilde was the only public figure they knew to identify with. Also, they were more likely to feel they needed to flee where they were.
Though heterosexual authors sometimes alleged that there was a homosexual conspiracy to promote fellow gay authors, Woods deems the “Homintern” a means of self-protection and only noticeable because it wasn’t the promotion of like-minded souls considered perfectly acceptable for heterosexuals (for which read heterosexual men—when Woods compares dedicating a book to a same-sex lover to dedicating a book to an opposite-sex spouse, it’s hard not to notice that, during this period, it was relatively rare for a wife to have the same kind of career as her husband, or to be helpful to him in it in the way that an oft-published fellow writer could be). Homosexuals’ cosmopolitanism was sexy and modern between the wars, then dangerous and corrupt—as Woods points out, this internationalism/urbanism was also associated with Jews, and Jewish homosexuals played a particularly large role in U.S. popular culture of the 20th century. Condemnation of the “gay mafia” in theater/fashion/etc., Woods argues, reflects homophobia rather than an understandable reaction to overrepresentation. As he points out, though you can list lots of culturally influential gays and lesbians, for every one of them “it is possible to name ten or so (presumed) heterosexuals in equivalent positions of cultural power.”
When homosexuality had to be concealed, the closet became both “compulsory and blameworthy,” a sign of untrustworthiness. In the period after Wilde’s conviction, homophobia and criticism of art were mutually reinforcing: people claimed that what was wrong with homosexuality was that “it tended towards the soppily arty, the morbidly affected and the frivolous,” and that what was wrong with art was that it was too gay. Italians called homosexuality “oscarwildismo” or “wildismo” and the French used “Dorian Gray” to mean gay. Later, homosexuality was blamed both for Nazism and for the lax morality of Weimar Berlin that supposedly led to the Nazis. (Edward Albee writing about a Berlin bar with wrestling matches in which the winner supposedly went to the highest bidder sounds straight out of fanfic to me, but sure, why not?) Woods spares some time for George Orwell’s homophobia (and Eric Blair’s brief gay phase at Oxford), and for Dylan Thomas’s.
As for gays in Hollywood, Woods argues that they were often privately open but only if they played along in public: the “consistently hostile representations of homosexuality for most of the twentieth century show[] that the considerable collective power so many individuals had was ceded to them under strict conditions.” The “presumed homophobia” of the mass audience still constrains Hollywood, in Woods’ view. The slowly developing image of a “good,” discreet homosexual (almost always a man, of course) was one response to homophobia, an attempt to appease it that also kept homosexuality secretive and therefore potentially threatening. This idea of discretion was misleading because reports of people who were persecuted and even prosecuted for being homosexual always indicated that they’d been “indiscreet”; people who hadn’t yet been found out thought that if they behaved, they’d be fine, not realizing that if they were caught, their “story would be told in such a way, by reporters and prosecutors alike, that [they] would appear indiscreet even to other homosexuals.” I was interested in the kind of double consciousness Woods described, in which many gay men who chose to live as gay men “did so both in the full knowledge of the fact that they could be prosecuted and yet in the hope—the necessary hope—that they would not be.”
Woods also spends some time on the reaction of older, mostly literary, gays and lesbians to the LGBT+ civil rights movement in the 60s-80s—a lot of “get offa my lawn” and “you’re making too big a deal of this,” sadly. In 1988, Alec Guiness worried that Ian McKellen and his ilk would create a “horrid backlash.” “They had not struggled quietly for so many years (those of them who had) for a bunch of hairy hippies to take up the freedoms the new legal situation had handed them and thereby, by association, brand all homosexual men as hedonistic weirdos.” Proving once again that the narcisissm of small differences is transcultural, Woods says that a lot of their discomfort focused on the term “gay.” Lesbians had their own struggles—first versus second-wave feminism, separatism versus integration, and so on.
Interestingly, Woods also argues that, while earlier generations took models from classical Greece or ideas about Greece, the newer generations were “engaging with what they could garner from cinema.” Also: Woods says that John Sutherland was speaking about W.H. Auden’s attitude towards rent boys in the line “one paid them not for sex, but to go away after sex,” which is an attribution I hadn’t seen before.
Though heterosexual authors sometimes alleged that there was a homosexual conspiracy to promote fellow gay authors, Woods deems the “Homintern” a means of self-protection and only noticeable because it wasn’t the promotion of like-minded souls considered perfectly acceptable for heterosexuals (for which read heterosexual men—when Woods compares dedicating a book to a same-sex lover to dedicating a book to an opposite-sex spouse, it’s hard not to notice that, during this period, it was relatively rare for a wife to have the same kind of career as her husband, or to be helpful to him in it in the way that an oft-published fellow writer could be). Homosexuals’ cosmopolitanism was sexy and modern between the wars, then dangerous and corrupt—as Woods points out, this internationalism/urbanism was also associated with Jews, and Jewish homosexuals played a particularly large role in U.S. popular culture of the 20th century. Condemnation of the “gay mafia” in theater/fashion/etc., Woods argues, reflects homophobia rather than an understandable reaction to overrepresentation. As he points out, though you can list lots of culturally influential gays and lesbians, for every one of them “it is possible to name ten or so (presumed) heterosexuals in equivalent positions of cultural power.”
When homosexuality had to be concealed, the closet became both “compulsory and blameworthy,” a sign of untrustworthiness. In the period after Wilde’s conviction, homophobia and criticism of art were mutually reinforcing: people claimed that what was wrong with homosexuality was that “it tended towards the soppily arty, the morbidly affected and the frivolous,” and that what was wrong with art was that it was too gay. Italians called homosexuality “oscarwildismo” or “wildismo” and the French used “Dorian Gray” to mean gay. Later, homosexuality was blamed both for Nazism and for the lax morality of Weimar Berlin that supposedly led to the Nazis. (Edward Albee writing about a Berlin bar with wrestling matches in which the winner supposedly went to the highest bidder sounds straight out of fanfic to me, but sure, why not?) Woods spares some time for George Orwell’s homophobia (and Eric Blair’s brief gay phase at Oxford), and for Dylan Thomas’s.
As for gays in Hollywood, Woods argues that they were often privately open but only if they played along in public: the “consistently hostile representations of homosexuality for most of the twentieth century show[] that the considerable collective power so many individuals had was ceded to them under strict conditions.” The “presumed homophobia” of the mass audience still constrains Hollywood, in Woods’ view. The slowly developing image of a “good,” discreet homosexual (almost always a man, of course) was one response to homophobia, an attempt to appease it that also kept homosexuality secretive and therefore potentially threatening. This idea of discretion was misleading because reports of people who were persecuted and even prosecuted for being homosexual always indicated that they’d been “indiscreet”; people who hadn’t yet been found out thought that if they behaved, they’d be fine, not realizing that if they were caught, their “story would be told in such a way, by reporters and prosecutors alike, that [they] would appear indiscreet even to other homosexuals.” I was interested in the kind of double consciousness Woods described, in which many gay men who chose to live as gay men “did so both in the full knowledge of the fact that they could be prosecuted and yet in the hope—the necessary hope—that they would not be.”
