| Title: |
Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite - Being Gay and Jewish in America |
 |
| Author: |
Lawrence D. Mass |
| Published by: |
Cassell, 1994 |
| ISBN: |
0-304-33114-7 [trade paperback, 268 pages] |
In 1981, Lawrence Mass was a 35-year-old
physician, writer and gay activist living in New York City. On his living-room
wall, among other opera memorabilia, there were five pictures of Richard
Wagner, one of them a drawing by Mass himself. While researching what would
become the first feature article on the epidemic that later became known
as AIDS, the author had the first confrontation of his adult life with
overt anti-Semitism, an incident he was completely unprepared to deal with
psychologically. As AIDS spread, and every sexually active gay man was
forced to confront his own mortality, the need to understand the even-greater
depths of fear touched by the incident became urgent, and Mass began to
face the reality that his life had been dominated by internalized anti-Semitism,
even as he came to grips with his gay identity.
A series of self-contained autobiographical essays, Confessions
examines a vast panorama of events, issues and personalities in the worlds
of identity politics, AIDS and the arts. As it probes the interconnectedness
of gay, Jewish and musical cultures in post-World War II America, against
a backdrop of resurgent anti-Semitism, it reveals one human being's quest
for personal and spiritual identity. From his adolescent infatuation with
Wagner to his friendship with the great-grandson of the composer and his
life-partnership with a fellow gay activist and Jewish-American writer,
Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite is the story of that voyage of
discovery.
