Tom Eubanks turns the “AIDS Memoir” on its head and in the process provides everyone, regardless of life’s experience, with an incredibly entertaining read…. read more

Although there’s plenty of travel, Berger doesn’t consider his book travel literature. Following one of his literary idols, Lawrence Durrell, Berger aims instead for a “residence book.”… read more

To those lucky saps who find themselves in possession of The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy (Liveright Publishing): be warned. The temptation to belly up to all 58 stories, written between the late 1930s and 2003, may be overwhelming. Eager readers who opt to binge will discover that Purdy’s particular prose is best consumed… read more

One thing the reviewing of diaries can do is deflate the zeppelin of personality one has created around the writer, in this case, author Christopher Isherwood, whose crystal-clear stories of conflicted characters have been ridden blissfully by many for years…… read more

With the publication of The Harvey Milk Interviews, editor Vince Emery humanizes the slain politician, allowing Milk’s own words to temper the hagiography advanced by Randy Shilts’s The Mayor Of Castro Street, as well as the subsequent documentary that brought Milk to a wider audience…. read more

Fans of Hollywood, once content with maps detailing the homes of movie stars, now prefer detailed flow charts of the stars’ sex lives, Venn diagrams of the daisy chains of the rich and famous, and vivid tell-alls like Full Service (Grove Press). With the assistance of ghost-writer Lionel Friedberg and the prompting of Tennessee Williams… read more

In a 1959 letter to his parents, William S. Burroughs confessed: “I give as much attention to a letter as I do to anything I write […].” In Rub Out the Words: The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1959-1974, editor Bill Morgan displays some of the author’s best work…. read more

One of the heroes responsible for changing the medical establishment’s understanding that gay people can be sane, Silverstein helped sway the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 1973. What’s most disturbing (or exonerating) about For the Ferryman is that even a shrink of Silverstein’s stature can be sucked into a tumultuous psycho-dependent relationship…. read more

While drafting an introductory letter to Johnny Mathis in his new collection of writing, Role Models, John Waters thinks: “Explain what? A role model? Someone who has led a life even more explosive than mine, a person whose exaggerated fame or notoriety has made him or her somehow smarter or more glamorous than I could… read more