Review by Choice Review
Exactly what is camp? Sixteen critics debate the question and offer varied responses, all provocative and timely. Although a minority of the essays has already been published, only three predate 1988. No ideology predominates, but several critics imply that, as a form of gay sensibility, camp becomes a strategy by which homophobia can be subverted, thus answering a repressive patriarchy seeking to silence the sexual other. Periods covered move from Victorian (Patience, Whitman, Wilde) to modern (Proust, Firbank, Mae West) and postmodern (Mapplethorpe, Barthes, ACT UP). The mixture of cultural materials invokes pop culture as often as it does gay culture--from Dusty Springfield's "subversive lesbian" to Kristy McNichol's "guerrilla ingenue." Of the contributors, A. Ross wields the sharpest critique (it allows him to compare Stonewall and Altamont as violent cultural "events" of the late 1960s), but M. Viegener's treatment of the gay punk fanzine as an attack on the mainstream assimilation of homosexuality remains the most original one. Editor Bergman, author of Gaity Transfigured (CH, Mar'92), strikes again. All levels. M. J. Emery; Cottey College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
