Maria Froihofer, Elke Murlasits, Eva Taxacher (Hr: L[i]eben und Begehren zwischen Geschlecht und Identität

Ö 2010, 239 S., Broschur, € 22.00
Kostenloser Versand innerhalb Europas.
Löcker Verlag
Wen wir als liebens- und begehrenswert empfinden, hängt mit den Vorstellungen von idealen Körpern, den Idealbildern von Mann und Frau, unserem Sinn für Schönheit und »Normalität« zusammen. Liebe und Begehren, Erotik und Sexualität unterliegen dem gesellschaftlichen Wandel. Das bekommen Schwule und Lesben im Laufe der Geschichte immer wieder zu spüren. Ein am Universalmuseum Joanneum angesiedeltes, interdisziplinäres Projekt in der Steiermark ging den Fragen rund um Sex/Gender, Sexualität und Begehren, Normierung und Selbstorganisation nach. Anhand von Interviews und Fotos aus der aktuellen lesbisch-schwulen Bewegung geben die Textbeiträge Einblicke in das Spektrum an Lebensentwürfen und Lebenswirklichkeiten. Mit Beiträgen von Neda Bei, Jens Dobler, Hanna Hacker, Gudrun Hauer, Ines Rieder, Hans-Peter Weingand u.a.

David Bret: Clark Gable

Tormented Star. USA 2008, 287 pp., brochure, € 14.89
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
Clarke Gable - the archetypal male of his era. He was named »King of Hollywood« in 1938. But as the author of this uncensored biography reveals, the star was not quite who he seemed. One of Gable's best-kept secrets was his bisexuality. Bret recounts Gable's failed marriages to women who turned a blind eye toward his affairs with actors Earl Larimore and Rod La Rocque, among others. He also reveals how studio chief Louis B. Mayer concocted a pseudo-scandalous paternity suit and exaggerated the actor's wartime accomplishments in order to amplify Gable's masculinity and heroism for the public eye. With passion and accuracy, Bret uncovers the truth behind one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Deborah Ball: House of Versace

The Untold Story of Genius, Murder, and Survival. USA 2010, 344 pp., hardbound, € 23.59
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Versace. The very name conjuresup images of outrageous glamour and bold sexuality, opulence and daring. All, of course, true - but only half of the story. Versace is also the legacy of a great creative genius from a poor, backward part of southern Italy who transformed the fashion world. Gianni Versace, with his flamboyant sister Donatella at his side, combined his virtuosic talent and extraordinary ambition to almost single-handedly create the celebrity culoture that today we take for granted. Deborah Ball presents the inside story and has conducted interviews with Versace family members, Gianni Versace's lovers and business rivals, with models, and fashion industry icons. Gianni Versace had been at the height of his creative powers when he was murdered in Miami Beach. The manhunt for his killer became a media obession. Donatella demanded no less than a funeral befitting an assassinated head of state to be held in Milan.

Patti Smith: Just Kids

USA 2010, 291 pp. + b/w photographs, hardbound, € 22.95
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It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to 42nd St, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous - the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding.

Joy Melville: Diaghilev and Friends

UK 2009, 290 pp., hardbound, € 26.95
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At the beginning of the 20th century Sergei Diaghilev stormed Paris with an operatic production that sounded the trumpets of the coming of the Russian artistic avantgarde. Not much later he created the magical and now legendary »Ballets Russes«. In Paris and London Diaghilev drew together a talented group of like-minded artists such as Picasso, Bakst and Fokine, the dancers Nijinsky, Lifar and Karsavina, and the composers Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. The Bloomsbury group, the Sitwells, John Gielgud and H.G. Wells were all captivated by the force of his personality. The biographer explores Diaghilev's tempestuous and destructive affair with his protégé Vaclav Nijinsky, who descended into schizophrenia, his friendship with Jean Cocteau, and his circle up until Serge Lifar's heartbroken leap into Diaghilev's grave. Diaghilev lived his life by his own rules.

Brad Epps, Despina Kakoudaki (eds.): All About Almodóvar

A Passion for Cinema. USA 2009, 496 S., brochure, € 22.59
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One of the world cinema's most exciting filmmakers, Pedro Almodóvar has been delighting, provoking, arousing, shocking, and - above all - entertaining audiences around the globe since he burst on the film scene in the early 1980s. This book offers new perspectives on the filmmaker's artistic vision and cinematic preoccupations, influences, and techniques. Through overviews of his oeuvre and in-depth analyses of specific films, the essays here explore: Almodóvar's nuanced use of TV and music in his films, his reworkings of traditional film genres such as comedy, horror, and film noir, his penchant for melodrama and its relationship to melancholy, violence, and coincidence, his intricate questioning of sexual and national identities, and his inquiries into visuality and its limits.

Michael Maar: Proust Pharao

D 2009, 80 S., geb., € 19.53
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Marcel Proust war der Größte. Für den Biografen Michael Maar jedenfalls. Nicht einmal Thomas Mann oder Nabokov konnten den Spürsinn dieses Tüftlers derart wecken wie Proust. Dabei kommt Prousts Literatur (v.a. »Die Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit«) in einem liebenswürdigen wie boshaften Ton daher. Wie kaum ein anderer hat er seine Freunde, seine Liebhaber, seine Welt, seine eigene Biographie in Literatur verwandelt. Viele seiner Geheimnisse bevölkern nun die hintersten Winkel, die verborgenen Nebenräume, die Kellerverliese jenes prächtigen, monumentalen Gebäudes, das die »Recherche du temps perdu« für immer darstellt. Michael Maar führt nun durch diesen Literaturpalast und setzt den Leser demselben Zauber des großen Franzosen aus, dem er selbst schon lang erlegen ist.

Frank Kermode: Concerning E.M. Forster

USA 2009, 180 pp., hardback, € 21.79
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The author offers an informal but wide-ranging inquiry into puzzling features of Forster's life and work. After all, Forster's first novels, written before he was 30, showed tremendous energy and promise, but his productivity seemed to fizzle out after the triumph of »A Passage to India« in 1924. Why? Kermode reflects not only on Forster's considerable talent but on the sexual und social circumstances that Forster found restrictive but didn't challenge. On the many changes in English society before, during, and after WW I and WW II, which Forster wrote about as a critic but not as a storyteller. And on Forster's relations with his great contemporaries - Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and others. There Kermode shows that Forster was closest to the people who shared not his literary interests or artistic vocation but, rather, his homosexuality.