Title: The Homosexuals - The First Book in Which Homosexuals Speak For and About Themselves Author: Alan Ebert Published by: Macmillan, 1977 ISBN: 0-02-534770-5 [Hardcover, 332 pages]
Seventeen homosexual men speak for themselves, freely and without fear of judgment.In these interview, taut with drama and self-revelation, Alan Ebert enables each man to create his own individual self-portrait. What results is not a picture of "the homosexual" but a medley of stories filled with humor, anger, love, tragedy, and pride, which in their cumulative impact explode the myths our society still holds about homosexuals.
They talk about themselves and their lives, their parents, lovers, wives, and children; and they talk about what being gay means to them - both positively and negatively - in their social and sexual lives, in their careers, and as they age. Ebert's skill as an interviewer and his relentless and probing questions set the stage for internal dramas which force his subjects to confront themselves as never before. Each of these profiles is the essence of hours of questioning, during which many of his subjects experience moments of self-discovery as startling and moving to themselves as to the reader.
Not attempting a definitive portrait of homosexuals today, Ebert finds the same diversity among homosexuals one would find in any group of people. These men are young, middle-aged, and old; professional and working class; black and white; flamboyantly gay, respectable, and closeted types. We hear from a doctor, a rabbi, a gymnast, a psychoanalyst, a hairdresser, a lawyer, an advertising executive, a stage designer, an opera singer, a restauranteur, a secretary, a Russian emigrea, a window dresser, and a physical therapist. The Homosexuals presents a tapestry of many voices telling the extraordinary stories of quite ordinary men.
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