Federico Garcia Lorca a Life [Paperback]

Ian Gibson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 18, 1990

Known primarily as a poet and dramatist, Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca published four books before his early death in the Spanish Civil War. This biography gives an account of his family, his homosexuality and his mysterious death, as well as tracing his literary development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Faber Paperbacks (June 18, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571142249
• ISBN-13: 978-0571142248
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,368,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lorquiana!, April 15, 2005

By 

Jeffery Mingo (Homewood, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Federico Garcia Lorca a Life (Paperback)

I read this book years ago from cover to cover and I had never even read any Lorca. This book is huge! (500 pages!) But I completed it all.

I think that those interested in the lives of pre-Stonewall gays will find this especially enlightening. Lorca uses Freudian, problematic reasoning for explaining his gayness. Like Gide and many other insecure gays, he harps on feminine gay men. Like Langston Hughes, Yukio Mishima, and again Andre Gide, he was inspired by the homoerotic poetry of Walt Whitman.

In this book, it is implied that Lorca loved Dali and Dali was both repulsed and intrigued by that love. So that scenario of gay man having unrequited love for straight man is played out here. However, in the documentary "Split," the viewer sees Dali courting a she-male. In Manrique's "Eminent M*r*c*n*es," he states that an American man, later in his life, admitted that he and Dali had a sexual relationship. So Gibson's portrayal of Dali as exclusively heterosexual may be inaccurate.

In Lorca's last days, the fascists were taking over Spain and they may have killed him for prejudiced reasons. Now, Spain has a Socialist president who is seriously considering legalizing gay marriage. This book will help to track progress. Lorca may be to Spanish gay men what James Baldwin is to American ones.