Name John Rechy TV shows Sex: The Revolution Allegiance United States | Period 1963– Nationality American Role Novelist | |
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Born John Francisco Rechy March 10, 1931 (age 93) El Paso, Texas ( 1931-03-10 ) Notable works City of NightThe Sexual OutlawThe Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez People also search for Jack Fritscher, Winston Leyland, Christopher Isherwood Books City of Night, The Sexual Outlaw, Miraculous Day of Amalia G, The coming of the night, About My Life and the Kept | ||
Ucla professor h ctor calder n in conversation with author john rechy may 14 2013
John Francisco Rechy (born March 10, 1931) is a Mexican American novelist, essayist, memoirist, dramatist and literary critic. In his novels he has written extensively about gay culture in Los Angeles and wider America, among other subject matters, and is among the pioneers of modern LGBT literature. His debut novel, City of Night, published in 1963, was a best seller and is widely considered a seminal work in 20th century literature. Drawing on his own background, he has contributed to Chicano literature, notably with his novel The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez, which has been taught in several Chicano literature courses throughout the United States.
Contents
- Ucla professor h ctor calder n in conversation with author john rechy may 14 2013
- A fiftieth anniversary celebration of john rechy s city of night
- Background
- Literary career
- Awards honors and recognition
- Legacy
- References
A fiftieth anniversary celebration of john rechy s city of night
Background
Rechy was born March 10, 1931 in El Paso, Texas. He was the youngest of five children born to Guadalupe (née Flores) and Roberto Sixto Rechy. Both of Rechy's parents were natives of Mexico; his father was of Scottish lineage.
He earned a B.A. in English from Texas Western College (now University of Texas at El Paso), where he served as editor of the college newspaper.
Following graduation from college, Rechy enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was granted early release from the Army to enroll as a graduate student at Columbia University. He applied for admission to a creative writing class taught by novelist Pearl S. Buck by submitting an unpublished novel he had written titled Pablo! While his application to Buck's class was not accepted, Rechy was admitted into the writing classes of Hiram Haydn, a senior editor at Random House, at the New School for Social Research.
Literary career
Rechy's first published work, the largely autobiographical novel City of Night, debuted in October 1963. Despite the predominantly negative reviews the book received at the time of its publication, City of Night became an international bestseller. It is now widely recognized as a "modern classic".
In addition to the dozen novels he has written to date, Rechy has contributed numerous essays and literary reviews to various publications including The Nation, The New York Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, L. A. Weekly, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Evergreen Review and Saturday Review. Many of these writings were anthologized in his 2004 publication Beneath the Skin. He has written three plays, Tigers Wild (first performed as The Fourth Angel and based on Rechy's novel of that title), Rushes (based on his novel of the same title), and Momma As She Became—Not As She Was, a one-act play.
Rechy was cited, by journalist Amy Harmon, in a 2004 New York Times article that reported about a computer glitch on Amazon.com that suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had anonymously posted book reviews. It was revealed that Rechy, among several other authors, had "pseudonymously written themselves five-star reviews, Amazon's highest rating". Amazon stopped accepting anonymous reviews as a result of this finding.
Awards, honors and recognition
Rechy is the first novelist to receive PEN-USA-West's Lifetime Achievement Award (1997); he is the recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle (1999) and an NEA fellow. He is a faculty member at the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He is the first recipient of ONE Magazine Culture Hero Award.
Legacy
Writers Michael Cunningham, Kate Braverman, Sandra Tsing Loh, and Gina Nahai were students of Rechy's creative writing classes before becoming published authors.
English pop artist David Hockney's painting Building, Pershing Square, Los Angeles was inspired by a passage in City of Night.
The 1983 song "Numbers" by the English synthpop duo Soft Cell was inspired by Rechy's 1967 novel of the same title.
A CD-ROM of Rechy's life and work was produced by the Annenberg Center of Communications and is titled: Mysteries and Desire: Searching the Worlds of John Rechy.