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... but I fear it may not be.
American - but frequently expatriate
Gay - but his work usually featured bisexuals
Having been dimissed by critics for far too long as being very much "of his time and place", his reputation is now starting to experience a rehabilitation.
A lifelong hero of mine.
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"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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He looks so vulnerable. I have no idea who he is. I suggest a clue at about 11pm UK time
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy wrote:
> He looks so vulnerable. I have no idea who he is. I suggest a clue at about 11pm UK time
It's that explicit vulnerability that makes that 1955 pic of him in his early 30’s my favourite photo. But once you've noticed it, it's there in all the later, perhaps better-known, photos as well (see below). And from that vulnerability he drew an astonishing compassion and an unconquerable strength.
The strength to overcome the temptation to violence he so readily admitted, and become a strong supporter of the non-violent Civil Rights movement.
The strength to withstand Eldridge Cleaver referring to him and others in the statement “many Negro homosexuals... are outraged and frustrated because in their sickness they are unable to have a baby by a white man," (Soul on Ice), and respond with "I was very much impressed by Eldridge... I knew he'd written about me in Soul on Ice …. Naturally, when I did read it, I didn't like what he had to say about me at all. But, eventually - especially as I admired the book and felt him to be valuable and rare - I thought I could see why he felt impelled to issue what was in fact a warning: he was being a zealous watchman on the city wall, and I do not say that with a sneer.”
The strength to rise from impoverished Harlem to forge a unique and powerful prose voice - he once wrote " I hazard that the King James Bible, the rhetoric of the store-front church, something ironic and violent and perpetually understated in Negro speech - and something of Dickens's love for bravura - have something to do with me today; ".
He was a teenaged preacher between the ages of 14 and 17 – a background shared by many of his most striking characters. That fact informs the conscious irony of taking the title of his most vivid and searing collection of essays from the Book of Job (ch 18 v17-18 ).
I may add that he was the first more-or-less openly gay author (essayist & novelist) I ever read – when I was 13, in 1968. And his apparent view - that the struggles of each of us (for identity, approval, self-affirmation: perhaps ultimately for love) are, in fact merely aspects of the same struggle - has shaped my political and moral compass ever since.
Another pic of the same guy – taken some two decades later:
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"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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Guest
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On fire! |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 2344
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James Baldwin!
Now, if the rules allow, may I offer one I tried to offer before (like this one, a portrait of an artist as a young man):
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Knowing Ron this is music. No idea if a musician, conductor or composer though
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Guest
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On fire! |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 2344
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??? Tchaikovsky???????????
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Gesundheit! ~passes tissue~
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Guest
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On fire! |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 2344
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Bravo, Marc! On to you, now!
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Re: Should be easy ... 
