City of Night (1963)

An unnamed narrator (who shares a similar life story with the author) takes the reader on a journey from his impoverished childhood in El Paso, to stints as a hustler in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans. The novel is primarily an exploration of the gay male bar scene of the 1950s, which, according to this account, was profoundly sad, lonely, and depressing.

Does this 400-page novel have a plot? Not really! Roughly half of it consists of people and bar cataloging – endless descriptions of this hustler and that drag queen and this bar and that bar. To make matters worse, many of these passages have a rambling, pretentious, Beat-era vibe that I have a very difficult time embracing. However, within the aimless ramblings there are some wonderful short stories, where the narrator delves into specific life events of the characters. Some of my favorites are the heartbreaking story of an aging (meaning mid-thirties, at most) hustler who carries around an envelope containing photos and newspaper clippings that depict him when he was young and desirable; another is the story of a dying professor who obsesses about young men from his past who he calls “angels,” while ignoring the man who loves and nurses him during his sickness; and, finally, the story of an emotionally unstable fascist (yes, literally), S & M guy with whom the narrator unfortunately comes into contact.

I also feel like the novel could have benefited from a more thorough exploration of the narrator’s thoughts and feelings, rather than his endless description of other people. We learn a bit about him at the very beginning and a bit at the very end, where some character growth can be detected, but otherwise it feels, for the most part, like he’s a stranger. I suppose this could be deliberate, demonstrating that the narrator is essentially running away from himself and chooses to focus on that which is outside, but it certainly makes for tedious reading.

So, rather than a 400-page novel, this could have been edited down into a 200-page collection of very high-quality short stories. This was Rechy’s first published novel and it’s clearly a bit of a mess and was in need of a good editor. However, there are moments of excellent writing, and I may try something else by him, further down the road. ( )

After I have read those praising words on the back, I was high spirited when I started reading.
Though through out the novel Rechy depicted several characters pretty detailed - what I thought was a nice gesture - I felt somehow a indeterminable lack of depth.
Also I totally disagree with the statement 'Probably no first novel is so complete, so well held together, and so important as City of Night.'(The Houston Post). Though every chapter in its own right is good, its content is comprehensible and coherent in itself, most of the chapters were only loosely interconnected. Others where tightly knitted together - and this discrepancy really disturbed me while reading.

But it was - of course! - not bad at all. The insight this book offers of the homosexual scene at that time is very detailed. This as well as the personal view, thoughts and feelings of the first person narrator helps a lot to get an impression aloof from the usual prejudice concerning the life of people called 'homosexuals'.

This is a classic in gay literature. Rechy reveals a seemy underside of life in the 1960s among hustlers and drag queens. This tale is not for the faint of heart. Although a mirror of some aspects of gay life of its time, it seems a bit quaint and dated these days. ( )