Fire Island, Jack Parlett
Fire Island, Jack Parlett
List: $22.99 | Sale: $16.09
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Fire Island
A Century in the Life of an American Paradise

Author: Jack Parlett

Narrator: Joe Jameson

Unabridged: 6 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/14/2022

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

A groundbreaking account of New York's Fire Island, chronicling its influence on art, literature, culture and queer liberation over the past century

Fire Island, a thin strip of beach off the Long Island coast, has long been a vital space in the queer history of America. Both utopian and exclusionary, healing and destructive, the island is a locus of contradictions, all of which coalesce against a stunning ocean backdrop.

Now, poet and scholar Jack Parlett tells the story of this iconic destination—its history, its meaning and its cultural significance—told through the lens of the artists and creators who sought refuge on its shores. Together, figures as divergent as Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, Carson McCullers, Frank O'Hara, Patricia Highsmith and Jeremy O. Harris tell the story of a queer space in constant evolution.

Transporting, impeccably researched and gorgeously written, Fire Island is the definitive book on an iconic American destination and an essential contribution to queer history.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

About Jack Parlett

Jack Parlett is a writer, poet, and scholar. He is the author of The Poetics of Cruising: Queer Visual Culture from Whitman to Grindr, published by the University of Minnesota Press and Same Blue, Different You, a chapbook. He holds a Junior Research Fellowship at University College, Oxford, where he teaches American literature and literary theory. His essays have appeared in Poetry London, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. He lives in Oxford.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Barry

really really blown away by this, a perfect blend of cultural and personal history, navigating the bushes and dunes of one of our few sites of devotion.......more

Goodreads review by Patrick

I bought this book thinking it would be a history of Fire Island and its queer communities. It is so much more than that. You’ll leave this book with 100 more things to read, watch, and listen to - it’s a history of this strip of sand (that writer Andrew Holleran likened to a parenthesis) told throu......more

Goodreads review by od1_40reads

This is well researched and very well written. I have to say, it was far better than I expected! Fire Island for sure has a rich history, and for a certain type of demographic holds a special place in the NYC queer community. But that’s the thing isn’t it? Fire Island historically is an amazingly he......more

Goodreads review by Erik

Jack Parlett's Fire Island is a history of a thin strip of land off the shore of Long Island and the queer characters that heralded its paradise. Fire Island lives in the queer imaginary as a getaway for (a certain type of) queer people; a place where they can go to let loose, be free, and escape the......more

Goodreads review by Mara

Despite its title, this book is less a history of Fire Island, although it is that to a degree, and more a series of mini-biographies of the love lives of both well- and lesser-known literary and artistic figures as they happened wholly or partially on Fire Island. There is interesting material abou......more

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