City of Night (Rechy, John) (Paperback)

by John Rechy (Author) "LATER I WOULD THINK OF AMERICA as one vast City of Night stretching gaudily from Times Square to Hollywood Boulevard-jukebox-winking, rock-n-roll-moaning: America at night fusing..." (more)
Key Phrases: two youngmen, other youngman, other youngmen, Miss Destiny, Darling Dolly, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

John Rechy, recipient of the Publishing Triangle’s William Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award, wrote City of Night in 1963. This radical and daring work, which launched Rechy’s reputation as one of America’s most courageous novelists, remains the classic document of the garish neon-lit world of hustlers, drag queens, and men on the make who inhabited the homosexual underground of the early sixties.

From the Inside Flap
When John Rechy's explosive first novel--now a classic--appeared in 1963, it became a national best-seller and ushered in a new era of gay fiction. Bold and inventive in his account of the urban underworld of male prostitution, Rechy is equally unflinching in his portrayal of one hustling "youngman" and his search for self-knowledge within the neon-lit world of hustlers, drag queens, and men on every kind of make. As the narrator moves from El Paso to Times Square, from Pershing Square to the French Quarter, we get an unforgettable look at life on the edge

"One of the major books to be published since World War II."--The Washington Post

"City of Night is a remarkable book.... Mr. Rechy writes in an authentic jive-like slang: the nightmare existence is explored with a clarity not often clouded by sentimentality and self-pity. The book therefore has the unmistakable ring of candor and truth."--The New York Times Book Review

"Rechy's tone rings absolutely true, is absolutely his own, and he has the kind of discipline which allows him a rare and beautiful recklessness. 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 Baldwin

"Probably no first novel is so complete, so well held together, and so important as City of Night."--The Houston Post

"[City of Night] illuminates, it stirs the heart, it is unforgettable."--Herbert Gold

John Rechy is the recipient of the PEN-USA West's Lifetime Achievement Award (he was the first novelist to be awarded the prize) and the Publishing Triangle's William Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the author of eleven other novels, among them Numbers, Rushes, The Sexual Outlaw (all from Grove Press), The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez, and Our Lady of Babylon. His most recent novel, The Coming of the Night, was published by Grove Press in 1999. An NEA recipient, he is also the author of several plays, essays, and short stories. John Rechy lives in Los Angeles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 13, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802130836
• ISBN-13: 978-0802130839
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #162,858 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A gay "classic" enhanced by an eerily prophetic ending set in New Orleans, September 20, 2005

By	D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

It's easy to see why this book caused such a sensation when it was published in 1963. It's not because of the sexual descriptions, which are neither remotely erotic nor all that graphic--even for the early 1960s. Nor is it because of the Beat-genre prose and the in-your-face nihilism. Instead, "City of Night" brought to the light of day the darkest corners of the "gay underworld" (and, yes, Rechy uses the term "gay" here), and the book does it in a way that highlights the insecurities and the pretenses, the profligacy and the humanity of even the most jaded hustlers, "scores," and "queens" who fervently frequent the bars and speakeasies in metropolitan America.

The unnamed narrator has fled his hometown of New Orleans, initially for New York, and he finds himself both bored of the "respectable" jobs he manages to find and intrigued by the easy money (not to mention the ready drugs, the nervous thrill, and the artificial freedom) that comes from being a male prostitute. Like many of his associates, the narrator tries to convince himself that he is only "gay for pay"--that his activities are no more than a job and that in the real world he would sleep with women. But gradually he realizes that this conviction, for him and for most of the others, is little more than a pose. Among the book's many themes is the tension between the futility of the closet and its ultimate necessity (let's not forget that, in much of the country, it was illegal for two men to dance together or to wear women's clothing).

Each chapter scrutinizes the bar scene and focuses on a different type (sometimes bordering on stereotype), from the flamboyant drag queen to the aging hustler to the married man to the older women whose guilt over a long-kept secret motivates her to tend to street boys. There are passages and scenes that will, of course, seem dated (or--to use a less loaded term--of historical interest), but many of the characters are, forty years later, hilariously and scarily recognizable.

