![]() ![]() Numbers, (published 1967 by Grove, then $2.95) follows a hustler named Johnny Rio through Los Angeles’ Griffith Park. Rechy’s later works expanded his evocation of the urban world. If a literary generation can be said to have taken its cues from any one book, then City of Night is a strong contender for such an honor. City of Night tracks the wanderings of a male hustler across the American continent, and does it better, more movingly and literally, than any other writer can or has to date. With his Decameron-like City of Night, in 1963 (first published by Grove at $1.95!), a gigantic new vista opened to American homosexual writers. To John Rechy these books - and many, many others - constitute ripoffs of areas that he originally helped to put on the map. Other writers followed with works like Cruising, an examination of the underworld of violence and sex Butterflies Are Free, a character study of male hustlers on the road to self-destruction and much, much later, a slew of titles ranging from the abysmal if not well-intentioned Superstar Murder (midnight Manhattan mayhem among the twilight people) to the sero-religiose Faggots with its almost theological evocation of Bad Boys Gone Wrong. ![]() About a dozen years ago the novelist James Leo Herlihy wrote a book called Midnight Cowboy. ![]()
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