The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City Review

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The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City ReviewGay Artists in Modern American Culture is a well-researched look at the history of an idea: that an organized group of gay males had overtaken American culture, high and low, and was using it to undermine American values at home and America's standing abroad. The book is full of insights that may surprise the uninitiated, for example, the idea that the "closet" is a mostly 60's-era creation that gay men were already out of during the 20's and 30's. The sheer number of gay men on the list of mid-20th century American artists is also astonishing - nearly every major composer and most of the playwrights, a good number of visual artists and a healthy smattering of authors, architects, and social critics. Also notable, the book exposes how views once confined to arcane psychoanalytic theory slowly entered the mainstream, both right and left, which distorted the public's previously condescending, but not vicious, views on gay men (and women, to an extent). It's a complicated, but truly new (for me) explanation of history.
Despite these strengths, the book disappoints on a few levels. One, it suffers from the defect of most social histories: to discuss general trends and other abstractions precisely requires a new and jargon-filled language. Also, to do so can require you to skip other real examples in the service of your general thesis, leading to some eye-glazing passages. I say this with the huge caveat of having only skimmed the chapter "Barber at the Met" - an entire chapter on a real example. Lastly, once the book enters the 1980's, the author is clearly not discussing his expertise and most of the ideas are rather banal and no longer focusing on artists as much as an ill-defined gay culture. That said, the book is worth checking out, especially for its many pithy quotes and its dissection of the McCarthy-era "Lavender Scare."The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City Overview

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