Finally--for reasons Rechy could not have fathomed--the most disconcerting section of the book is the last one, which is set in New Orleans. The eeriness of finishing this book at a time like this (early September 2005) is that certain passages take on a prophetic tone. The environs around the French quarter are "merely the remnants of what may have been; a city scarred by memories of an elegance and gentility which may have never existed. A ghost city." And later: "An almost Biblical feeling of Doom--of the city about to be destroyed, razed, toppled--assaults you." The narrator's love-hate relationship with the Big Easy--with its celebratory abandon and its remorseful gloom--instills the novel's finale with an intensity both haunting and unforgettable.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FIGHT THE POWER!, , April 20, 2005

By	Karen Stout (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews

John Rechy's book, City of Night, was published in 1962 just before the Supreme Court opened up the floodgate to the publishers of cheap porn in 1965. He will most likely be remembered as a gay male writer who was a brutal and lyrical recorder of the sexual underworld in pre-Stonewall times. It must be difficult for anyone who didn't live through those times to grasp how heavily the threat of censorship hung over America's authors and publishers.

He describes this world with brusque frankness. There is an easy understanding of who and what his characters are; they are presented without sentimentality or self-pity. At the beginning he writes about being a shy child who read a lot and sat by the hall window and looked out to see the world. We hear about the death of his dog and about the suffocating attention of his overly affectionate mother

Rechy uses the window theme and carries it throughout the book. He's letting us look into and onto the dark underworld of the City of Night . . . wherever that may occur. He's also into looking into mirrors as he looks at himself and at what his narrator has become.

I liked the very believable flip dialogue of the drag queens and the hustlers . . . the text was almost like it was recorded.

His narrator takes us on a journey through a world of forbidden love. Here, sex is a job, not an identity. This masculine hustler moves from city to city, searching for business and a sense of self-worth and love. While he actively avoids the lives and world of the self-admitted and well-adjusted gay men he encounters, he pursues the outcasts, the maladjusted and self-loathing instead.

Rechy's representations of gay life are often bleak and the lives of this extraordinary collection of characters are filled with drugs and liquor. There are two types of chapters in this novel: there are accounts of the narrator's wanderings and character sketches of the people he meets as a hustler. Each sketch builds an understandable person for the reader. I've been on the fringes of this culture a few times and didn't like it at all, but believe me they seem very real. Each narrative chapter pulls the reader away and moves them onward.

Rechy was brought up as a devout Catholic. His book is full of symbolism . . .especially of angels in the form of beautiful young men.

Well, surprise, a lot of this world still exists. The people of the night haven't changed all that much since John Rechy wrote his eye-opening novel 40-some years ago. Anonymous sex, hustlers, dirty bookstore sex, cruising, rough trade, druggies, dealers, hustlers, bartenders, cops and robbers still abound. There are still sexy boys from the country who will soon be dead from HIV/AIDS . . . or something else like in the old days . . . an overdose, a knife fight, or a car crash. Not much has changed. This is a compelling early account of "the life" that I believe gays and non-gay people will enjoy; the book still has a fun, underground feel to it. It's still a very cool book, kind of like "On the Road." But decide for yourself. Pick up a copy! (...)

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic City Still Burns Bright, October 10, 2003

By	Daniel Olivas (West Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Though it's been forty years since its publication, John Rechy's "City of Night" still packs an emotional wallop. The novel's storyline is well-known: Rechy writes of one young male hustler who wanders from El Paso to New York to Los Angeles to New Orleans meeting and experiencing male customers, drag queens, tough men and "nellies." While partaking of this life, he is also observing the pain and joy of a world filled with "youngmen" and those who are no longer young. Will he find meaning in any of it? Will he come to terms with his sexual orientation? The answers are not clear. But in the end it doesn't really matter. The prose is powerful, the dialogue poignant and, at times, hilarious. This is a remarkable and unforgettable book that should be read by everyone.