Woods also spends some time on the reaction of older, mostly literary, gays and lesbians to the LGBT+ civil rights movement in the 60s-80s—a lot of “get offa my lawn” and “you’re making too big a deal of this,” sadly. In 1988, Alec Guiness worried that Ian McKellen and his ilk would create a “horrid backlash.” “They had not struggled quietly for so many years (those of them who had) for a bunch of hairy hippies to take up the freedoms the new legal situation had handed them and thereby, by association, brand all homosexual men as hedonistic weirdos.” Proving once again that the narcisissm of small differences is transcultural, Woods says that a lot of their discomfort focused on the term “gay.” Lesbians had their own struggles—first versus second-wave feminism, separatism versus integration, and so on.
Interestingly, Woods also argues that, while earlier generations took models from classical Greece or ideas about Greece, the newer generations were “engaging with what they could garner from cinema.” Also: Woods says that John Sutherland was speaking about W.H. Auden’s attitude towards rent boys in the line “one paid them not for sex, but to go away after sex,” which is an attribution I hadn’t seen before.
October 19, 2018
Quite ambitions in its scope, Woods' book is a vastly entertaining and quite erudite exploration of how gay men and women have shaped our western world, mostly through the tumultuous course of the last century. Novelists, painters, poets, philosophers, moviemakers, actors, musicians, composers, dancers, etc.: they all played a role, and they all have a place in the history of our culture. Woods brings a lot of energy in reminding us of who they were, of what they did, of their legacy, of their achievements as much as of their shortcomings. He’s very good at showing how the interconnections between countries, between groups of people, between specific artists, created incredibly vigorous and stimulating networks, whose influences cannot be underestimated, yet he also forcefully underlines how, all the time, this web of networks was undermined by the intolerance, the homophobia, and the often suspicious and scornful demeanor of the straight elite, both political and artistic, that felt threatened. The book is populated by a myriad of flawed but fascinating characters: many have been forgotten, and it’s exciting to rediscover them. They are so many that Woods doesn’t always give us all the details we wish we had. Because he is determined to talk about, basically, all of our western world (with arresting insights about gay life in Sweden, the USSR, or Latin America, for example), he is of course sometimes obliged to glide over the surface. His chapter on Hollywood, for example, is full of great ideas, but it gives us only a glimpse of what was going on. Still, Woods offers the reader a truly panoramic and multifaceted portrait of the intellectual gay life that has shaped Europe, the Americas, and the countries they had ties with (such as some of the former colonies): if only for that, it is thrilling. But he’s also very good at understanding (and analyzing) the flows of ideas and the different movements that are associated with this fragmented intelligentsia, and at explaining what was happening in the big scheme of things, beyond the multitude of individual stories. One of the joys of his book resides in how he manages to mix historical and sociological rigor with a recognition of the important role that the intimate corners of the lives of those people played. Gossip, told with humor, becomes quite instructive, with Woods. Among the strongest chapters, I especially appreciated his considerations on how the conspiracy theories made against gay networks spread intense homophobia for decades, on the complicated post-Oscar Wilde years of the early XX century, on the Harlem Renaissance, on the Germany of the Weimar era, on Italy and how it was much more welcoming to gay foreigners than to local gay people. The conclusion, titled New Politics, opens up on the changes brought by the sexual revolution of the sixties: it is equally interesting, as it reminds us how divided the gay community actually was, with many older gay luminaries seeing the world, and their place in it, in a very different way than the trailblazing members of the new generation. We certainly, today, owe a lot to the numerous people Woods writes about, and it’s rewarding to read about their lives and their contributions.
February 2, 2018
Gregory Woods’ Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World is an interesting look at some of the queer people and communities who have undeniably influenced modern cultural development, from Oscar Wilde to Yukio Mishima, and how these artists and communities have been viewed.
Woods begins by defining his idea of the Homintern (a play on the international Communist organisation, Comintern, which advocated world communism): “The Homintern is the international presence of lesbians and gay men in modern life. Imagined as a single network, it is either one of the major creative forces in the cultural development of the past century, or a sinister conspiracy against the moral and material interests of nation states. You decide.”
However, Woods makes it clear that he is not speaking of some actual secret organisation or conspiracy to make the world more queer, but rather a loose conceptualisation of the international community of queer cultural workers, the artists, writers, musicians, critics, aesthetes, sponsors and patrons who held salons and operated clubs and galleries and publishing houses and other businesses and establishments where culture makers could gather, disseminate their works and perspectives, pass on their world views to future generations, straight and queer. But at the same time, he reminds us that the “homosexual” has frequently been seen as a fifth columnist, as a security risk, as a traitor more inclined to identify with “his” own kind across international birders than with his country if birth.
“There was no such thing as the ‘Homintern’. It was a joke, a nightmare, or a dream, depending on one’s point of view; but, despite its lack of substance, it still occupied a solid and prominent site near the centre of modern life. ... The coining of the expression ‘Homintern’ is often attributed to Cyril Connolly, less often to Maurice Bowra, and sometimes to W.H. Auden; but Anthony Powell thought its source was Jocelyn Brooke, and Harold Norse claimed it for himself. Most plausibly, it was the felicitous invention of many minds, unknown to each other, at more or less the same time. Anyone who pronounced the relatively new word ‘homosexual’ with a short first ‘o’ – and that is likely to have included anyone with a classical education – could have made the camp pun. ‘Homintern’ was the name Connolly, Auden and others jokingly gave the sprawling, informal network of friendships that Cold War conspiracy theorists would later come to think of as ‘the international homosexual conspiracy’. In fact, the Homosexual International was sometimes only superficially international and sometimes only half-heartedly homosexual: it was also a matter of surfaces, fashions and styles. The term tended to be applied to networks only of men, in part because those who thought of such a potential conspiracy as a threat tended not to think of women, let alone lesbian women, as having sufficient influence to be worth worrying about.”
Woods also reminds us of the at-times commonly held belief that “homosexual cliques” controlled access to the cultural world, offering preferential access to artists who were gay themselves, or incorporated gay aesthetics into their work. The Homintern may not exist, but it has been, and still is, believed to exist (think of the religious right’s harping on a mythical ‘gay agenda’), and thus affects the ways in which queer people, communities and culture are seen and treated.
Woods begins his meditation on the interactions of gay aesthetics with the larger scope of modern culture with an examination of the influences of Oscar Wilde - his art, his role in the aesthetic movement, and his homosexuality, imprisonment and exile. Wilde’s work influenced a generation of continental writers, many of them also homosexual, but the tragic circumstances of his later life reinforced an association between aestheticism, decadence, and sexual deviance, and motivated a generation of straight writers to “butch up” as much as possible to avoid any suspicion that they might be “like Oscar Wilde.”
He also notes the effects of psychological and psychoanalytical exploration of sexuality, including deviant sexuality, centred around such German and Austrian thinkers as Freud and Kraft-Ebbing. Woods suggests that these effects were particularly pronounced in England: “The fact that the new sciences of sexology and psychoanalysis were of predominantly German and Austrian origins inspired in some British nationalists and jingoists the suspicion that sodomy itself was being promoted by a conspiracy of German-speaking perverts against the moral purity of the British Empire.”
