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Ladataan... Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997Tekijä: Alvin Orloff
Books Read in 2019 (1,036) Ladataan...
Kirjaudu LibraryThingiin nähdäksesi, pidätkö tästä kirjasta vai et. Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta. I really wanted to love this book, especially after the eloquent and thought-provoking introductory chapter by Alexander Chee. Queer history is so important to me, and often underdocumented and even more rarely well-recalled by younger generations. The introduction had me thinking about all kinds of parallels between the AIDS crisis and climate change, anticipatory grief and tragedies of the past. That said, this book just reproduced so many tropes of gay white male culture that I found myself recoiling as I read it. References made to "Gender Issues" and racist tropes ("Native American facepaint") that were prevalent at the time documented by this book but with no acknowledgement of the harm of these stereotypes can do in present day culture or did do in history feels to me like it embodies so much of what is problematic within white gay male culture and what continues to make LGBTQ2S spaces inaccessible for so many folks. This story is well worth telling, but I don't feel that the book itself holds up, unfortunately. ( ) Orloff’s memoir takes us through the late 70s, 80s and 90s club scene in San Francisco. In 1977 he took a bus to Polk Street, and his adventure began. While much of the first part of the story is about relentlessly cruising for sex, whether it be in bars, parks, or bathrooms, there is more to it. There is endless dancing (it was, after all, the disco era), a lot of humor, parties, fashion (both high and vintage), a deep knowledge of old movies, Broardway, and Art Deco, and, above all, irony. While he was a very shy person, he performed with the Popstitutes and Klubstitute before becoming a deejay. He is open about his time spent as a sex worker and as a stripper. He comes across as a genuinely kind person. Then AIDS hit. No one knew where it came from, or what it would do. People were dying, right and left. Friends and lovers were lost. A way of life came to a close as the landscape became grim. This part of the story is difficult to read, but the author is so easy to read that I was engaged just as much as in the times that were more fun. The book is absorbing and humorous; I stayed up nights reading it. There are some marvelous photos and posters from the club years, too. The Publisher Says: DISASTERAMA: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997, is the true story of Alvin Orloff who, as a shy kid from the suburbs of San Francisco, stumbled into the wild eclectic crowd of Crazy Club Kids, Punk Rock Nutters, Goofy Goofballs, Fashion Victims, Disco Dollies, Happy Hustlers, and Dizzy Twinks of post-Stonewall American queer culture of the late 1970s, only to see the “subterranean lavender twilit shadow world of the gay ghetto” ravished by AIDS in the 1980s. In Disasterama, Orloff recalls the delirious adventures of his youth—from San Francisco to Los Angeles to New York—where insane nights, deep friendships with the creatives of the underground, and thrilling bi-coastal living led to a free-spirited life of art, manic performance, high camp antics, and exotic sexual encounters. Orloff looks past the politics of AIDS to the people on the ground, friends of his who did not survive AIDS’ wrath—the boys in black leather jackets and cackling queens in tacky frocks—remembering them not as victims, but as people who loved life, loved fun, and who were a part of the insane jigsaw of Orloff’s friends. In Disasterama, Orloff tells their story: the true tale of how a bunch of pathologically flippant kids floundered through a deadly disaster. My Review: I'm Author Orloff's age. Despite being born within hailing distance of the place, I spent little time in San Francisco, more in Austin (a surprisingly queer place even then!) and New York, but the world we lived in as young men has utterly vanished. Many of the guys I knew are dead...many aren't...but all of us have empty slots where loved people once stood. But enough long-face! What a fast-paced and nostalgic look back at a moment when being young was fun! It can't be helped that AIDS took the lives of so many. It feels like the world Orloff describes (and illustrates with candid snapshots and collected ads, posters, and the like...who the hell keeps this ephemera?!) is as distant as World War II. These days, fun seems dead and young people have to think about what we had the luxury of ignoring. Selfishly, I'm glad I could ignore it. Responsibly, I wish I hadn't had that choice. Tämä arvostelu kirjoitettiin LibraryThingin Varhaisia arvostelijoita varten. The raucous, punk queer community and it's underground. The devastation brought about by the HIV virus. I am not sure what I expected, but this book wasn't it. Glad to have read it though, it was a different perspective than I have read before. Tämä arvostelu kirjoitettiin LibraryThingin Varhaisia arvostelijoita varten. I'm glad I read Disasterama, because it is what it says it is and queer history is of particular interest to me. But it failed to really draw me in. The writing was fine, but Orloff has this sense of humor that I dislike. For example, early on he describes getting in the mood as rising to the occasion with "if you catch my drift" in parenthesis, which is so cliche and unfunny to me. And unfortunately, this is the sort of humor that's prevalent in this memoir. So, I wasn't always looking forward to reading it and ended up taking a while to get through it. Mixed feelings, overall ei arvosteluja | lisää arvostelu
Palkinnot
DISASTERAMA: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997, is the true story of Alvin Orloff who, as a shy kid from the suburbs of San Francisco, stumbled into the wild, eclectic crowd of Crazy Club Kids, Punk Rock Nutters, Goofy Goofballs, Fashion Victims, Disco Dollies, Happy Hustlers, and Dizzy Twinks of post-Stonewall American queer culture of the late 1970s, only to see the "subterranean lavender twilit shadow world of the gay ghetto" ravished by AIDS in the 1980s. Includes an introduction by Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018, HMH Books). InDisasterama, Orloff recalls the delirious adventures of his youth--from San Francisco to Los Angeles to New York--where insane nights, deep friendships with the creatives of the underground, and thrilling bi-coastal living led to a free-spirited life of art, manic performance, high camp antics, and exotic sexual encounters, until AIDS threatened to destroy everything he lived for. In his introduction, award-winning essayist and novelist Alexander Chee notes, "There's a strange love I have for these times that can be hard to explain. How can I love what I lived through from a time that was as 'bad' as that? But as I read this, and those days came into view again, what I think of that love now is that there was a beauty to the beauty you found then that was made the more fierce by the horror of what was happening. If you could still find the worth of your life,still find sex, love, friendship, your own self-worth amid these attempts by the state at erasure and the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, then it had the strength of something forged in fire." Orloff looks past the politics of AIDS to the people on the ground, friends of his who did not survive AIDS' wrath--the boys in black leather jackets and cackling queens in tacky frocks--remembering them not as victims, but as people who loved life, loved fun, and who were a part of the insane jigsaw of Orloff's friends.Disasterama showcases Orloff's wit and poignancy as he relays the true tale of how a bunch of pathologically flippant kids floundered through a deadly disaster, and, struggled to keep the spirit of camp and radicalism alive, even as their friends lost their lives to the plague. Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumAlvin Orloff's book Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997 was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current Discussions-Suosituimmat kansikuvat
Google Books — Ladataan... LajityypitMelvil Decimal System (DDC)306.7662Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Culture and Institutions Relations between the sexes, sexualities, love Sexual orientation, gender identity Homosexuality Gay MenKongressin kirjaston luokitusArvio (tähdet)Keskiarvo:
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