I've been rereading John Rechy's gay novel City of Night. I first read it as an angst-ridden young man in the late 1960s (it was published in 1963) and it completely blew me away. I've often wondered since whether it was my vulnerable adolescent state that made the connection so strong or did the book have enduring qualities? I can now say unhesitatingly that in my opinion it fully deserves the popular and critical acclaim it has enjoyed over the years.
For those unfamiliar with it, it depicts the experiences of a loner hustler/narrator (based on Rechy himself) escaping an unhappy childhood to make his way restlessly from one large US city to another, seeking self-knowledge through scoring with innumerable tricks. He plays a narcissistic role, craving the desire of others while not being prepared to give anything of himself in return. There is a bleakness to his vision of life. All human relationships, not just those between hustler and score, are doomed to end in loneliness and sadness. Even when one or two of the more decent guys he meets invite him to explore the possibilities of mutual love, he hesitates briefly but cannot bring himself to abandon the numbers game, the lack of commitment. Endless descriptions show trampled humanity wandering aimlessly through scarred nocturnal urbanscapes. It could all get a bit tedious except for the fact of the sheer quality of the writing. There is more than a hint of the free-associating urgency of Kerouac's On the Road to it. Good literature is never, ultimately, depressing.
Best of all is the depiction of the wide array of characters that the hustler/narrator meets or goes with on his travels. There's the sharp-tongued drag queen who wants nothing more than a spectacular wedding ceremony, the once-beautiful boy hustler desperately aware that his sell-by-date has passed, the tough vice cop with a secret life, the fat score whose self-hatred expresses itself in savage putdowns, the guilt-ridden married trick. Characters like these could easily become mere stereotypes in lesser hands, but Rechy's sharp eye for the telling detail and uncanny ear for the rhythms of actual speech bring them all memorably to life. For me their monologues, often stretching over page after absorbing page, are the chief pleasure of the book.
I might add that the novel doesn't seem at all dated. Well, there are minor giveaways - like the going rate for a hustler being 10 dollars, for instance! Interestingly, there are many references to queens, fairies, homosexuals but only two to 'gay people' - and both of those are uttered by characters disparagingly, as of an inappropriate term. Clearly, the word was not yet in widespread, unavoidable usage.
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