Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Illustrations (p. ix)
• Preface (p. xi)
• Acknowledgements (p. xiv)
• 1 The Homintern Conspiracy (p. 1)
• Beginning to Count Themselves (p. 1)
• Natural Secret Agents and Natural Traitors (p. 6)
• The Girls' Friendly Society (p. 12)
• Positions of Influence (p. 22)
• All Queers Meet Each Other (p. 26)
• 2 Scandal and After (p. 31)
• The Wilde Case (1895) (p. 31)
• The Eulenberg Case (1906-09) (p. 42)
• The Pemberton Billing Case (1918) (p. 44)
• Getting Away (p. 46)
• Radclyffe Hall and The Well of Loneliness (1928-29) (p. 49)
• Dolly Wilde: The Next Generation (p. 54)
• Lord Alfred Douglas (p. 57)
• 3 The Northern Exotic (p. 61)
• Moonlight People (p. 61)
• Lovers of the Beautiful (p. 64)
• The Russian Ballet (p. 71)
• The Swedish Ballet (p. 79)
• Sergei Eisenstein (p. 81)
• Tamara de Lempicka (p. 84)
• Rudolf Nureyev (p. 87)
• 4 France and its Visitors (p. 94)
• The Paris Scene (p. 94)
• Pedestrians and Pederasts: Americans in Paris (p. 106)
• The Modern Sapphic Paris (p. 115)
• Indifferent Tolerance (p. 124)
• 5 Germany and its Visitors (p. 132)
• The George Kreis (p. 132)
• The Berlin Scene (p. 137)
• Magnus Hirschfeld (p. 141)
• Visitors to Berlin (p. 146)
• Flirting with Fascism (p. 156)
• 6 Frivolity to Seriousness (p. 165)
• The Fashionable Vice (p. 165)
• Modernity Outdated (p. 170)
• Becoming Serious: Evelyn Waugh (p. 174)
• The Nancy Poets and Their Detractors (p. 176)
• Pansipoetical Poets (p. 184)
• 7 Berlin Propagandised (p. 190)
• Sodom on Spree (p. 190)
• The Homosexuality of Hitler(ism) (p. 194)
• Publications and Bookshops (p. 198)
• Sexual Tourism (p. 201)
• 8 The Southern Exotic (p. 208)
• That Southwards Drift (p. 208)
• Capri and its Visitors (p. 214)
• Sicily and its Visitors (p. 225)
• The Intolerant South (p. 229)
• In Every Land an Oriental Colony (p. 234)
• Tangier and its Visitors (p. 246)
• The Oriental Occidentalism Yukio Mishima (p. 257)
• 9 The New World (p. 261)
• Harlem and its Visitors (p. 261)
• A New Sodom (p. 271)
• Gay Hollywood (p. 280)
• New York to Havana and Back (p. 286)
• Manuel Puig (p. 298)
• 10 The New Politics (p. 303)
• A Lot of Privacy (p. 303)
• The 'Good' Homosexual (p. 305)
• The 'Bad' Homosexual (p. 312)
• From the Covert to the Overt (p. 319)
• Culture and Gay Culture (p. 326)
• Madness Begets Madness (p. 334)
• Notes (p. 340)
• Bibliography (p. 380)
• Index (p. 402)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Using many dozens of quotes from obscure novels, biographies, and poems, Woods (emer., gay and lesbian studies, Nottingham Trent Univ., UK) provides a meandering, gossipy survey of the lives and loves of gay musicians, actors, composers, writers, dancers, painters, filmmakers, politicians, and spies throughout Europe and the Americas (North, Central, and South) from the late 19th century to the present. Although the subtitle suggests a thesis that will serve as an organizing principle, the topic "how gay culture liberated the modern world" is almost nonexistent. The only coherence in the book is that the author devotes chapters to particular geographic areas (Germany, northern Europe, Harlem, France) with a bit of chronology. Woods describes some problems LGBT subcultures have faced: for example, non-gay peers thinking LGBT people were traitors or a suspicious cabal plotting to destroy the moral fiber of society and stereotyping gay men (think Oscar Wilde) as witty, effete, flamboyant, upper-class sexual predators likely to be arrested. Summing Up: Optional. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Richard W. Smith, California State University, Northridge

Booklist Review

In this marvelous mess of a book, which British poet and academic Woods (A History of Gay Literature, 1999) describes as a magical mystery tour, the author examines European and American gay and lesbian networks in the twentieth century and their impact on the arts. Homintern was a funny play on Comintern (Communist International, an international organization advocating communism), likely created in Auden's circle to describe their sprawling network of friendships. By Joseph McCarthy's era, it took on a sinister, conspiratorial meaning. Woods begins with the enormously influential trial of Oscar Wilde, then moves around the continent and century from Russia and Diaghilev to Paris and Stein, from Berlin and Isherwood to Naples after WWII, finally landing in Harlem and Hollywood, all the while tapping letters, diaries, and novels to illustrate the vitality of queer artistic communities. But this is no academic text. Woods regales the reader with an avalanche of stories, ribald gossip, and lengthy asides that collectively confirm the book's central thesis: gay culture, or at least gays and lesbians, did indeed liberate the modern world.--Kenney, Brian Copyright 2016 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A comprehensive anthropological survey exploring the ways in which the gay community has changed the world. In 1895, Oscar Wilde set a precedent that would change the lives of homosexual men all over Europeand, eventually, the world. Accused of having same-sex relations, he was prosecuted and sent to jail. Most men accused of homosexual acts would have denied the fact, but Wilde did not. This choice set an example that defined new terms for the inner life of the artist, the aesthete, and, more importantly, the European gay man. It spurred the rise of the modernist sensibilities and underground communities in Paris and Berlin. The universal appeal of the Wilde case also led to conspiracy theories about homosexuals. As Woods (Emeritus, Gay and Lesbian Studies/Nottingham Trent Univ.; The Myth of the Last Taboo: Queer Subcultural Studies, 2015, etc.) explains, "to speak of homosexual internationalism wasto conjure up the threat of subversive conspiracy. In this case, however, the Homintern was understood to be conspiring against the Comintern, rather than in league with it." This conspiracy, however irrational it may seem, fueled the decadence of the 1920s and '30s and allowed homosexual men to travel from Russia to Paris and from Paris to Berlin to Capri and beyond. As a result, artists and writers formulated a new, cross-cultural art practice: "Values previously taken for granted were deliberately being subverted; rules of perspective and harmony, even of logic, were deliberately being flouted; standards of decency and good taste were deliberately being violated." Woods delivers a well-researched, compelling study of how countless gay men have affected, influenced, and restructured the cultural climate for more than 100 years. He also addresses diversity and remains objective, all the while slipping in some personal opinions about political climates across the generations. An information-heavy book that provides a wonderful resource for those interested in learning about the rise of gay poetics at the onset of the 20th century. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.