From these beginnings - which in combination mark the end of an era where gay sexuality was kept hidden and as unremarked as possible, by all but the most daring of wilful outcasts, and the start of the modern era of sexual ferment and freedom when the love that once dared not speak its name became able to shout it proudly in the streets - Woods takes us on a tour of queer engagement with culture and public discourse, from the literary salons of Natalie Barney to the ballet company of Sergei Diaghilev, from sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and the Weimar Republic’s Berlin club scene to the idyllic pleasures of sultry Capri, and on to the post-war “Sodom-on-Hudson,” Greenwich Village.
The book reads like a massive combination cultural tour guide and gossip sheet to all things queer, following a somewhat idiosyncratic itinerary through the 20th century, stopping frequently to exclaim “something interesting was said here” or “here is where these people were” - and then proceeding to tell you absolutely everything about it. As an organising conceit, the idea of the Homintern allows Woods to trace connections, networks, of acquaintance, of influence, of correspondence, of personal relationship, between people, places and even times, giving a sense of organicity to the idea of queer culture(s). It is a “who’s who” of queer artists and thinkers, and a celebration of their lives, scandals and achievements.
What is lacking, unfortunately, is an actual argument in support of the grand claim made in the book’s subtitle. There is much exploration of the minutiae of gay culture, but not much critical exploration of its themes and subjects, or indeed of its influence on mainstream culture. What critical analysis there is, is mostly about theories of homosexuality, and the ways in which changes in society influenced attitudes towards being gay.
What this book offers, essentially, is a vicarious journey through the lives of a number of well-known creative gay people, rarely rising above the level of reportage about their notable achievements, social habits and domestic arrangements. The depth of detail, and the research involved to produce such a tome, is impressive. However, the Homintern ultimately dissolves into a simple narrative of who worked with whom, who vacationed with whom, where they partied and with whom they slept while they did all that. I don’t know what I was expecting from a book so expansively titled, but what I got was little more than a crowded landscape of biographical notes about people linked by a common sexual orientation and shared occupation.
Woods begins by defining his idea of the Homintern (a play on the international Communist organisation, Comintern, which advocated world communism): “The Homintern is the international presence of lesbians and gay men in modern life. Imagined as a single network, it is either one of the major creative forces in the cultural development of the past century, or a sinister conspiracy against the moral and material interests of nation states. You decide.”
However, Woods makes it clear that he is not speaking of some actual secret organisation or conspiracy to make the world more queer, but rather a loose conceptualisation of the international community of queer cultural workers, the artists, writers, musicians, critics, aesthetes, sponsors and patrons who held salons and operated clubs and galleries and publishing houses and other businesses and establishments where culture makers could gather, disseminate their works and perspectives, pass on their world views to future generations, straight and queer. But at the same time, he reminds us that the “homosexual” has frequently been seen as a fifth columnist, as a security risk, as a traitor more inclined to identify with “his” own kind across international birders than with his country if birth.
“There was no such thing as the ‘Homintern’. It was a joke, a nightmare, or a dream, depending on one’s point of view; but, despite its lack of substance, it still occupied a solid and prominent site near the centre of modern life. ... The coining of the expression ‘Homintern’ is often attributed to Cyril Connolly, less often to Maurice Bowra, and sometimes to W.H. Auden; but Anthony Powell thought its source was Jocelyn Brooke, and Harold Norse claimed it for himself. Most plausibly, it was the felicitous invention of many minds, unknown to each other, at more or less the same time. Anyone who pronounced the relatively new word ‘homosexual’ with a short first ‘o’ – and that is likely to have included anyone with a classical education – could have made the camp pun. ‘Homintern’ was the name Connolly, Auden and others jokingly gave the sprawling, informal network of friendships that Cold War conspiracy theorists would later come to think of as ‘the international homosexual conspiracy’. In fact, the Homosexual International was sometimes only superficially international and sometimes only half-heartedly homosexual: it was also a matter of surfaces, fashions and styles. The term tended to be applied to networks only of men, in part because those who thought of such a potential conspiracy as a threat tended not to think of women, let alone lesbian women, as having sufficient influence to be worth worrying about.”
Woods also reminds us of the at-times commonly held belief that “homosexual cliques” controlled access to the cultural world, offering preferential access to artists who were gay themselves, or incorporated gay aesthetics into their work. The Homintern may not exist, but it has been, and still is, believed to exist (think of the religious right’s harping on a mythical ‘gay agenda’), and thus affects the ways in which queer people, communities and culture are seen and treated.
Woods begins his meditation on the interactions of gay aesthetics with the larger scope of modern culture with an examination of the influences of Oscar Wilde - his art, his role in the aesthetic movement, and his homosexuality, imprisonment and exile. Wilde’s work influenced a generation of continental writers, many of them also homosexual, but the tragic circumstances of his later life reinforced an association between aestheticism, decadence, and sexual deviance, and motivated a generation of straight writers to “butch up” as much as possible to avoid any suspicion that they might be “like Oscar Wilde.”
He also notes the effects of psychological and psychoanalytical exploration of sexuality, including deviant sexuality, centred around such German and Austrian thinkers as Freud and Kraft-Ebbing. Woods suggests that these effects were particularly pronounced in England: “The fact that the new sciences of sexology and psychoanalysis were of predominantly German and Austrian origins inspired in some British nationalists and jingoists the suspicion that sodomy itself was being promoted by a conspiracy of German-speaking perverts against the moral purity of the British Empire.”
From these beginnings - which in combination mark the end of an era where gay sexuality was kept hidden and as unremarked as possible, by all but the most daring of wilful outcasts, and the start of the modern era of sexual ferment and freedom when the love that once dared not speak its name became able to shout it proudly in the streets - Woods takes us on a tour of queer engagement with culture and public discourse, from the literary salons of Natalie Barney to the ballet company of Sergei Diaghilev, from sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and the Weimar Republic’s Berlin club scene to the idyllic pleasures of sultry Capri, and on to the post-war “Sodom-on-Hudson,” Greenwich Village.
The book reads like a massive combination cultural tour guide and gossip sheet to all things queer, following a somewhat idiosyncratic itinerary through the 20th century, stopping frequently to exclaim “something interesting was said here” or “here is where these people were” - and then proceeding to tell you absolutely everything about it. As an organising conceit, the idea of the Homintern allows Woods to trace connections, networks, of acquaintance, of influence, of correspondence, of personal relationship, between people, places and even times, giving a sense of organicity to the idea of queer culture(s). It is a “who’s who” of queer artists and thinkers, and a celebration of their lives, scandals and achievements.
What is lacking, unfortunately, is an actual argument in support of the grand claim made in the book’s subtitle. There is much exploration of the minutiae of gay culture, but not much critical exploration of its themes and subjects, or indeed of its influence on mainstream culture. What critical analysis there is, is mostly about theories of homosexuality, and the ways in which changes in society influenced attitudes towards being gay.
