The effect was visceral, sexy, fightening, and it made my spirit soar. His story told me of a world I had only hoped might really exist. Pornographer David Hurles wrote that "Rechy's story set me free. The author uses curious methods to achieve verisimilitude, for instance, omitting the apostrophe in contractions, in order to recreate the speech of characters who are barely literate. The narrator shares many characteristics, including his ethnicity and relative age, with the author at the time.
Rechy and the other two original detainees were able to escape. The LAPD called for back-up and arrested a number of rioters. Patrons began pelting the police with donuts and coffee cups. The book includes writing about the Cooper Do-nuts Riot, which happened in 1959 in Los Angeles, when the lesbians, gay men, transgender people, and drag queens who hung out at Cooper Do-nuts and who were frequently harassed by the LAPD fought back after police arrested three people, including Rechy. All of these relationships range in the extent of their emotional and sexual nature, as well as in their peculiarity. Throughout the novel, the unnamed narrator has trysts with various peculiar characters, including another hustler, an older man, an S&M enthusiast and a bed-ridden old man. The book focuses chapters on locations that the youth visits and certain personages he meets there, from New York City, to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Orleans. Earlier excerpts had appeared in Evergreen Review, Big Table, Nugget, and The London Magazine.Ĭity of Night is notable for its exposé approach to and stark depiction of hustling, as well as its stream of consciousness narrative style.Ī young man (Rechy uses the term “youngman” when referring to hustlers) travels across the country while working as a hustler. It was originally published in 1963 in New York by Grove Press. City of Night is a novel written by John Rechy.
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