Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out - Paperback

$19.99
$19.99
Skip to product information
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out
  • Gay Bar: Why We Went Out
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out - Paperback

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out - Paperback

by Jeremy Atherton Lin
$19.99
$19.99

Book Overview

Los Angeles Times bestseller

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: The New York Times * NPR * Vogue * Gay Times * Artforum *

"Gay Bar is an absolute tour de force." -Maggie Nelson

"Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex." -New York Times Book Review

As gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks back to find out what's being lost in this intimate, stylish, and indispensible celebration of queer history.

Strobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and drag queens on counters; first kisses, last call: the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression--whatever your scene, whoever you're seeking. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it?

In Gay Bar, the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today's fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out--and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever.

The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the connection between place and identity--a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory. Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.
ISBN9780316458757
Author Jeremy Atherton Lin
PublisherBack Bay Books
GenreBiography and History
FormatPaperback
PublishedMay 2022
LanguageENG- English
Pages320
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography History Nonfiction

1% fer Each of the Seven Seas

Every purchase sends 7% of our profits to The Ocean Cleanup. No fine print, no opt-in — just how we sail.

Whoever Ye Be, Welcome Aboard

Queer lit, music, art, philosophy, fiction — stories for every kind of soul. Come as ye are, matey.

More by Jeremy Atherton Lin

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out - Paperback

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out - Paperback

By Jeremy Atherton Lin

About Jeremy Atherton Lin

Jeremy Atherton Lin is the author of Gay Bar, a New York Times Top Book of 2021 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. His essays appear in numerous places including the Paris Review, the Times Literary Supplement and the Yale Review, for which he was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. He has reviewed fiction for the Guardian and the Washington Post. His sound programs have been broadcast on NTS Radio. He is based in Los Angeles and East Sussex, England.

You may also like