What this book offers, essentially, is a vicarious journey through the lives of a number of well-known creative gay people, rarely rising above the level of reportage about their notable achievements, social habits and domestic arrangements. The depth of detail, and the research involved to produce such a tome, is impressive. However, the Homintern ultimately dissolves into a simple narrative of who worked with whom, who vacationed with whom, where they partied and with whom they slept while they did all that. I don’t know what I was expecting from a book so expansively titled, but what I got was little more than a crowded landscape of biographical notes about people linked by a common sexual orientation and shared occupation.
September 17, 2020
Homintern is an incredible achievement. The sheer spread of knowledge and insight that Woods has pulled together is astounding. Moreover, his ability to weave these threads into a coherent narrative ark is admirable. My favourite moments reading this book were the little sparks of realisation or inspiration that this gives the modern queer reader (and there are many such moments!). Seeing our history collected like this is a wonderful thing. I had a number of gripes with the book, however, that really tempered my enjoyment. What's interesting is that Woods addresses each of these in turn in his epilogue. I so wish this had been a prologue, for it would have helped me to see at least a couple of these issues through a different lens.
First, I tired very, VERY quickly of the, at times, insufferable name dropping. There are passages and chapters that feel showboaty. I could not begin to imagine the sheer number of names that were thrown at me throughout this book. Many for little reason, it seems, other than to point to their existence at a particular time and place. Of course, this isn't always true, and Woods addresses the place of 'gossip' in his book and in gay history that goes some way toward addressing this critique. Woods argues that: 'Absent from the official histories, authorised biographies and academic syllabuses, gay people passed alternative narratives from person to person' and he argues these are informative and entertaining. I wish I had appreciated this perspective from the beginning of the book. I may have sighed less.
Another thought is that I have never before felt uncultured but, reading this book, it was impossible to feel anything but that. If I never have to read the word 'aesthete' again, I will be all the better for it. But this critique, of course, says more about my reading experience than the book itself. Woods writes that his focus on the arts is not a means of 'perpetuating a tired old stereotype'. Rather, it was a consequence of the fact that 'the arts were a relatively welcoming environment, or a tolerant one at least'. Indeed, Woods makes this clear throughout the narrative of the book. What I can say, for any potential reader, is that this book has a narrower audience than I originally thought. I was interested to learn about gay history and the influence of gay culture, being relatively green to the subject. Most of my experience with queer literature is political or fictional. Most of this book's accomplishments likely flew right over my head and I found myself bored and frustrated on numerous occasions. This is, in part, particular to me. But I can't help but think there is something about the narrative style that did not help this. Woods flits so quickly between brief insights into the lives of countless queers, often without spending sufficient time dwelling on the overarching, connective themes. It is in those moments, of deconstructing the gossip and contextualising the stories, that I learned the most and found I enjoyed the book the best.
Finally, I took issue with the narrow range of stories told in this book: overwhelmingly white, rich, and more male than female. As with the critiques above, I think Woods would have done better to address this in a prologue rather than an epilogue. I'm not entirely satisfied with his answer. He says 'the main history available to us, in terms of the modern development of gay identities and their subcultures, is Western. Similarly, it is more male than female, more bourgeois than proletarian, more white than black'. I think what Woods means to say is that this is 'the main history available to ME', not 'us'. I cannot stand false objectivity or false universals. An author may go to great lengths to generalise and remove themselves from their writing. But this will never take away from their subjective positionality as author. Rather, it masks it in a rather harmful way. This view stems from feminist standpoint theory. The histories that are available to Woods likely speak to his western and relatively privileged positionality. I think it's great that Woods points out there remain other stories to be told, and that he is honest (if not upfront, having addressed this in an epilogue) about the gaps in his work. But, I do not think it true to proclaim that other stories are unavailable. Perhaps not in the histories or libraries Woods attends but in other cultural spaces, these stories exist.
First, I tired very, VERY quickly of the, at times, insufferable name dropping. There are passages and chapters that feel showboaty. I could not begin to imagine the sheer number of names that were thrown at me throughout this book. Many for little reason, it seems, other than to point to their existence at a particular time and place. Of course, this isn't always true, and Woods addresses the place of 'gossip' in his book and in gay history that goes some way toward addressing this critique. Woods argues that: 'Absent from the official histories, authorised biographies and academic syllabuses, gay people passed alternative narratives from person to person' and he argues these are informative and entertaining. I wish I had appreciated this perspective from the beginning of the book. I may have sighed less.
Another thought is that I have never before felt uncultured but, reading this book, it was impossible to feel anything but that. If I never have to read the word 'aesthete' again, I will be all the better for it. But this critique, of course, says more about my reading experience than the book itself. Woods writes that his focus on the arts is not a means of 'perpetuating a tired old stereotype'. Rather, it was a consequence of the fact that 'the arts were a relatively welcoming environment, or a tolerant one at least'. Indeed, Woods makes this clear throughout the narrative of the book. What I can say, for any potential reader, is that this book has a narrower audience than I originally thought. I was interested to learn about gay history and the influence of gay culture, being relatively green to the subject. Most of my experience with queer literature is political or fictional. Most of this book's accomplishments likely flew right over my head and I found myself bored and frustrated on numerous occasions. This is, in part, particular to me. But I can't help but think there is something about the narrative style that did not help this. Woods flits so quickly between brief insights into the lives of countless queers, often without spending sufficient time dwelling on the overarching, connective themes. It is in those moments, of deconstructing the gossip and contextualising the stories, that I learned the most and found I enjoyed the book the best.
Finally, I took issue with the narrow range of stories told in this book: overwhelmingly white, rich, and more male than female. As with the critiques above, I think Woods would have done better to address this in a prologue rather than an epilogue. I'm not entirely satisfied with his answer. He says 'the main history available to us, in terms of the modern development of gay identities and their subcultures, is Western. Similarly, it is more male than female, more bourgeois than proletarian, more white than black'. I think what Woods means to say is that this is 'the main history available to ME', not 'us'. I cannot stand false objectivity or false universals. An author may go to great lengths to generalise and remove themselves from their writing. But this will never take away from their subjective positionality as author. Rather, it masks it in a rather harmful way. This view stems from feminist standpoint theory. The histories that are available to Woods likely speak to his western and relatively privileged positionality. I think it's great that Woods points out there remain other stories to be told, and that he is honest (if not upfront, having addressed this in an epilogue) about the gaps in his work. But, I do not think it true to proclaim that other stories are unavailable. Perhaps not in the histories or libraries Woods attends but in other cultural spaces, these stories exist.
July 15, 2020
The project that Woods seeks to explore is by its sheer size and scope massive. While interesting as an idea, the fact that queer culture and identity helped birth a culture of modernism, he is never quite brings it together. What he has done is to show how queer culture and identity crosses time and space using a plethora of literary sources. His understanding of these sources is extensive and laudable, but at time the narrative is more focused about who slept with whom and when. However, in the process he shows how gay men and lesbians pass their culture from one generation to the next through cultures of desire.
