18
GAY PEOPle's ChronICLE JULY 19, 1996
BOOKS
Historian's book chronicles decade of change and growth
Midlife Queer: Autobiography of a Decade, 1971 to 1981 by Martin Duberman
Reviewed by Nels P. Highberg
For those of us born after Stonewall, the 1970s exists as a mythic time of which we could never be a part, a time of sex and increasing freedom, activism, and self esteem. Even though this "reality" is not necessarily the truth for most gay men out and about at the time, the legend still lives on.
The past few years has seen a fair amount of work by gay men, including Paul Monette
and Edmund White, who write of gay,middle class, white manhood in a way that adds a richness to understandings of this pivotal decade in gay history. Martin Duberman's Midlife Queer enters this discussion as well.
Martin Duberman had already established an academic career in history, an artistic career in playwriting, and an activist career in civil rights by the 1970s. Many times, these careers overlapped, as in his 1964 play In White America. This recent book chronicles a decade of questioning, turmoil, and change in both his own life and the lesbian and gay community.
Duberman initiated and witnessed many
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of the political events that
shaped gay liberation after Stonewall. The challenges he faced with the Gay Academic Union and National Gay Task Force connect to the same battles shaping queer organizations today. Duberman's fight to include feminism and issues of race and economic struggle in the platforms of these groups conflicted with others who saw these areas as separate political battles. His accounts of early meetings of these groups will definitely attract anyone interested in coalition-building today. His stories of struggle within the university and the theatre scene reflect how these political events impacted upon other arenas of American life.
Martin Duberman
But the style of the book does feel a bit disconcerting at times. Duberman liberally intersperses his recent recollections with quotes from his diary, reviews, and articles of the time period. This technique does enable him to present mindsets separated by 20 years. However, the ellipses, quote marks, and citations reminiscent of academic work clash with the autobiographical story and its narrative flow. And this clash does not suggest ways to break the lines between literary categories as much as it simply jars the reader.
The academic markings decrease as Duberman focuses on deeply personal experiences in the book's later sections. His de-
scriptions of a therapeutic stint with "bioenergetics" and of a heart attack at the age of 49 demonstrate his struggle with how to continue his life and work. These pieces grab the most attention, challenging the ways in which psychology and medicine can both help and hurt a person's existence.
It would have been beneficial to hear more about how he established a direction for himself after surviving these events, but Reagan and AIDS certainly signaled the start of a new decade, the end of another, and one closing chapter in Duberman's life. The book will connect with different readers and different times and leave a number of questions along the way.
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