City of Night(1963) by John Rechy

 Book Review

City of Night (1963)

John Rechy

   This groundbreaking novel about the life of a gay hustler during the pre-Summer of Love 1960's recently got a fifty-year anniversary edition, which was the first I'd heard of it- something I'm embarrassed to admit.  It is hard to believe that in 30 plus years of assiduous reading of transgressive fiction, City of Night never came up.   Rechy chronicled the LGBTQ underworld (Mostly the G/T letters of the formula) at a time and place where those kinds of choices were actively persecuted by the authorities.  In a way, this pre-Stonewall, pre-Summer of Love, pre-AIDS world borders on the quaint, as distant from our modern world of killer drugs, killer diseases and the open embrace of LGBTQ lives as a book about people living on a frontier farm in the mid 19th century.

   The lack of concern with societal approbation and open embrace of the gay hustler lifestyle is still refreshing in 2023.  His portrayal of the different hustling "scenes" of the era are memorable, NYC, LA, the SF Bay Area and New Orleans in particular.  LA/Hollywood, in particular is vividly drawn, almost a book within a book, including his portrayal of thinly veiled closeted Hollywood bigwigs.  This fiftieth anniversary edition makes the case for a canon-level placement for City of Night, perhaps replacing one of the cis-white male beats who are commonly included from this time period.   You could replace On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac and miss very little.