"A beautiful, beguiling journey to the ultimate queer utopia" - Olivia Laing "Clued-up but insatiably thirsty, poignant, packed with literary intrigue, Fire Island is a beaming beach read" - Jeremy Atherton Lin --- Fire Island: a slim strip of land off the coast of New York, and a place of hedonism, reinvention, liberation. Arriving on the island after a break-up back home in England, scholar and poet Jack Parlett was beguiled by what he found. Here were the halcyon scenes of Frank O'Hara's poetry; the bars where Patricia Highsmith got drunk; the infamous cruising sites; and the dazzling beaches where couples had fallen in and out of love, free for a sun-kissed moment to be themselves in the time before gay liberation. Tracing Fire Island's rich history, Parlett leads the reader through the early days of the island's life as a discreet home for same-sex love, to the wild parties of the post-Stonewall disco era, to the residents' confrontation with the AIDS epidemic, and into a present where a host of new challenges threaten the island's future. Lyrical and vivid, Fire Island is a hymn to an iconic destination, and to the men and women whose ardour and determination spread freedom across its shores.
ISBN: | 9781783787005 |
Publisher: | Granta Publications |
Imprint: | Granta Books |
Published date: | 26 May 2022 |
DEWEY: | 974.725 |
DEWEY edition: | 23 |
Language: | English |
Number of pages: | 272 |
Weight: | 104g |
Height: | 144mm |
Width: | 222mm |
Spine width: | 28mm |