Lars Eighner's US Bookstore Presents The Texas Institute of Letters Authors
John Rechy
John Rechy was born John Francis Rechy 10 March 1931 in El Paso to Roberto and Guadalupe (ne้ Flores) Rechy who were in much reduced circumstances after fleeing the 1910 Mexican Revolution. He studied journalism at Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso) and The New School. After serving in the Army in Germany he returned to New York where he discover the hustling scene which became the basis of his first novel City of Night which began as a letter to a friend about his trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
Rechy taught film and creative writing at the University of Southern California in the 80s and in 1997 received the PEN-USA lifetime achievement award.
Rechy's novels include: City of Night, Numbers, This Day's Death, The Vampires, The Fourth Angel, Rushes, Bodies and Souls, Marilyn's Daughter, The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez, Our Lady of Babylon, The Coming of the Night, and The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens.
Rechy's books of nonfiction include: The Sexual Outlaw and Beneath the Skin: The Collected Essays.
The Sexual Outlaw: A Documentary
The Sexual Outlaw: A Documentary: The facts behind City of Night presented as the history of a thinly-veiled composite character.
The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens: A Novel
The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens is a picaresque satire and modernization of Tom Jones.
City of Night
City of Night is the first novel, an account of pre-Stonewall hustling, considered shocking and revealing at the time when there were only a handful of above-ground books dealing with gay sexuality at all. From the perspective of the 21st Century it's hard to say which is more astonishing: how much has changed or how little.
Novels of John Rechy
Bodies and Souls: a novel that could only be set
in L.A.
The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez: is a day in
the life a poor, divorced, mother of two in the barrio - a life she
experiences through the filter of her religiosity, and a day that
comes to a dramatic conclusion.
The Fourth Angel: Teen outcasts tear around El
Paso
Numbers: The second novel: Johnny Rio, after
several years on the shelf in Arizona, returns to the street to see
if he can still rack up the numbers.
Hispanic American Studies
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John Rechy
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This a bookstore page about Texas Institute of Letters member John Rechy.
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