GAY NEW YORK: Gender, Urban Culture and...

GAY NEW YORK: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 by George Chauncey (Basic Books: $15; 478 pp., illustrated). Chauncey won the L.A. Times prize for this provocative study of 20th-Century manners and mores. Drawing on a variety of meticulously documented sources, he demolishes two widespread cultural myths: that the gay subculture was invisible in America until the late ‘60s, and that current social and psychological divisions between homosexuals and heterosexuals reflect long-standing norms. As he recreates a forgotten world of urban taverns, restaurants and balls, Chauncey demonstrates that the familiar images of gay men were largely created during the repressive McCarthy era.