Título: Philip Sparrow Tells All
Autor: Samuel Steward
Sinopse: Samuel Steward (190993) was an English professor, a tattoo artist for the Hells Angels, a sexual adventurer who shared the considerable scope of his experiences with Alfred Kinsey, and a prolific writer whose publications ranged from scholarly articles to gay erotica (the latter appearing under the pen name Phil Andros). Perhaps his oddest authorial role was as a monthly contributor between 1944 and 1949 to the Illinois Dental Journal, an obscure trade publication for dentists, where writing as Philip Sparrow he produced a series of charming, richly allusive, and often quirky essays on a wildly eclectic assortment of topics. In Philip Sparrow Tells All, Jeremy Mulderig has collected thirty of these engaging but forgotten columns, prefacing them with revealing introductions that relate the essays to people and events in Stewards life and to the intellectual and cultural contexts in which he wrote during the 1940s. In these essays we encounter such famous friends of Steward as Gertrude Stein, André Gide, and Thornton Wilder. We hear of his stint as a holiday sales clerk at Marshall Fields (where he met and seduced fellow employee Rock Hudson), of his roles as an opera and ballet extra in hilariously shoddy costumes, of his hoarding tendencies, his disappointment with the drabness of mens fashions, and his dread of turning forty. We go along with him to a bodybuilding competition and a pet cemetery, and together we wander the boulevards of Paris and the alleys of Algiers. Throughout, Mulderigs entertaining annotations explain the essays wide-ranging allusions and also highlight their gay subtext, which constituted a kind of private game that Steward played with his mostly oblivious audience of Midwestern dentists. The first collection of any of Samuel Stewards writings to be republished since his death in 1993, Philip Sparrow Tells All makes these lost essays available to a broad readership that Steward imagined but never actually enjoyed when he wrote them. In doing so, it takes a major step toward documenting his important place in twentieth-century gay literature and history.
Contexto da obra
Quando a classificação é mais ampla, o contexto do livro costuma depender ainda mais de autoria, tema e edição. “Philip Sparrow Tells All”, de Samuel Steward, publicado pela editora University of Chicago Press, em 2015 e com 263 páginas, integra a categoria Livros Variados. Por isso, autoria, edição e tema acabam tendo ainda mais peso na forma de apresentar o livro.
Editora: University of Chicago Press
Páginas: 263
Ano: 2015
Edição:
Linguagem: English
ISBN: 022630471X
ISBN13: 9780226304717
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora University of Chicago Press oferecem uma experiência de leitura que combina rigor intelectual e narrativa acessível, transitando entre temas como história da ciência, filosofia, literatura clássica e ciências sociais. As obras frequentemente exploram processos históricos complexos, como a evolução da linguagem científica ou debates filosóficos, com um tom que varia do didático ao ensaístico, mantendo clareza e profundidade. O catálogo revela também interesse por estudos culturais e sociais detalhados, como etnografias contemporâneas e análises de identidades de gênero, além de textos que dialogam com tradições filosóficas e literárias antigas. Em algumas obras, o ritmo é marcado por uma narrativa envolvente, enquanto outras adotam um estilo mais reflexivo e analítico, sugerindo uma diversidade que vai do relato histórico à investigação crítica.
