Good day everyone, I’m Elena from Italy and thanks to be here on Alessandro III di Macedonia- Alexander the Great and Hellenism. Today is the publication day of the Italian edition of a book that I won’t buy it and read the article to know why:
Bad Gays. Crudeli e spietati: una storia omosessuale
by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller
Il Saggiatore
Translator: Goffredo Polizzi
Bad Gays raccoglie le vite di quei personaggi gay che faticheremmo a definire paladini dei diritti Lgbtq+: i bugiardi, i potenti, gli arrivisti, i criminali. Da Alessandro Magno a Ernst Röhm, da Yukio Mishima a Lawrence d’Arabia, la nostra storia ne è disseminata.
Ogni minoranza che lotta per uscire dall’emarginazione, per il riconoscimento o per la stessa sopravvivenza si trova prima o poi a fare i conti con la questione di chi debba essere il volto della propria battaglia, quali voci e prospettive all’interno del gruppo debbano essere messe in luce per riflettere adeguatamente la sua esistenza. Gli autori di questo libro si sottraggono a questa domanda per porsene una ancora più acuta: quali sfaccettature non ancora raccontate ha la storia queer? Perché tutti ricordano Oscar Wilde e nessuno ricorda Bosie, l’uomo per cui è finito alla sbarra? Forse siamo giunti al punto in cui è necessario parlare anche dei bad gays, i gay spietati e crudeli, affinché il quadro sia completo. Raramente menzioneremmo l’omosessualità di un generale nazista o di un perfido agente dell’Fbi, eppure le loro vite sono state influenzate dal proprio orientamento sessuale quanto quelle di Alan Turing o Audre Lorde.
Lemmey e Miller hanno ricostruito le quattordici vite incredibili di alcune tra le figure più controverse della storia per scardinare i luoghi comuni tradizionali dell’identità sessuale.
Huw Lemmey (Massachusetts, 1992) è scrittore, artista e critico; vive a Barcellona. Collabora, tra gli altri, con The Guardian, Flash Art, The Architectural Review, Art Monthly e L’Uomo Vogue.
Ben Miller (Barrow-in-Furness, 1986) è scrittore e dottorando presso la Freie Universität di Berlino. Collabora con The New York Times, Literary Hub e Los Angeles Review of Books. È membro del consiglio di amministrazione dello Schwules Museum, museo e archivio queer.
Copertina flessibile
ISBN: 978-8842832621
Peso articolo: 710 g
Dimensioni: 14.7 x 4.8 x 21.7 cm
496 pagine
26,00 €
I won’t buy this book because Il Saggiatore’s back cover has a tendentious synopsis that suggests that one of the fourteen biographies is dedicated to Alexander the Great but it is not. In fact, I looked at the English version and first of all Alexander doesn’t appear in the synopsis and looking at the Table of Contents I confirm that there is not a chapter dedicated to him. Here is the synopsis of the English edition (Verso Books, 2023) and the Table of Contents:
An unconventional history of homosexuality
We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those ‘bad gays’ whose unexemplary lives reveal more than we might expect? Many popular histories seek to establish homosexual heroes, pioneers, and martyrs but, as Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and dastardly deeds have been overlooked despite their being informative and instructive.
Based on the hugely popular podcast series of the same name, Bad Gays asks what we can learn about LGBTQ+ history, sexuality and identity through its villains, failures, and baddies. With characters such as the Emperor Hadrian, anthropologist Margaret Mead and notorious gangster Ronnie Kray, the authors tell the story of how the figure of the white gay man was born, and how he failed. They examine a cast of kings, fascist thugs, artists and debauched bon viveurs. Imperial-era figures Lawrence of Arabia and Roger Casement get a look-in, as do FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, lawyer Roy Cohn, and architect Philip Johnson.
Together these amazing life stories expand and challenge mainstream assumptions about sexual identity: showing that homosexuality itself was an idea that emerged in the nineteenth century, one central to major historical events.
Bad Gays is a passionate argument for rethinking gay politics beyond questions of identity, compelling readers to search for solidarity across boundaries.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. Hadrian
2. Pietro Aretino
3. James VI and I
4. Frederick the Great
5. Jack Saul
6. Roger Casement
7. Lawrence of Arabia
8. The Bad Gays of Weimar Berlin
9. Margaret Mead
10. J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn
11. Yukio Mishima
12. Philip Johnson
13. Ronnie Kray
14. Pim Fortuyn
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Further Reading
Notes
Index
As you can see Alexander is missing and this makes me angry because I was convinced he was there by reading the plot of the Italian book. When things like these happens I get angry because I risk buying books for nothing and I realize that the big publishers aim to sell and they are so big that if a reader is unhappy, nothing changes for them. I understand that in this period in Italy there is talk of Alexander the Great and someone wants to ride the wave but this time Il Saggiatore was wrong to put Alessandro Magno on the back cover. I’ll read this book in English and digital because I have seen that there are still some references to Alexander but I certainly won’t spend 26 euros for the Italian paper version published by Il Saggiatore!
Good day everyone,
Alessandro III di Macedonia 