Walt Whitman: A Gay Life

by Gary Schmidgall

Book Overview

Walt Whitman's place in U.S. letters is unchallenged: he is the poet of America, democracy, and individual freedom. Yet Whitman and his work have been misrepresented by scholars and critics during the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452279208
• ISBN13: 9780452279209
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Walt would love this...

One of the things that people often do is to take their heroes and try to see within that person themselves. It's only natural. It's through someone else's greatness that we experience it, and often, find our own. So it's not surprising that many Whitman biographers have passively denied Whitman's homosexuality, or out right refuted it. It's also not surprising that Gary Schmidgall takes a different view, and sees Whitman through the eyes of a gay man, writing an impressive, passioned look at Whitman's life called "Walt Whitman: A Gay Life". Based on a look on Whitman's poetry, letters, and other sources, Schmidgall tells a tale of a gay Whitman. This isn't a biography, however, which Scmidgall admits right away. His book attempts to describe Whitman during different phases in his life, particularly important ones that would have shaped his gay identity. Therefore, the focus is not broad across the span of Whitman's many years, but very intensely focused specific times, for example, Whitman as an opera lover. Schmidgall admits upfront the task before him which is enormous; being that in all of Whitman's known correspondances, interviews, archival evidence, details on his sexuality and sex life is scanity at best. We have no big true confessional, and when asked directly about the sexual content of "Leaves of Grass", his pat answer is to let the work speak for itself. However, Schmidgall does an awesome job reconstructing Whitman, looking at everything through the eyes of a gay man, bringing the poet alive much more than other biographies which I've read.Schmidgall liberally uses the words like "imagine, think, suppose" when talking about his points, but you forgive him. The task is daunting, but well done. Whitman is alive in this book as he never has been before. Whereas more scholarly books fail to adequately persue Whitman's sexuality, this one brings it alive, and therefore, brings Whitman alive in a wonderful sense. You can almost hear the poet chuckling in the background as you read some of the passages. Whatever the effect, Whitman has been drawn closer to my heart because of this book, and I highly recommend it.

not the only book on whitman, but...

this is a great book to add to the growing collection of whitman biographies. don't make this the only one you read, however. that said, it does an amazing and passionate job that i think whitman would appreciate.