GLR July-August 2025

B R I E F S of any kind, the mounting body count.

RED HOT + BLUE (33 1/3) by John Garrison

stories are ostensibly constructed. Washington’s arguments are lively and lofty, though the intensity of his reasoning can be at times overwhelming, jumping from liter ary theory to trans studies to theoretical physics. In addition, Washington’s vocabulary and citation choices erect significant barriers to entry, suggesting that the intended audience for this book is largely academicians. How ever, despite these difficult elements, the bold ness with which Washington theorizes will resonate not only with academics but with anyone interested in queer literary critique, the ever-evolving field of trans studies, or the interdisciplinary implications of his ideas. C ASPER B YRNE CLEAN SLATE Created by Laverne Cox, Dan Ewen, and George Wallace Prime Video Norman Lear, that ur-creator of the prime time curmudgeon, left behind one more be fore he left us at the age of 101 in 2023. Clean Slate is a homecoming story with a trans twist. Lear liked to shake up social con ventions, with a career that spanned Maude and All in the Family to The Jeffersons and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman . This time around, the lovable old fogey is an update of Archie Bunker in the person of Harry Slate, played by George Wallace, the recliner-lov ing patriarch around whom the times are rap idly changing. Harry gets a rude awakening when he opens the front door, hoping to hug the young man he raised as “Desmond.” Knock, knock: Desiree Slate calling! After decades of estrangement, Harry seems more incensed that Desiree (played by Laverne Cox of Or ange Is the New Black ) now identifies as a vegetarian than by her name-change. Watch ing a white-robed Desiree re-baptized in Harry’s carwash while a church choir per forms Lady Gaga’s “Rain on Me” a capella is about the gayest thing imaginable. But Clean Slate is looking for laughs, not a ser mon. Happy that she helped another local gay guy named Louis (D.K. Ozoukwu) come out in an achingly small Alabama town (also Cox’ native state), Harry beams: “Desiree, you have that new car shine!” Like Midcentury Modern (Hulu), an up date of The Golden Girls but with gay besties front and center, Clean Slate is an other reminder that wherever gay people go, we are forced to explain ourselves and edu cate even the most open-minded people, sometimes our closest friends and family. One can only hope that some day soon every queer person won’t have to leave the house and distribute an explanatory pamphlet. C OLIN C ARMAN

Mallon struggles to understand what kind of relationships he’s seeking and how to nav igate his needs, and those passages are well written and sometimes quite moving. The diary also documents Mallon’s development as a serious writer, his struggle to earn enough money to survive, his love of the city and its culture, and the politics of the day. What’s unusual here is that Mallon was— certainly compared to most gay men at the time in New York—relatively conservative in his politics, and there is a whiff of country club snobbery here and there that will strike a discordant note for some readers. Moreover, weighing in at nearly 600 pages, the diary could have used some serious editing; there are too many passages documenting conver sations or meals with people the reader knows nothing about. Future historians will be able to use the text to create a list of Manhattan’s restaurants and bars, though occasionally the names of Mallon’s companions ring familiar (the writer Mary McCarthy, for example). Still, the book is a useful addition to the literature documenting an extraordinary, excruciatingly difficult time for gay men as well as the sen sibilities of a serious literary talent. Those who lived through the time will find a mirror; those who did not will find an often com pelling, if sprawling, introduction to an era. HNH IRSCH NONBINARY JANE AUSTEN by Chris Washington Univ. of Minnesota Press. 99 pages, $10. Reading queer literary theory is often a diffi cult task, primarily because much of critical queer thought is unapproachable on even the most basic conceptual levels. On its face, it defies common logic, sense, and decency, sometimes to great effect, sometimes not. The other issue is finding an audience patient and pliable enough to sit with these ideas to the extent of changing their own minds. Nonbinary Jane Austen , despite the tran scendental implications of its argument, is likely to suffer on both accounts, at least ini tially. This latest book from Professor Chris Washington is a new addition to the Univer sity of Minnesota Press’ Forerunners series, a project that aims to produce “short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where in tense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead.” Nonbinary Jane Austen exem plifies this ethos, arguing in a brief but dense 95 pages for a radical rereading of Austen as a gender abolitionist. In Washington’s read ing, Austen’s world is rife with deception, irony, and double entendre, all of which con ceal the goal of undermining the binary, het eronormative institutions on which her

Bloomsbury Academic. 139 pages, $14.95 33 1/3 is a long-running series of short books focused on albums by popular artists. In the 185th volume in the series, author John Gar rison discusses Red Hot + Blue , a 1990 album that raised money for organizations fighting AIDS such as ACT UP. The album was the brainstorm of New York City writer John Carlin, who—with help from film maker Leigh Blake and Talking Heads front man David Byrne—recruited twenty musical artists to lend their talents and fame to the cause, including U2, Annie Lennox, Erasure, and Sinéad O’Connor. Rather than perform their own music, each artist was asked to perform a song written by Cole Porter, the prolific gay American composer. Taking its title from Porter’s 1936 Broad way musical of the same name, which starred Ethel Merman and Bob Hope, RedHot+ Blue was a commercial and critical success, selling over one million copies. It was accom panied by a television special, airing in the U.S. on World AIDS Day, December 1, 1990, which featured music videos by prominent di rectors, including Jim Jarmusch, Jonathan Demme, and Wim Wenders. Garrison looks at each song and video, examining how they fit into the cultural con text of the 1990s. For example, U2’s per formance of “Night and Day” was the biggest hit from the album and also intro duced audiences to the new, industrial sound that the band would feature on future al bums like Achtung Baby and Zooropa . Annie Lennox’ version of “Every Time We Say Goodbye” appeared on soundtracks for two films, Derek Jarman’s Edward II and Norman René’s Prelude to a Kiss . Sadly, both directors died of AIDS. Garrison also weaves in memories from his own experi ence as a young gay man coming out at the time, and highlights from Cole Porter’s life to create an evocative blend of memory, his tory, and cultural commentary. P ETER M UISE THE VERY HEART OF IT New York Diaries, 1983–1994 by Thomas Mallon Knopf. 592 pages, $40. Thomas Mallon, a distinguished literary critic and author of several well-received novels, has now published the personal diary he kept from the early 1980s to the early ’90s. Writ ten by a gay man seeking sex and love in New York City at the height of the AIDS epi demic, the diary documents what every gay man who lived through that period will re member—the intense anxiety, the shifting in formation about the virus, the guilt over sex

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