Description

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    Long before Stonewall, young Air Force veteran Edward Field, fresh from combat in WWII, threw himself into New York’s literary bohemia, searching for fulfillment as a gay man and poet. In this vivid account of his avant-garde years in Greenwich Village and the bohemian outposts of Paris’s Left Bank and Tangier—where you could write poetry, be radical, and be openly gay—Field opens the closet door to reveal, as never been seen before, some of the most important writers of his time.

    Here are young, beautiful Susan Sontag sitting at the feet of her idol Alfred Chester, who shrewdly plotted to marry her; May Swenson and her two loves; Paul and Jane Bowles in their ambiguous marriage; Frank O’Hara in and out of bed; Fritz Peters, the anointed son of Gurdjieff; and James Baldwin, Isabel Miller (Patience and Sarah), Tobias Schneebaum, Robert Friend, and many others. With its intimate portraits, Field’s memoir brings back a forgotten era—postwar bohemia—bawdy, comical, romantic, sad, and heroic.

About the Author

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Edward Field’s poetry collections include the Lamont Award–winning Stand Up, Friend, With Me;Counting Myself Lucky: Selected Poems, 1963–1992, which won a Lambda Literary Award; and A Frieze for a Temple of Love. Field is the editor of the Alfred Chester Newsletter, and with his partner, Neil Derrick, is coauthor of the novel The Villagers. Field received a Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. He lives in New York City.

Praise For…

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“Such fine writing, such style, and also, an eye and ear for what we want to see and hear. Edward Field fills in a big gap and offers some deeper ideas about what created some of the great writers and artists of our time. After reading a chapter, I feel like I’ve just had a martini with Edward Field.”—Brian Bouldrey, author of The Boom Economy

“Edward Field’s memoir vividly recounts the story of New York bohemian life since the fifties, a world that is now gone. With its tell-all bluntness and gossipy intimacy, it brings to life—as no other work that I know—the spirit of gay bohemia.”—David Bergman