GLR July-August 2024

perhaps not surprising, but there are those gaps. The letters cast light only occasionally on other parts of his rough-and-tumble milieu. The grittiest passages tend to be about the perennial New York quests to find an apartment and to make the rent. Much of the rest is a patchwork of epistolary conven tions mixed with ardent if ultimately noncommittal expressions of love. Wojnarowicz’ efforts to convince himself, more even than his correspondent, that they have a future together seem as sincere in their hope as in their doubt. The ensemble is touch ing in an almost literal sense: the two clearly experienced a physical and emotional connection that Wojnarowicz had not really found before, and his writing seems an effort to linger in that embrace—or to frame it in negative terms lest he risk get ting hurt yet again. Each letter is like a sparsely furnished room somewhere between New York and Paris where Wojnarowicz and Delage luxuriate in nothing more than one another’s prox imity, speaking de tout et de rien . Tacked to the walls of each room are the correspondents’ eclectic visuals. The standouts, of course, are images by Woj narowicz himself. These range from whimsical doodles and fig ures in the margins to photocopies of contact sheets and larger prints from his photographic projects, including Rimbaud in NewYork . A few drawings cover a whole page; there are also photocopies of Wojnarowicz’ collages. In some cases, the artist

has modified an existing image by drawing or stenciling in styl ized people, animals, or machines. One striking work is the re sult of stenciling over a postcard reproduction of Paul Klee’s Arches of the Bridge Stepping Out of Line , itself drawn on paper-mounted fabric, yielding a remarkable multiplicity of lay ers, media, and time. No less interesting are the images already on the postcards and more improvised stationery that caught Wojnarowicz’ artistic eye in the first place. Among these are works by fa mous artists—an occasional Hockney or Rothko, a great deal of O’Keeffe—as well as others who are less famous, mixed in, to be sure, with a wide array of New York postcard schlock. There is also a persistent interest in Japanese and Chinese woodblock prints, an underappreciated influence on Woj narowicz’ visual vocabulary to date. There are also more play ful moments, such as the eight successively mailed postcards in which he spells out in exuberantly colorful letters J’aime toi . Never mind the faulty phrasing (Wojnarowicz never really learned French and depended instead on Delage’s English): the artist is always looking for a language beyond what he fre quently disparaged as the “pre-invented world.” The opportu nity to draw such connections makes this book essential for scholars and committed Wojnarowicz fans, though others may prefer a reprint of the Whitney catalogue.

A Life in Episodes (#1–35)

L IKE THE TOUGH, unruly child hood of its queer Black author, Another Word for Love isn’t easy to take in. Raised by a struggling single mother who twice gave him up to relatives, uneasy for decades about who he was, feeling small and anxious to please, using drugs and alcohol to numb his grief, Carvell Wallace nevertheless managed to forge a life of storytelling, parenting, con

ries About Loss,” recounts wrenching events from Wallace’s youth, beginning with being handed off to his mother’s sister at eighteen months of age. When he turned four, Wal lace’s unstable, often impoverished mother brought him to live with her in Virginia but left him to fend for himself much of the time. Even her presence didn’t offer secu rity; for example, if they were without a place to stay, she might sell herself to get

R OSEMARY B OOTH

ANOTHER WORD FOR LOVE AMemoir by Carvell Wallace Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 272 pages, $28.

necting with people—and writing. Out of his intense experi ence, he has distilled a wide-ranging, compelling memoir full of insights from the vantage point of middle age. Born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, in 1974, Wallace lived in Virginia, Maryland, and California before moving to New York City to earn a BFA from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. He now lives in Oakland. Among his accomplishments are designing and running programs for troubled youth; writ ing noteworthy profiles for such publications as GQ , Esquire, Glamour , The New Yorker , and The New York Times ; and pro ducing Finding Fred , an award-winning documentary podcast about children’s television host Fred Rogers. Another Word for Love unfolds in 35 loosely chronological episodes, but the title prompts an immediate question: What is that other word? “Stories About Loss,” “Stories About God,” and “Stories About Return” offer surprising answers. Part One, “Sto Rosemary Booth is a writer and photographer who lives in Cam bridge, MA. July–August 2024

them invited into “some guy’s apartment” for the night, and the atmosphere could be dangerous. “The Razors” recounts the boy’s having his hand cut to bleeding by a man who demanded oral sex, an experience that left him feeling alone and scared. Wallace is sent back to McKeesport at the age of eight to live with his mother’s brother and his wife, an interracial couple. “The Clothes” describes the child rummaging through his aunt’s closet after school and pulling on her stockings: “When I looked in the mirror I saw a woman that I could be safe with who ... knew everything about me and still wanted to spend time with me. That woman was me.” Caught and berated, Wallace quits dressing up. By eighth grade he is back living with his mother, but in Los Angeles, where he exults in the abundance of Black people and wins praise for high school drama performances. “The Death” finds Wallace in his late twenties, married with two children and living in Oakland. He flies to Maryland to see his mother, who is dying of lung cancer. Amazingly, he has let go of resentment over her abandonments and brings her home with him. “To be among the dying, and to know it, the feeling

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