John Rechy

Bold and inventive in style, City of Night is the groundbreaking 1960s novel about male prostitution. Rechy is unflinching in his portrayal of one hustling 'youngman' and his search for self-knowledge among the other denizens of his neon-lit world. As the narrator moves from Texas to Times Square and then on to the French Quarter of New Orleans, Rechy delivers a portrait of the edges of America that has lost none of its power. On his travels, the nameless narrator meets a collection of unforgettable characters, from vice cops to guilt-ridden married men eaten up by desire, to Lance O'Hara, once Hollywood's biggest star. Rechy describes this world with candour and understanding in a prose that is highly personal and vividly descriptive.

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction John Rechy's first novel, City of Night, an international bestseller, is considered a modern classic. Subsequent work asserts his place among America's most important writers. The author's most daring work, After the Blue Hour is narrated by a twenty-four-year-old writer named John Rechy. Fleeing a turbulent life in Los Angeles, he accepts an invitation to a private island from an admirer of his work. There, he joins Paul, his imposing host in his late thirties, his beautiful mistress, and his precocious teenage son. Browsing Paul's library and conversing together on the deck about literature and film during the spell of evening's "blue hour," John feels surcease, until, with unabashed candor, Paul shares intimate details of his life. Through cunning seductive charm, he married and divorced an ambassador's daughter and the heiress to a vast fortune. Avoiding identifying his son's mother, he reveals an affinity for erotic "dangerous games." With intimations of past decadence and menace, an abandoned island nearby arouses tense fascination over the group. As "games" veer toward violence, secrets surface in startling twists and turns. Explosive confrontation becomes inevitable.

"[Rechy's] tone rings absolutely true, is absolutely his own. . . . He tells the truth, and tells it with such passion that we are forced to share in the life he conveys. . . . This is a most humbling and liberating achievement."--James BaldwinWhen John Rechy's explosive first novel appeared in 1963, it marked a radical departure in fiction, and gave voice to a subculture that had never before been revealed with such acuity. It earned comparisons to Genet and Kerouac, even as Rechy was personally attacked by scandalized reviewers. Nevertheless, the book became an international bestseller, and fifty years later, it has become a classic. Bold and inventive in style, Rechy is unflinching in his portrayal of one hustling "youngman" and his search for self-knowledge within the neon-lit world of hustlers, drag queens, and the denizens of their world, as he moves from El Paso to Times Square, from Pershing Square to the French Quarter. Now including never-seen original marked galley pages and an interview with the author, Rechy's portrait of the edges of America has lost none of its power to move and exhilarate.

Teki kundi muiden miesten kanssa mitä tahansa, niin kauan kuin se tekee sen rahasta, niin se ei ole hintti. Silloin on vielä hetero. Sitten kun sitä alkaa tehdä muiden nuorten kundien kanssa ilmaiseksi, niin silloin alkaa vakavasti lirvahtaa hinttiyden puolelle... Kaupunkien yössä kuvaa konstailemattomasti ja värikkäästi poikaprostituutiota 1950-luvun Yhdysvalloissa. Nuori mies etsii identiteettiään huorien, drag-queenien ja kaikenkirjavien miesten parissa maailmassa, jota neonkyltit sävyttävät ja siveyspoliisi partioi. Kertojan liikkuessa El Pasosta New Yorkiin ja Los Angelesista New Orleansiin lukijan eteen piirtyy unohtumaton välähdys katujen elämästä aikana, jolloin homokulttuuri kukoisti vain maan alla. John Rechyn esikoisteos Kaupunkien yössä ilmestyi vuonna 1963. Kirja saavutti nopeasti ilmestymisensä jälkeen kulttimaineen ja se on käännetty kymmenille kielille. Rechy on saanut kirjailijantyöstään arvostetun PEN-USA Westin Lifetime Achievement -palkinnon.

Tired of having the people around him try to transform him into something he is not, Lyle Clemens leaves fundamentalist Texas to embark on a picaresque odyssey in search of his own true destiny that takes him to the gambling casinos of Las Vegas and the glittering world of Los Angeles, encountering charlatans, lost souls, gamblers, pornographers, showgirls, and other colorful characters along the way. Reprint.

In The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez, Amalia Gomez thinks she sees a large silver cross in the sky. A miraculous sign, perhaps, but one the down-to-earth Amalia does not trust. Through Amalia, we take a vivid and moving tour of the "other Hollywood," populated by working-class Mexican Americans, as John Rechy blends tough realism with religious and cultural fables to take us into the life of a Chicano family in L. A. Epic in scope and vision, The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez is classic Rechy.

In this angry, eloquent outcry against the oppression of homosexuals, the author of the classic City of Night gives "an explosive non-fiction account, with commentaries, of three days and nights in the sexual underground" of Los Angeles in the 1970s--the "battlefield" of the sexual outlaw. Using the language and techniqus of the film, Rechy deftly intercuts the despairing, joyful, and defiant confessions of a male hustler with the "chorus" of his own subversive reflections on sexual identity and sexual politics, and with stark documentary reports our society directs against homosexuals--"the only minority against whose existence there are laws."

Records the adventures of a male hustler as he stalks the hideouts of homosexuals in Los Angeles

The Fourth Angel is John Rechy’s most accomplished work since his explosive City of Night. It is the compelling, ferociously relevant story of four teenagers playing deadly games with drugs, sex, and one another. Behind a facade of tough cynicism, on a raging search for kicks, they explore the hot, dusty city, bent on trouble. There are three “angels”—Shell, Cob, and Manny, and their recruit Jerry, who becomes the fourth. Hovering in that uncertain limbo between childhood and adulthood, the four angels maintain a precarious balance among themselves and with the outside world. Each one is today’s street kid: still tinged with innocence and capable of beauty, but at the same time full of rage and violence, attempting to conceal an ugly past.