A Great Gay Book

March 4, 2024
Artist Fitzgibbon debuts with an insightful collection of essays, interviews, fiction, and artwork from Hello Mr., a queer magazine he founded in 2013, which ran for 10 issues before shuttering in 2018. Highlights include an interview between novelists Garth Greenwell and Hanya Yanagihara about how gay life has been sanitized in popular culture for the sake of “acceptance and visibility” and the challenges of pushing those boundaries in art; musician Ben French’s rich, ecstatic “Slutboys,” which celebrates gay sex (“Turn up for the holy glory only found in dive bar glory holes”); and “Blurry Soles,” in which journalist Mathew Rodriguez draws surprisingly tender links between his foot fetish and his anxieties about having diabetes. “The prospect of losing your foot when you have a foot fetish is, I guess, nature’s little homophobic joke,” Rodriguez quips, then reminds himself that “what makes gay sex great” is its embrace of “parts that other people might turn away.” The stylistically diverse contributions are linked by a preoccupation with the question of whether increased mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ people must come at the expense of what makes the community unique. It’s an illuminating snapshot of the changing face of queerness. Photos.

December 6, 2024

Fitzgibbon debuts with a collection of visual art, essays, short stories, poetry, and interviews from the archives of the queer magazine Hello Mr., which he founded in 2012, printing 10 issues over the magazine's six-year run. Listeners don't need to be familiar with the magazine to enjoy the collection, but some may want to check out the print edition of Fitzgibbon's book to access the images and photos. The majority of the writers and artists are cisgender gay men, with limited contributions from other queer people, including lesbians and trans women. The text is frank and overt in discussion of the subject matter. The formats and topics vary widely from academic discussions of censorship in queer literature and the reclamation of the word "queer" to literary speculative fiction stories and essays about the Grindr generation. Lee Osorio does an excellent job differentiating between voices across the 50-plus pieces. He is especially skillful in narrating the interviews, but listeners may still regret not hearing the authors narrate their own works. VERDICT This is a valuable work in print; nonetheless, the audio edition offers an engaging experience for listeners interested in LGBTQIA+ studies and literature.--Taylor Skorski

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