"Thus, at the very time that homosexuality was beginning to be examined and theorized as an individual state of being, verging on an aspect of identity, those who might be called homosexual were also beginning to be seen s a potential group with common interests..." 2
"The outcome was a transnational sense of new subjectivities, but also of a potentially powerful collectivity." 2
"Forces into the shadows, homosexual people would be distrusted for frequenting the darkness." 5
"The salient feature of the widespread, paranoid association of homosexuality with espionage is the suspicion that homosexuals may form stronger allegiances to others of their own kind, across national boundaries, as well as across other social subdivisions such as classes, then to their own fellow nationals." 7
"Where would modern culture be with them? Richard Davenport-Hones has pointed out that "The cosmpolitanism of homosexuality was a distinct refrain in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century confessional moments." 27
"Wayne Koestenbaum has goce as far as to call the Modernist period itself 'the Age of Inversion, when homosexuality was in the process of being undermined and traduced by its eerie opposite." 29
"In the poetry that followed, George deified him as an icon of immortal beauty. (Mortality has a habit of bringing on immortality.)" 133
"Between the two German wars of the present century the fashionable vice was probably homosexuality." So wrote T.H. White in 1950." 165
"So Modernism degenerates in two distinct ways: in England its aesthetic is watered down to the frivolous level of the Cochrane revues and fashion magazines,...whereas in Germany its aesthetic side is discarded in favour of the drive for the industrial and military efficiency of fascism." 175
"Louise MacNeice found that 'Cambridge was still full of Peter Pans but all the Peter Pans were now talking Marx." 177
"The modern history of homosexuality is also, perforce, a history of homophobic responses to homosexuality." 179
"...David Herbert, the second son of the fifteenth Earl of Pembroke..." 248
"Tangier was as much an imaginative construct as a geographical location, a metaphor for limbo, for a dead-end place, a place where everyone could act out his most extreme fantasies." 250-251
"The most overt gays tended to come from working-class backgrounds, while those from the middle classes invariably were more circumspect." 281
"Thus, at the very time that homosexuality was beginning to be examined and theorized as an individual state of being, verging on an aspect of identity, those who might be called homosexual were also beginning to be seen s a potential group with common interests..." 2
"The outcome was a transnational sense of new subjectivities, but also of a potentially powerful collectivity." 2
"Forces into the shadows, homosexual people would be distrusted for frequenting the darkness." 5
"The salient feature of the widespread, paranoid association of homosexuality with espionage is the suspicion that homosexuals may form stronger allegiances to others of their own kind, across national boundaries, as well as across other social subdivisions such as classes, then to their own fellow nationals." 7
"Where would modern culture be with them? Richard Davenport-Hones has pointed out that "The cosmpolitanism of homosexuality was a distinct refrain in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century confessional moments." 27
"Wayne Koestenbaum has goce as far as to call the Modernist period itself 'the Age of Inversion, when homosexuality was in the process of being undermined and traduced by its eerie opposite." 29
"In the poetry that followed, George deified him as an icon of immortal beauty. (Mortality has a habit of bringing on immortality.)" 133
"Between the two German wars of the present century the fashionable vice was probably homosexuality." So wrote T.H. White in 1950." 165
"So Modernism degenerates in two distinct ways: in England its aesthetic is watered down to the frivolous level of the Cochrane revues and fashion magazines,...whereas in Germany its aesthetic side is discarded in favour of the drive for the industrial and military efficiency of fascism." 175
"Louise MacNeice found that 'Cambridge was still full of Peter Pans but all the Peter Pans were now talking Marx." 177
"The modern history of homosexuality is also, perforce, a history of homophobic responses to homosexuality." 179
"...David Herbert, the second son of the fifteenth Earl of Pembroke..." 248
"Tangier was as much an imaginative construct as a geographical location, a metaphor for limbo, for a dead-end place, a place where everyone could act out his most extreme fantasies." 250-251
"The most overt gays tended to come from working-class backgrounds, while those from the middle classes invariably were more circumspect." 281
December 25, 2017
On the one hand, based on the number of pages I bookmarked, I clearly found quite a few passages that contained interesting thoughts or opinions (mostly of those the author is quoting than his own analysis) or references to authors that I hadn't heard of.
However, overall, it's an overly dense and disappointing read. If nothing else for the simple reason that it doesn't do what is says on the tin.
His definition of 'culture' is very narrow. The bulk of the book is a painstaking portrait of the sex lives of countless gay or bisexual writers, composers, dancers and similar creative types - mostly from the 19th century onwards; mostly men, but also some women; mostly in the US, Britain, France and Germany, but also some nods to Russia, Italy, Spain and Latin America. He also references their work and how their sexuality affected their output. He explores the emerging bar 'scene' and other gay venues in the various countries and the changing political climates.
A lot of this is fascinating, don't get me wrong. And, despite how detailed it is, it's surprisingly readable.
But there's no getting over that what he means by 'gay culture' is very restricted not only in terms of era and geography, but also social class and milieu.
And at the end of the day, he simply fails to even tackle the question posed in the book's subtitle. One could perhaps argue that he starts talking about this on the last few pages of the book but, even then, I'm not convinced.
So if that premise is what draws you to this book, you'll be similarly disappointed.
===============
One little fun aside, as an example of my bookmarked passages.
In 1929, Federico García Lorca spent a couple of days in England en route from Spain to the US.
However, overall, it's an overly dense and disappointing read. If nothing else for the simple reason that it doesn't do what is says on the tin.
His definition of 'culture' is very narrow. The bulk of the book is a painstaking portrait of the sex lives of countless gay or bisexual writers, composers, dancers and similar creative types - mostly from the 19th century onwards; mostly men, but also some women; mostly in the US, Britain, France and Germany, but also some nods to Russia, Italy, Spain and Latin America. He also references their work and how their sexuality affected their output. He explores the emerging bar 'scene' and other gay venues in the various countries and the changing political climates.
A lot of this is fascinating, don't get me wrong. And, despite how detailed it is, it's surprisingly readable.
But there's no getting over that what he means by 'gay culture' is very restricted not only in terms of era and geography, but also social class and milieu.
And at the end of the day, he simply fails to even tackle the question posed in the book's subtitle. One could perhaps argue that he starts talking about this on the last few pages of the book but, even then, I'm not convinced.
So if that premise is what draws you to this book, you'll be similarly disappointed.
===============
One little fun aside, as an example of my bookmarked passages.
In 1929, Federico García Lorca spent a couple of days in England en route from Spain to the US.
Travelling through England, [Lorca] formed the mistaken impression, conveyed by signs on the station platforms, that every town was called Bovril.
March 6, 2018
This book was a massive, gorgeous undertaking--the kind of queer cultural history I've been searching for over *years* but hadn't found yet. If you're looking for a history of queer rights' movements, this isn't going to be it. But if you're looking for a detailed history of various cultural scenes--gay Berlin/Paris, queer exiles in Tangier, etc--then this is the volume for you.
The first portion of the book was quite overwhelmingly western and white, which was rectified towards the end of the book with sections on Harlem and Tangier. I will also say that it was very much G-L-B focused (in that order), with no T--which was, frankly, a disappointment, as I was quite curious to see how trans artists fit into this narrative. (I mean, I know there's The Danish Girl, but that book is also a... fictionalization? of Lili Elbe's life, so I wanted to know a bit more about her real story.) Part of this might be based on who's out; I suppose it's a bit easier to find information on gay male authors, with fewer lesbians and self-identified bi people. (It's also worth noting that the subtitle refers to "gay culture" rather than "queer culture," so do make a note of that--sticks to its word. Man, there's so much I'd write about queer notions of communities here, but I'll refrain.)
