Choice Reviews Online · 2008 · 102 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesLiteratureSexuality StudiesHistory Of SexualityLgbtq StudiesQueer StudiesLgbtq HistoryLgbtq LiteratureLgbtq+ HistoryQueer CriticismQueer HistoryQueer LiteratureGay LiteratureIdentificationQueer FictionQueer Literary CriticismSexual Identity ConcealmentSexual Identity RepresentationSexual Self-knowledgeTwentieth-century Historiography
Early twentieth‑century narratives of the other half‑lives surged in popularity, offering sensational revelations of the underworld and its deviants to readers seeking slumming experiences from home. Herring investigates how a group of American authors used slumming literature to evade conventional sexual identification, thereby rethinking the genre’s cultural significance. By examining writers such as Jane Addams, Willa Cather, Carl Van Vechten, and Djuna Barnes, he shows how they adhered to slumming conventions while simultaneously undermining those very conventions to queer the genre. Their work frustrates readers’ desire for sexual knowledge, preserves the inscrutability of sexual identity, and casts doubt on the value of a visible homosexual subculture, linking the genre to ongoing debates about lesbian and gay history and politics.
At the start of the twentieth century, tales of the other half lives experienced a surge in popularity. People looking to go slumming without leaving home turned to these narratives for spectacular revelations of the underworld and sordid details about the deviants who populated it. In this major rethinking of American literature and culture, Scott Herring explores how a key group of authors manipulated this genre to paradoxically evade the confines of sexual identification. the examines a range of writers, from Jane Addams and Willa Cather to Carl Van Vechten and Djuna Barnes, revealing how they fulfilled the conventions of slumming literature but undermined its goals and in the process queered the genre itself. Their work frustrated the reader's desire for sexual knowledge, restored the inscrutability of sexual identity, and cast doubt on the value of a homosexual subculture made visible and therefore subject to official control. Herring is persuasive and polemical in connecting these writers to ongoing debates about lesbian and gay history and politics, and Queering the Underworld will be widely read by students and scholars of literature, history, and sexuality.