Scan barcode
A review by joehartman
City of Night by John Rechy
4.0
On my first two attempts to read City Of Night, I found it impossible to get past opening incident of the book, which I found pitiful, heartbreaking and infuriating. As much as I tried to move past it, I decided I did not want to steep myself in a world in which this kind of sadness was likely one of many. so I closed the book and tried to forget it. Twice. And yet its place in the canon of LGBTQ fiction, the time during which the novel is set, and the implied promise of a seamy underbelly of life that would likely seem somewhat tame by today's standards, these things brought me back to it last week.
I was able to make it through those first few moments of the book, in which the narrator recalls a moment in his childhood when he was powerless to stop the harsh realities of the world from hammering down upon him and those he loved, and powered through until the youngman had set off to New York to seek his future. It was a world populated by cruel and colorful characters who reflexively jab and pick at and dismiss others, participating in a world that has scarred them without questioning the rules they are following. It's dark friends. It's bleak. And it feels very, very true.
As I continued reading it, this book left me feeling tainted long after I closed it. It sat with me on the subway, as I walked through Times Square, polluted my fantasies of Hollywood past, it just seeped into me. And yet, I couldn't abandon it this time. I had to see it through to the end to try and understand what the author was saying about his world, and America, and life in general, in spite of how I felt about a world in which sexual allure is the only thing of real value, and then only as a commodity to be traded and bartered for and used to make oneself feel worthy, and to staunch the pain of what can be a very poisonous world.
Having finished the book last night, I have to disagree with those who dismiss this as irrelevant today, or who clash with the out of date practices and beliefs it shows in regards to race and gender. It is a book reflecting the belief's of its time, and the people in that world survive as best they can, unquestionably accepting the pablum they've been fed. Rebelling against it as best they know how, but in that rebelling they pay forward the little betrayals and begrudgingly accepted gropings that fuel this world. They are not strong enough to question the rules, because these rules feel too ingrained, to powerful, to ancient to be challenged and overcome. And make no mistake, there is nothing half hazard or accidental about this book. Each seamy detail and barely missed opportunity is there for a reason.
Its characters are not people I want to know, and its cruelties are those I want to deny out of existence, but it is incredibly well crafted book, almost tenderly so. And it forces the kind of self examination in the reader that the narrator seems so desperate to elude. Which is why, as much I feel it has affected me in adverse ways during its reading, and as grateful as I am to at least in some way be putting it behind me, my respect for it continues to grow, and I believe it deserves its place in the canon of LGBTQ literature.
I was able to make it through those first few moments of the book, in which the narrator recalls a moment in his childhood when he was powerless to stop the harsh realities of the world from hammering down upon him and those he loved, and powered through until the youngman had set off to New York to seek his future. It was a world populated by cruel and colorful characters who reflexively jab and pick at and dismiss others, participating in a world that has scarred them without questioning the rules they are following. It's dark friends. It's bleak. And it feels very, very true.
As I continued reading it, this book left me feeling tainted long after I closed it. It sat with me on the subway, as I walked through Times Square, polluted my fantasies of Hollywood past, it just seeped into me. And yet, I couldn't abandon it this time. I had to see it through to the end to try and understand what the author was saying about his world, and America, and life in general, in spite of how I felt about a world in which sexual allure is the only thing of real value, and then only as a commodity to be traded and bartered for and used to make oneself feel worthy, and to staunch the pain of what can be a very poisonous world.
Having finished the book last night, I have to disagree with those who dismiss this as irrelevant today, or who clash with the out of date practices and beliefs it shows in regards to race and gender. It is a book reflecting the belief's of its time, and the people in that world survive as best they can, unquestionably accepting the pablum they've been fed. Rebelling against it as best they know how, but in that rebelling they pay forward the little betrayals and begrudgingly accepted gropings that fuel this world. They are not strong enough to question the rules, because these rules feel too ingrained, to powerful, to ancient to be challenged and overcome. And make no mistake, there is nothing half hazard or accidental about this book. Each seamy detail and barely missed opportunity is there for a reason.
Its characters are not people I want to know, and its cruelties are those I want to deny out of existence, but it is incredibly well crafted book, almost tenderly so. And it forces the kind of self examination in the reader that the narrator seems so desperate to elude. Which is why, as much I feel it has affected me in adverse ways during its reading, and as grateful as I am to at least in some way be putting it behind me, my respect for it continues to grow, and I believe it deserves its place in the canon of LGBTQ literature.