Finally, it was a well-written book. The thing about academic histories is they can be dry. Woods' notes in his introductory note that he's a poet, but he also has a gift for story and setting the scene; the book crackles with energy when describing various cities, which is such a wonderful thing to experience. It was a really meaty, engrossing read; I learnt a lot (even about my favourites, such as EM Forster!) and would love to read more of Woods' work.
The first portion of the book was quite overwhelmingly western and white, which was rectified towards the end of the book with sections on Harlem and Tangier. I will also say that it was very much G-L-B focused (in that order), with no T--which was, frankly, a disappointment, as I was quite curious to see how trans artists fit into this narrative. (I mean, I know there's The Danish Girl, but that book is also a... fictionalization? of Lili Elbe's life, so I wanted to know a bit more about her real story.) Part of this might be based on who's out; I suppose it's a bit easier to find information on gay male authors, with fewer lesbians and self-identified bi people. (It's also worth noting that the subtitle refers to "gay culture" rather than "queer culture," so do make a note of that--sticks to its word. Man, there's so much I'd write about queer notions of communities here, but I'll refrain.)
Finally, it was a well-written book. The thing about academic histories is they can be dry. Woods' notes in his introductory note that he's a poet, but he also has a gift for story and setting the scene; the book crackles with energy when describing various cities, which is such a wonderful thing to experience. It was a really meaty, engrossing read; I learnt a lot (even about my favourites, such as EM Forster!) and would love to read more of Woods' work.
June 3, 2017
This was a disappointing read. The subtitle would lead the reader into thinking that this would be an analysis of what constituted gay culture and how this culture spread from the gay ghetto into the mainstream of world, or western at least, culture. Instead, what we get is a snapshot of the activities of, mostly, gay men and some lesbians who were active in the narrow worlds of Literature, "The Arts" and a few related fields. There is no attempt to analyse their impact on the modern world beyong their narrow range of followers and admirers and it would help greatly in following this account if the reader is already familiar with most of the characters who appear and disappear in its pages. Popular culture, which is vary much influenced in the modern world by LGBT people, rarely surfaces in this narrow account other than in a brief discussion of Hollywood, more or less in its classic period. Had the subtitle of this work not been so misleading, it would have left me less disappointed, though I would probably not have bought the book in the first place.
March 27, 2018
On my version of the book, there's a review saying " It's one of those books that make other books possible" and I couldn't agree more. This book is like the ABC of LGBT+ history and it's so thorough I couldn't help but wonder how much time it took to place all the facts, names and quotes together. The reader is confronted with hard, solid truths and it's clear how some things changed throughout the decade, but unfortunately, it's also clear that so many other things haven't.
I was disappointed only by the author's failed mentions of trans people and of Stonewall, I mean, trans people played a big role in the gay rights movement, so why not add their stories?
I was disappointed only by the author's failed mentions of trans people and of Stonewall, I mean, trans people played a big role in the gay rights movement, so why not add their stories?
Read
December 20, 2016A very well written, fascinating and enjoyable read about how Homosexuality affected High Culture in Europe in the first third of the 20th century, focusing especially on European Modernism before the great movement of refugee Artists and intellectuals to America in the 1930's and 40's. Some great gossip, and interesting ideas- for example about how the Russian Ballet homosexualized ballet itself and created a public space for male homosexuality. I do think that the claims of the title are not fulfilled or even attempted, as this is not a general history but a very specific one.
July 25, 2018
I was looking for a book to educate myself on the history of the LGBT+ community. Instead, what I got was a near endless listing of supposedly influential people without the context. While a lot of care and research has gone into the book (hence the 3 stars), I would have been more engrossed had there been a greater focus on what these figures did and how they paved the way for equality, rather than a who's who of quirky characters. While I still recommend this book to those interested in gay culture, be warned that the title leaves a lot to be desired.
July 14, 2019
Very torn between a 3 or 4 star rating for this! This was a very well-researched look at groups of influential queer people from history. I enjoyed how much this encompassed, we travel from London to Paris to Berlin to Russia to Tangier and more. At times, this was rather dense and some parts seemed like they could be edited down a bit. A lot of potted biographies of people and descriptions of their books etc. On the whole though, a really interesting read which has expanded my knowledge.
August 6, 2016
Though a bit lacking in terms of insight and incisive commentary, Woods offers an entertaining collection of anecdotes and cultural surveys concerning homosexual artists/writers/poets in the late 19th and 20th centuries. A good jumping off point for further exploration.
January 15, 2018
When I stumbled upon this book, I was really looking forward to reading it despite other reviews.
It was indeed very text heavy, and quite wordy- which was disappointing. Overall, there were some insightful tidbits of queer history that made up for the wordiness.
It was indeed very text heavy, and quite wordy- which was disappointing. Overall, there were some insightful tidbits of queer history that made up for the wordiness.
August 9, 2018
Incredibly informative and detailed. At times it jumps around a lot and Woods seems determined to put all of the info in there which made me feel like reading a gay dictionary. Invaluable for gay literary and cultural history though.
May 24, 2016
very good, although more could be said in multiple Volumes~~
July 2, 2016
There are some excellent sections in the book but also some that are dull; an uneven book. It doesn't really live up to its sub heading but it is an enjoyable, and also frustrating read.
July 3, 2016
fantastic, vast, eye-opening.
http://daily.jstor.org/gay-culture-an...
http://daily.jstor.org/gay-culture-an...
September 8, 2021
Let’s make a deal: Homintern is Gregory Woods’s cunning little pun for the supposed international conspiracy of queers to bring you art, culture, fashion, literature, home decorating, pop, gossip, drag and bitchy asides. Proving its existence proves more difficult than talking about fight club, whatever that means, although he has a darn good try.
This is a weighty piece heavy with name-dropping (I’m one of those queens who thinks when someone mentions Mrs Ottoline Morrell that I should have some clue who they’re talking about, but when I get to Google to check, a dreadful ennui envelopes, and I simply can’t be arsed). Homintern has a similar effect early on - names, sweetie, places, movements - an overwhelming tide of people some tenuously connected, some not even that. It all gets a bit overwhelming, despite the organisation on display in chapter and subheading.
Where it comes into its own is the final chapter drawing strands together under the heading of ‘new politics’ and Woods has some trenchant and sensible things to say about how an identity was forged from these disparate ingredients (apparently presaged by Engels who mused to Marx that if only the queers would organise they’d be a force majeure on account of numbers - I am the all-powerful gay, fear me!) How those who were “known to be gay on the cocktail circuit, or in the salons or country houses,” were not enough, but organisation and solidarity were required: the HIV epidemic was more promptly and effectively responded to in countries with an active gay rights movement than those without. Contrast if you will the US and Soviet responses.
Of course, many mourned the loss of the ‘fun’ to be had in the bad old days - “we mustn’t strip away the charm of the taboo, or lose the cult of the secret garden,” said Raymond Morel, summing up the appeal of being clandestine, outlaws, bold explorers. But then how to deal with “…the ones who let the side down, the ones who give us a bad name, the ones who rock the boat, the ones who go on about it all the time, the obsessives, the perverts.”
