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Helms vividly brings to life the time just before Stonewall and the Gay Liberations Movement in this poignant, insightful, often humorous remembrance of his journey from a midwestern adolescence to a self-absorbed life as a male model in New York and Europe in the 1960s, ending with his self-acceptance as a gay man in a homophobic society.
- Sales Rank: #1875847 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Faber n Faber
- Published on: 1995-11-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.30" h x .85" w x 6.38" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 208 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
In his 20s and early 30s, Helms was at once the most privileged and self-destructive of men, at the giddy peak of his career as "the most celebrated young man in all of gay New York." The Manhattan of the 1950s and '60s embraced the Columbia student as a "U.T."?a "universal type," or "someone everybody wants," photographed by Avedon, directed by Edward Albee and pursued by any number of men. Repudiating the drab miseries of his Indiana boyhood, Helms pursued those who pursued him: his more celebrated lovers included Anthony Perkins, Larry Kert and Luchino Visconti. Leonard Bernstein wooed him ardently, and chum Noel Coward helped Helms reconcile with a lover. But the relationships were doomed to fall apart, as Helms (held aloft by adoration, alcohol and drugs; brought thuddingly to earth by excess?bulimia; alcoholism; joyless, frenetic promiscuity) began to self-destruct. Self-acceptance came with the more temperate joys of work as a college professor and with counseling from the Harvard psychologist Robert Coles. As he grew older, Helms was better able to distance himself from the past. Because Helms is neither an elegant nor a modest writer, the reader is less willing to repudiate his glittering excesses; Helms's vigorous name-dropping has more charm than the somber self-reproaches that accompany his sobriety. This self-described "D student in the school of life" depicts a New York that, after the Stonewall riots, would never be as closeted?or as cozily familiar?again.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Even if you don't recognize Helms as the epitome of New York's and Europe's golden "boymen" during the late 1950s and 1960s, you will appreciate his poignant, picaresque memoir, which vividly captures with humor and insight the chronicle of his journey: from the unhappiness of his abusive, alcoholic family life in Indianapolis and an overwhelming need for acceptance, seemingly fulfilled by becoming a cynosure in the world of the beautiful people, to his aborted careers as a model, actor, and writer. Among the many names dropped are friendships with Noel Coward, Leonard Bernstein, and Luchino Visconti and affairs with Larry Kert, Tony Perkins, and scores of other famous and/or handsome young men. But after years of addiction to the gym, cigarettes, adulation, booze, sex, dope, and later drugs and bulimia, Helms finally faces his fears and creates a new life as professor of literature at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. For gay studies collections.
James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
It is easy to lose patience with suffering in the upper depths, and there were times I wanted to hurl this book.... But the misery and remorse over squandered gifts here are too genuine to reject.... one to heed, one to read. -- The New York Times Book Review, Steven Bach
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Fabulous reading
By So. Calif book reader
Excellent, excellent book!!!!!!!!! I really enjoyed it SO much and was so sorry it came to an end. Let people say what they want to about him, but it was an interesting, fascinating story and I was extremely touched by it and recommend this book to all.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Lyrical and moving
By Lulu J
As someone who has read a good deal of gay literature I alighted upon this book with a great deal of anticipation and was not disappointed.
I have a keen interest in many of the people mentioned by Alan Helms yet found myself becoming very interested in him. As far as dishing the dirt (who isn't interested in a bit of juicy gossip) well there's not much of it, it's very restrained. Yet I found myself grateful for the lack of it, in an age where things are stripped bare and nothing is left unsaid, it was suddenly refreshing not to be regaled with someone's intimate bedroom habits.
I found it a lyrical book, for example "the whole world focussed in the cone of light from a reading lamp as the words moved forward on the page, the fabric of knowledge rising in the expectant silence" melodious prose indeed.
Touching on the subject of name dropping - well it's hard to know what else he could do, this is a memoir of someone unknown to much of the public, but his fame for the rest of us lay in the people he associated with, not much point writing the whole book about the boy next door.
It will surprise some when I say I found it humble, certainly those for whom there are too many references to his beauty. This is deliberate, setting the scene nicely ready to turn the tables on himself and us and make us experience the despair of losing youth, beauty, body and hair (things that he has relied on so heavily) - never sparing, he acknowledges his faults, the fact that he lied, that he has stolen, that he has a dark side (haven't we all).
It is a skilfully crafted, accomplished book - the death of his mother is very moving - international boy prostitute turned professor, you couldn't make it up - I so hoped that in the end he might find true love but remembered that this is real life - not the movies.
Perhaps the only criticism was the lack of photographs; they are always helpful in drawing the reader that little bit closer.
At this point I would like to add that I am a straight, middle aged woman and realise that the subject matter of this book is not for everyone which is to be regretted as it is brave and at times, beautiful. Having finished it my one regret is that I will never meet Mr Helms.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
The Agony and the Ecstasy
By Kenneth R. Mabry
This is a candid and powerful account of Helms' journey of growing up in 1940's Indianapolis in an alcoholic home, attending Columbia University on a scholarship, navigating his way through the gay beau monde of New York in the 1950's and 60's as a highly desirable young man, burning out on his lifestyle, and eventually settling into a more sedate life in Boston as a middle-aged professor.
In large part, the memoir swings between the poles of Helms' agony and ecstasy. The agony was that Helms was a deeply wounded and insecure young man who was emotionally unprepared for his high octane life in New York. Despite the constant stimulation of sex, drugs, travel, and celebrity, he feels depleted and empty, suffering, at times, from insomnia, bulimia, and suicidal thoughts. The ecstasy was the thrill of that same lifestyle. Helms was one of the most desirable young men of his time, and the temptations surrounding him were thrilling and irresistible. It's titillating and exhausting simply reading about his constant exploits.
Helms was lucky to survive all his excesses; many of his contemporaries did not. Some of his recovery was due to that nascent part of him that wanted to be whole, the person who sought out therapy, a twelve-step program, and a teaching career outside New York. And much of it was simply the result of the diminishing opportunities that come with middle age.
This book tells a remarkable story. It shows that so many of the forces that compel us through life are unchosen: our family background, our sexual orientation, our physical and intellectual capabilities, the era in which we come of age. It's also a cautionary tale that no one can get enough of what he really doesn't need, be it sex, money, drugs, power, or fame. This account also shows that with courage, luck, and grace we can find our way to a more authentic life, one we can respect and call our own.
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