drdevience's Full Review: Stephen O. Murray - American Gay
In recognition of the birthday of Minnesota author Sinclair Lewis on February 7, Stephen Murray is sponsoring a Minnesota Writeoff. How could I resist the opportunity to review, then, my own favorite Minnesotan ever...
Sometimes, when you order a book you have one expectation on what it will be like.. then when it arrives it is something completely different. I had expected an expose on life in the gay community, told kind of in a story-mode way. An easy read, if you will.
What I got is a text book, pretty much. I would use it in upper-level Sociology classes. No, I mean seriously I Would Use It if I ever decided to go teach some classes again. What that means is, it's not dry and boring as one usually expects from academic endeavors, and it is very well presented. Every premise the author puts forth, or slams, is backed up quite convincingly.. and in a very low-key humor to boot.
The reason I target upper level classes is because in order to 'get' some of the subtle digs and humor, you really have to already have at least a passing familiarity with the big names of Sociology. Luckily, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber are all folks I readily recognized. Murray draws from them and others on numerous occasions so if you don't know them, you will be lost.
At any rate, I think you should all go learn about those folks just for the sake of learning. Everyone should familiarize themselves with concepts such as Structural-Functionalism and Symbolic Interactionist Theory. (ok, off soap box.. I think)
But this book is not about them. It just draws from some of their models. It's about being Gay in America, and all that entails... even occasionally touching on events hundreds of years ago. Murray takes us pretty much from the beginning and shows us what did (and what didn't) impact the gay community. (By gay, I'm being lazy and including lesbian.. Murray uses the term 'Lesbigay' to encompass gay, lesbian, and bi-sexual.. but gay is much less to type. Bite me.)
The humor begins as early as the introduction. DO read the footnotes here and throughout the text. That's where most of the cute jabs take place. heh. For instance, in the Intro (page 3 to be exact) he sets the tone by footnoting:
Gerard.. suggested that I was a closet Weberian. I thought that my comparativism was explicitly Weberian...
Nice little jab, that, and it made me alert to watch for others. There were plenty. He takes some events that have been heralded as the penultimate occurence in gay life and shows why that view is faulty. One in particular is the Stonewall Inn raid in 1969. Many put forth that that was like the defining moment in public awareness on how gays were being mistreated and drew in folks from the 'mainstream' in support of them. Not so says Murray, and he goes on to show exactly why. Murray deftly takes apart that fallacy and makes it look downright stupid.
In fact, things started happening well before that in San Francisco, and much more definitively. To be honest, I knew nothing of any of these events prior to reading this book, so it was all very enlightening to me. But if I had been buying into that Stonewall thang, I'd feel really ignorant about now.
And no. I am not going to explain any of those to you. That's why you should buy the book. Educate yourself.
The topics he hits on are how communities formed in America, the social life and how they meet each other, how events have been falsely depicted in the past, the promiscuity paradigm, the role played by gays in society, and just about anything you might like to know about American Gays.
There are no pictures, but I'm sure the majority of you will get over that. heh.
My final recommendation is to buy this book if you have any interest in the gay community at all, or in sociology in general. Do familiarize yourselves first though with basic sociological tenets so you will understand when Steve is being witty...
American Gay was written by our own beloved host, Stephen Murray. Let's have a nice round of applause folks. Exceptionally well done.
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