Some, like campaigner Peter Wildeblood, came to understand that the law and public prejudice could not be propitiated and defiance and courage might be needed. For him, the turning point was his arrest, along with Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, in the early 1950s: “I did not think that such things could happen in England, until they happened to me.” Even so, Wildeblood continued to be discomforted by any suggestion of overtness, in similar vein to “Virgil Thompson [who] organised his friends into two groups, the ‘openly queer’ and the ‘proper’.”
Whether this is proof beyond reasonable doubt of Woods’s thesis I’m not sure. As he admits, many claimed for queerdom in the fields of art and culture, let alone sport, science or politics, wouldn’t have recognised themselves as such and some were positively repulsed by the idea. There’s something in the notion of a gay/LGBT/queer sensibility but, engaging as Homintern is, it doesn’t quite carry it off. It may not be right but it’s ok that many a young LGBT today doesn’t know - or care - who Oscar Wilde was, let alone Noel Coward or Nijinsky. The queer Illuminati can rest easy - their secret is safe, for now, dear.
This is a weighty piece heavy with name-dropping (I’m one of those queens who thinks when someone mentions Mrs Ottoline Morrell that I should have some clue who they’re talking about, but when I get to Google to check, a dreadful ennui envelopes, and I simply can’t be arsed). Homintern has a similar effect early on - names, sweetie, places, movements - an overwhelming tide of people some tenuously connected, some not even that. It all gets a bit overwhelming, despite the organisation on display in chapter and subheading.
Where it comes into its own is the final chapter drawing strands together under the heading of ‘new politics’ and Woods has some trenchant and sensible things to say about how an identity was forged from these disparate ingredients (apparently presaged by Engels who mused to Marx that if only the queers would organise they’d be a force majeure on account of numbers - I am the all-powerful gay, fear me!) How those who were “known to be gay on the cocktail circuit, or in the salons or country houses,” were not enough, but organisation and solidarity were required: the HIV epidemic was more promptly and effectively responded to in countries with an active gay rights movement than those without. Contrast if you will the US and Soviet responses.
Of course, many mourned the loss of the ‘fun’ to be had in the bad old days - “we mustn’t strip away the charm of the taboo, or lose the cult of the secret garden,” said Raymond Morel, summing up the appeal of being clandestine, outlaws, bold explorers. But then how to deal with “…the ones who let the side down, the ones who give us a bad name, the ones who rock the boat, the ones who go on about it all the time, the obsessives, the perverts.”
Some, like campaigner Peter Wildeblood, came to understand that the law and public prejudice could not be propitiated and defiance and courage might be needed. For him, the turning point was his arrest, along with Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, in the early 1950s: “I did not think that such things could happen in England, until they happened to me.” Even so, Wildeblood continued to be discomforted by any suggestion of overtness, in similar vein to “Virgil Thompson [who] organised his friends into two groups, the ‘openly queer’ and the ‘proper’.”
Whether this is proof beyond reasonable doubt of Woods’s thesis I’m not sure. As he admits, many claimed for queerdom in the fields of art and culture, let alone sport, science or politics, wouldn’t have recognised themselves as such and some were positively repulsed by the idea. There’s something in the notion of a gay/LGBT/queer sensibility but, engaging as Homintern is, it doesn’t quite carry it off. It may not be right but it’s ok that many a young LGBT today doesn’t know - or care - who Oscar Wilde was, let alone Noel Coward or Nijinsky. The queer Illuminati can rest easy - their secret is safe, for now, dear.
February 26, 2021
From the trial of Oscar Wilde to the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969, the history of gay men and women in the world has often been one conducted in the shadows, where the straight world would prefer they reside (unless, of course, said absence from view means that the gays are plotting against the straights). But despite such persecution, many creative voices have emerged over the last century and a half to give voice to the wide diversity of LGBTQ culture, and Gregory Woods shows in this book how international those voices are.
"Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberate the Modern World" takes its title from the notion of a "homintern" or "homosexual international" that coordinated gay culture around the world much in the way that the Communist International ("Comintern") supposedly did for Communism. It's a joke phrase, but it does contain the grain of truth that many of the gay subcultures of various nations shared connective tissue because of figures who connected across racial, nationalist, or class lines to find one another and dare to speak of "the love that dare not speak its name." An exhaustive overview of the international homosexual networks, this book goes a long way towards illuminating for readers many aspects of homosexual culture and history that might otherwise be unfamiliar. Woods, a poet by trade, ends up focusing on the arts (legendary for its supposed tolerance for LGBTQ, though Woods highlights how such tolerance was often bought at the price of silence on issues affecting the gay community), and he documents many famous people (some of whom aren't as well known today as they were at the height of their creative work) who managed to enjoy healthy, fulfilling same-sex relationships (as well as the obvious instances of gay creators whose love lives were filled with tragedy).
"Homintern" is an important work that has some flaws: sometimes Woods brings up a creator to be discussed for a few paragraphs, moves on to another creative, and then circles back again to the creator he was originally talking about, without much in the way of context or a segue. It's a small matter, however, and the book as a whole highlights the critical importance of representation for homosexuals in everyday life and how the denial of that fostered creative environments all over Europe and elsewhere in the decades after Oscar Wilde's conviction (Paris and Weimar-era Berlin being the most prominent hot spots for gay culture, but also Italy, Tangier, and New York City). This is both a quick survey of some critically important LGBRQ creators and a deep dive into the ways in which gay culture has come to be appreciated as inexorable from "mainstream" culture.
"Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberate the Modern World" takes its title from the notion of a "homintern" or "homosexual international" that coordinated gay culture around the world much in the way that the Communist International ("Comintern") supposedly did for Communism. It's a joke phrase, but it does contain the grain of truth that many of the gay subcultures of various nations shared connective tissue because of figures who connected across racial, nationalist, or class lines to find one another and dare to speak of "the love that dare not speak its name." An exhaustive overview of the international homosexual networks, this book goes a long way towards illuminating for readers many aspects of homosexual culture and history that might otherwise be unfamiliar. Woods, a poet by trade, ends up focusing on the arts (legendary for its supposed tolerance for LGBTQ, though Woods highlights how such tolerance was often bought at the price of silence on issues affecting the gay community), and he documents many famous people (some of whom aren't as well known today as they were at the height of their creative work) who managed to enjoy healthy, fulfilling same-sex relationships (as well as the obvious instances of gay creators whose love lives were filled with tragedy).
"Homintern" is an important work that has some flaws: sometimes Woods brings up a creator to be discussed for a few paragraphs, moves on to another creative, and then circles back again to the creator he was originally talking about, without much in the way of context or a segue. It's a small matter, however, and the book as a whole highlights the critical importance of representation for homosexuals in everyday life and how the denial of that fostered creative environments all over Europe and elsewhere in the decades after Oscar Wilde's conviction (Paris and Weimar-era Berlin being the most prominent hot spots for gay culture, but also Italy, Tangier, and New York City). This is both a quick survey of some critically important LGBRQ creators and a deep dive into the ways in which gay culture has come to be appreciated as inexorable from "mainstream" culture.
