Books: 797

“With the Heart of a Ghost”
Lim Sunwoo (tr. Chi-Young Kim)
The Unnamed Press
$28

Sunwoo’s ordinary folks undergo extraordinary experiences. The oceans of “You’re Not Glowing” are overrun by mutant jellyfish; one touch turns a person into one. Horrifying, yet so many citizens freely seek transmogrification; an entire industry bloomed to infect and provide special tanks to help them change at home. Narrator’s boyfriend Gu, who works in dead jellyfish disposal, suggests she work tending in-tank clients. Results alter both. Another whose mirror image appears in a bun shop fears she’s died, but the “ghost” assures her she hasn’t, that it isn’t a ghost, and is equally puzzled at her own appearance. In these two stories, like the others, some otherworldly being or essence arrives to set the narrator on a better, surer path with a fair shot at happiness.

“Castro to Christopher: Gay Streets of America 1979-1986”
Nicholas Blair Photographs, Introduction by Jim Farber
powerHouse Books
$45

Photographer Blair captured life in two enclaves in a unique and now vanished era, when gay men and women emerged to celebrate. Facilitated by a lack of isolating technology, they roamed the streets to connect. Police harassment; young thugs from the burbs menaced, but AIDS dark cloud was in the future. After first Pride came a joy in one’s gayness, discovering others like one’s self. Hope freshened. Blair has captured time rather than geography. Sunning bodies on New York piers, the Castro’s Halloween extravaganzas. Blair reveals humor, pathos, slyness and release. The mood finally darkens as the plague that took so many engulfs its prey, including Blair’s best friend, mentor and photographer Laurence Bair, to whom, along with Blair’s father Vachel, his book is dedicated.

“The Woman Dies”
Aoko Matsuda
Europa
$18

Matsuda’s sharp, sideways wit ranges in these stories through the Why-I-no-longer-lick-yogurt-lids of “This Precious Opportunity” to early acceptance of the necessity of female death in fiction and explaining “Why?” in “The Woman Dies.” Among the excuses are: … to provide a plot twist; … to develop the narrative; … because no one could think of what else to do with her. Thus, we’re accustomed, both young and aging, to embrace ever more outrageous inflictions. “Dissecting Misogyny” turns the tables. A department store huckster addresses a ladies’ gathering, praising her serrated knife as she begins the Dissection. “The head’s off!” Noticing distress among some, she summons an ambulance as others succumb. Wrapping up the remains bagged, the speaker again touts the fine blades, “Discounted today for your immediate use at home.”

“Queer Lens: A History of Photography”
Ed. Paul Martineau and Ryan Linkof
Getty Press
$65

This sumptuous volume is the catalogue of the exhibition of the same name held this year from June 17 to September 28 at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Curated by co-editor Paul Martineau, curator of Photography at the J. Paul Getty Center, the works span photography’s existence, from roughly 1839 to the 20th century, encompassing pictorialism, photo-secessionism, everyday life and staged productions, containing 270 images by 157 artists, along with four essays including Derek Conrad Murray’s “Seeing the Overlooked: Blackness and the Queer Self-Portrait,” and Jordan Bear’s “Nothing But a Freak Convention: Queer Photography’s Hybrid Origins.” Subjects unknown and known: Walt Whitman beside friend Peter Doyle, Oscar Wilde, Bessie Smith, Quentin Crisp, Catherine Opie. A treasury of images to peruse again and again.