Items
Theme is exactly
Correspondence
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Straight hearts' delight : love poems and selected letters, 1947-1980 Containing thirty years of poetry and numerous letters, this book relates the lives and works of two key figures of the Beat Generation. Documenting chronologically the relationship between Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) and Peter Orlovsky (1933-2010), the book is not only a record of their love but also of the milieu in which they lived and worked. The book contains previously unpublished poems and is illustrated, including with a Richard Avedon photograph of the authors naked. Edited by Winston Leyland, the authors were involved in the book’s production and contributed footnotes. As with many Gay Sunshine Press (and Fag Rag) publications, it was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency established by the US Congress.
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The disrobing : sex and satire Poet and author Royal Murdoch, known to friends as Kenneth, was born in California in 1898 and moved to Mexico City in the mid-1960s, where he died in 1981. ‘The Disrobing’, ten copies of which were seized in the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids, is a posthumously published collection spanning fifty years, including poetry, diary extracts, letters and part of an unfinished novel. It was edited by Gay Sunshine’s Winston Leyland. Murdoch himself wrote of ‘Gay Sunshine Journal’ that “I was already an old man when I first saw an issue” and “each issue brings me a renewed sense of liberation”. Murdoch’s prose works in particular describe life in pre-Stonewall America. His papers are now held by the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
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The Kryptonite kid : a novel An affecting novel of one-sided letters to Superman from schoolboy Jerry Chariot and his best friend Robert Sipanno. Filled with a mixture of curiosity and naivety (down to the preservation of Jerry’s childlike spelling and grammar), the letters wrestle with everyday problems of homelife, hero-worship and Catholic schooling as well as questions about what “a queer” is and whether Superman pees out of his “Thing”. Joseph Torchia (1946-1996), a journalist for various newspapers on the West Coast of the US, published one other full-length work and a short story, and wrote two further unpublished novels. He turned to photography later in life. His papers are held at Stanford University.