April 19, 2020
THE SUBTITLE IS misleading, I would say, insofar as it suggests the book has a central argument along the lines of "Gay culture liberated the modern world by...," along with definitions of "gay," "modern," and "liberated." This is not that book (though Woods could write that book, I expect). This is something more like a survey of LGBTQ presence in and contribution to a variety of artistic and cultural milieus in (mainly, but not exclusively) Europe during (mainly, but not exclusively) the years from World War I to the 1960s.
Was the subtitle the publisher's idea, I wonder?
Well, whoever does write a book about gay culture liberating the modern world will definitely profit from keeping this book at their elbow. There's been nothing like it since Jeffrey Meyers's serviceable but long outdated Homosexuality and Literature, and Woods's book is not only more up-to-date, but also more detailed, more comprehensive, and better grounded in the culture it studies. It is a great complement to Louis Crompton's Homosexuality and Civilization, which only gets as far as about 1800; Woods's scholarship rivals Crompton's but his style (thankfully) is not as dry.
As someone particularly interested in Anglophone literature between the world wars, I can only say the book is a goddamn goldmine.
Anyone out there wondering what "Homintern" means? It's a British joke dating to the 1930s, authorship disputed (as Woods discusses). The "Comintern" was shorthand for the Third Communist International, supposedly the master committee for international co-ordination among Communist parties, but in fact Moscow-dominated and eventually little more than another instrument of Soviet foreign policy. It had a reputation for being a network of manipulation of unguessable extent, and some wit (Auden? Connolly?) adopted the word to express the idea that literary homosexuals too had a kind of support network of unguessable extent, manipulating who reviewed what, who got which editorial post, etc.
Sounds insidious, right? Because straight male writers never indulge in log-rolling, or give their friends hyperbolic blurbs, or nudge grants and appointments in certain ways, or abuse their privileges in any way whatsoever. Yep, everything fair and above board.
So the book's title is a joke on the joke. Did 20th century gay writers know each other, network with each other, support each other? Yes, sometimes, and we're all the better off because they did.
Was the subtitle the publisher's idea, I wonder?
Well, whoever does write a book about gay culture liberating the modern world will definitely profit from keeping this book at their elbow. There's been nothing like it since Jeffrey Meyers's serviceable but long outdated Homosexuality and Literature, and Woods's book is not only more up-to-date, but also more detailed, more comprehensive, and better grounded in the culture it studies. It is a great complement to Louis Crompton's Homosexuality and Civilization, which only gets as far as about 1800; Woods's scholarship rivals Crompton's but his style (thankfully) is not as dry.
As someone particularly interested in Anglophone literature between the world wars, I can only say the book is a goddamn goldmine.
Anyone out there wondering what "Homintern" means? It's a British joke dating to the 1930s, authorship disputed (as Woods discusses). The "Comintern" was shorthand for the Third Communist International, supposedly the master committee for international co-ordination among Communist parties, but in fact Moscow-dominated and eventually little more than another instrument of Soviet foreign policy. It had a reputation for being a network of manipulation of unguessable extent, and some wit (Auden? Connolly?) adopted the word to express the idea that literary homosexuals too had a kind of support network of unguessable extent, manipulating who reviewed what, who got which editorial post, etc.
Sounds insidious, right? Because straight male writers never indulge in log-rolling, or give their friends hyperbolic blurbs, or nudge grants and appointments in certain ways, or abuse their privileges in any way whatsoever. Yep, everything fair and above board.
So the book's title is a joke on the joke. Did 20th century gay writers know each other, network with each other, support each other? Yes, sometimes, and we're all the better off because they did.
September 4, 2021
I really enjoyed the major aspects of this book, talking about the different aspects that one needs to keep in mind when considering development of the LGBT (but almost solely the gay and lesbian world) from the 19th century onwards. It shows some impressive understanding of the different factors, extensive list of people and authors who marked their presence in this world, and interaction with literature and academic sources. I really enjoyed reading about it, also questioning things.
However, the reason I only give it three stars is for a few reasons. First, it does barely go beyond the Eurocentric scheme: non-European and American world is only discussed or Everytime put at the center, neglecting developments outside of it. This is rather odd, given it tries to interact with issues of Orientalism. Second, it is too focused on literature and elitist culture, discussing select groups that indeed have an important role in LGBT culture, but gay culture is more than the elite. It would be okay if the book would account for this. Third, it does not provide this notion of actually changing the modern world. It is true that the book discusses some forms of resistance against restrictive measures, but unfortunately, it does not interact with these restrictions and anti-gay laws, making it therefore unable to assess it's proper influence.
In conclusion, this work is good if you want to get familiar with some cultural Western icons in Western culture and the times they live in, but not a complete assessment of the impact of the LGBT impact on our world.
However, the reason I only give it three stars is for a few reasons. First, it does barely go beyond the Eurocentric scheme: non-European and American world is only discussed or Everytime put at the center, neglecting developments outside of it. This is rather odd, given it tries to interact with issues of Orientalism. Second, it is too focused on literature and elitist culture, discussing select groups that indeed have an important role in LGBT culture, but gay culture is more than the elite. It would be okay if the book would account for this. Third, it does not provide this notion of actually changing the modern world. It is true that the book discusses some forms of resistance against restrictive measures, but unfortunately, it does not interact with these restrictions and anti-gay laws, making it therefore unable to assess it's proper influence.
In conclusion, this work is good if you want to get familiar with some cultural Western icons in Western culture and the times they live in, but not a complete assessment of the impact of the LGBT impact on our world.
January 17, 2021
An odd book, that doesn't seem to stick to a central narrative matching the title. Rather than explain to the reader how the gay and lesbian creative have helped to liberate the world the majority of the book is more of a majestic tour through the remarkable interconnectedness of the non-hetero artistic community through the late ninteenth and twentieth century. While their works are discussed the impact of their work on the wider world is less covered, maybe left deliberately for the reader to consider, maybe assuming a level of knowledge of these works that I do not have.
For me, interest peaked and lowered depending on the familiarity of the names mentioned, but as a whole the book held my interest and made me want to look up modern works about the people and times.
One thing to note, is the sheer amount of older men enjoying the bodies of teenage boys. This is included without comment through the book but to me does jar.
For me, interest peaked and lowered depending on the familiarity of the names mentioned, but as a whole the book held my interest and made me want to look up modern works about the people and times.
One thing to note, is the sheer amount of older men enjoying the bodies of teenage boys. This is included without comment through the book but to me does jar.
Read
June 28, 2023DNF. I gave it over 100 pages, but I'd started skipping paragraphs, so I decided it wasn't the book for me. I just found it to be too dense with biographical detail to be enjoyable, and I couldn't grasp the point of it all.
October 24, 2019
I have very mixed feeling about this book. First of all, it is academic in nature rather than a popular culture survey. The author writes in an erudite style more suited to a college course in Gay Studies. Any points that he wants to make is obscured by the language and hundreds of literary references that he makes. I did learn a lot but I truly can't say this was a pleasurable read. The book was tabled at the NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit on Camp and has a bright pink color. It is not campy in the least. Caveat Emptor!!!!!
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