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Taken together, the chapters in this book outline a theory and a practice of painting ecstatic ordinarinesses in contemporary, diverse American queer life.To do so, it offers the first sustained study of five individually renowned twenty-first-century queer painters—Gio Black Peter, Doron Langberg, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Salman Toor, and João Gabriel—who have achieved substantial recognition from international museums, galleries, and critics working with short-form reviews but not yet from academics producing large-scale studies. This study argues for a broad understanding of what constitutes the queer American art of our time and for a broad sense of who can help to fashion American culture and history, including art by African American, Southeast Asian, Muslim and Jewish American, South American, and gender nonconforming queer artists. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, gender studies, and queer studies.

If I knew how to draw a picture of how I feel, I would pick up a pencil and paper and begin sketching.If I were capable of sculpting a solid figure of my thoughts, I would grab a hammer, some stone or granite, and start chiseling away.If I could choreograph a dance or even a fight explaining what I want to say, I would rise, do some warmup exercises, and start moving.Since I am able do none of these things, but I can write in a way that happens to have a rhyme and rhythm to it, that's exactly what I do.This is to place into the world the love, despair, and everything in between that would otherwise stay hidden inside, where it would do very little good. I believe everyone can find such an outlet, a medium or forum that allows us to feel freedom.

Everyone feels, but not everyone proves it the same way. Some sing, others shout. Some rhyme, others curse. Some dance, others hit. These are examples of how we try to get people to understand, “I'm feeling this way, and I want you to know about it!” This book has some of my examples, and since I consider these healthy expressions, I hope they will help you find your own.

From Allen Ginsberg's'angel-headed hipsters'to angelic outlaws in Essex Hemphill's Conditions, angelic imagery is pervasive in queer American art and culture. This book examines how the period after 1945 expanded a unique mixture of sacred and profane angelic imagery in American literature and culture to fashion queer characters, primarily gay men, as embodiments of'bad beatitudes'. Deutsch explores how authors across diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, including John Rechy, Richard Bruce Nugent, Allen Ginsberg, and Rabih Alameddine, sought to find the sacred in the profane and the profane in the sacred. Exploring how these writers used the trope of angelic outlaws to celebrate men who rebelled wilfully and nobly against religious, medical, legal and social repression in American society, this book sheds new light on dissent and queer identities in postmodern American literature.

You can always start again, and stories can always be retold to make new meanings. In Once Before Sunset, Will Belicor wanders through small-town New Hampshire, Princeton, and Amsterdam like a medieval knight errant, reworking old narrative traditions to re-assess his aristocratic New England upbringing and his increasing desire for other men. As medieval knights sought religious ecstasy through encounters with hermits, locked-up lovers, and foreign lands, Will turns to exiled intellectuals, feverish crushes, and the city of Amsterdam to establish his own moral guidelines.

The first book-length study of an influential voice in contemporary queer American literatureSince the early 1980s, Jim Grimsley has received increasing acclaim for his achievements in a variety of dramatic and literary genres. Through his novels, plays, and short stories, Grimsley portrays an unrelenting search for happiness and interrogates themes of corruption, technology, poverty, domestic abuse, sexuality, and faith in the contemporary United States. Through unique characters and a multitude of forms, the award-winning author explores the complexities of southern culture, his own troubled childhood, and larger pieces of the human experience.In Understanding Jim Grimsley, David Deutsch offers the first book-length study of Grimsley's diverse work and argues for his vital role in shaping the contemporary queer American literary scene. Deutsch helps readers navigate the intricacies of Grimsley's influential drama, fiction, and fantasy science fiction—including his most popular novel, Dream Boy—by weaving together discussions of common themes. Placing Grimsley's plays, novels, and short stories in conversation with one another, Deutsch reveals Grimsley's development throughout a career in which he has investigated hope and hardship, youth and maturity, experimentation and convention. Deutsch also provides vital historical and cultural contexts for understanding how Grimsley engages, expands, and challenges literary and theatrical traditions. Deutsch demonstrates a deep, critical understanding of Grimsley's hard-earned, pragmatic optimism. Intertwining Grimsley's major fiction and plays and contextualizing these within a broader American landscape, this volume brings his work more completely into the conversation on southern queer literature.

British Literature and Classical Music explores literary representations of classical music in early 20th century British writing. Covering authors ranging from T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf to Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells and D.H. Lawrence, the book examines literature produced during a period of widely proliferating philosophical, educational, and performance-oriented musical activities in both public and private settings. David Deutsch demonstrates how this proliferation caused classical music to become an increasingly vital element of British culture and a vehicle for exploring contentious issues such as social mobility, sexual freedoms, and international political rivalries. Through the use of archives of concert programs, cult novels, and letters written during the First and Second World Wars, the book examines how authors both celebrated and satirized the musicality of the lower-middle and working classes, same-sex desiring individuals, and cosmopolitan promoters of a shared European culture to depict these groups as valuable members of and - less frequently as threats to – British life.

The New York Times bestseller: A provocative, imaginative exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge“Dazzling.” – Steven Pinker, The GuardianIn this groundbreaking book, award-winning physicist David Deutsch argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe—and that improving them is the basic regulating principle of all successful human endeavor. Taking us on a journey through every fundamental field of science, as well as the history of civilization, art, moral values, and the theory of political institutions, Deutsch tracks how we form new explanations and drop bad ones, explaining the conditions under which progress—which he argues is potentially boundless—can and cannot happen. Hugely ambitious and highly original, The Beginning of Infinity explores and establishes deep connections between the laws of nature, the human condition, knowledge, and the possibility for progress.

A penetrating exploration of the new physics, including time travel, quantum computers, and the multiverse – as referenced in the film “Avengers: Endgame”For David Deutsch, a young physicist of unusual originality, quantum theory contains our most fundamental knowledge of the physical world. Taken literally, it implies that there are many universes “parallel” to the one we see around us. This multiplicity of universes, according to Deutsch, turns out to be the key to achieving a new worldview, one which synthesizes the theories of evolution, computation, and knowledge with quantum physics. Considered jointly, these four strands of explanation reveal a unified fabric of reality that is both objective and comprehensible, the subject of this daring, challenging book. The Fabric of Reality explains and connects many topics at the leading edge of current research and thinking, such as quantum computers (which work by effectively collaborating with their counterparts in other universes), the physics of time travel, the comprehensibility of nature and the physical limits of virtual reality, the significance of human life, and the ultimate fate of the universe. Here, for scientist and layperson alike, for philosopher, science-fiction reader, biologist, and computer expert, is a startlingly complete and rational synthesis of disciplines, and a new, optimistic message about existence.