No comments about American Bridge Patents: The First Century (1790-1890).

1 comments about Chattanooga Walking Tour and Historic Guide.

1. A great book! Full of so many fascinating stories, things even a long-time resident like me didn't know. I would also think anyone visiting Chattanooga would find the detailed history of downtown interesting.

1 comments about Gingerbread Gems of Willimantic, Connecticut.

1. This was a nice book, nicely done. The photographs and descriptions gave a thoughtful picture of a town justifiably proud of its history.

4 comments about A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture.

1. Fellows, Will. "A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture", University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
   
   
   
   Preserving the Past
   
   
   
   Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
   
   
   
   If you love the past, you will love Will Fellows's book "A Passion to Preserve". He has written about a topic that is not only worthy of attention but that is long overdue. Fellows began early on caring about the past. As a youth he was attracted to antiques and the past became a passion of his. Today's world seems to care more for the present as we all settle down to a way of life that is so different to what once was. Knowing that there were other men like him, Fellows undertook a project of exploring the relationship between gay men and preservation. We see that this becomes quite complex as he goes back in history to look at preservationists all over the United States. He then documents their contributions to the larger American cultural scene.
   
   It appears that throughout history gay men have had a talent to collect, organize, renovate and restore. This seems obvious to many people but the motivation for this has not been examined before.
   
   Fellows looks at rural and urban America and shows that it is gay men who have the pioneers in preserving American culture. He shows how gays rescue and restore buildings and revitalize neighborhoods that have fallen into disrepair. But the irony here is that after the preservation has been completed, the knowledge of who did the work disappears. Fellows has retraced the history and returned gay men to their proper place with reference to preservation. In Little Rock, Arkansas where I live--in the historic section of downtown--this has been especially true. The old mansions that were built during the period of Little Rock's incorporation have, in fact, almost all have been restored by the gay men of the city.
   
   The book is peppered with testimonies of 29 individuals which are sorted by region of the country and there are shorter pieces by several other preservationists. The book, however, is not just about the preservation of culture but it is also about what it means to be gay. Fellows adroitly examines the gay stereotype and labels it as a "gender-role atypical or nonconformist". He prefers the term "sociotype" which is more realistically based. Gay men flourish in concerns that deal with creating.
   
   Fellows also accurately defines all the key terms. He explains homosexual as referring to sexual orientation which may include behavior, self-identification and fantasy as well as arousal. The word "gay", however, includes all of the aforementioned as well as gender identity. By using there terms, Fellows finds a balance to clarify the identity of gender roles. By going into this theory of homosexuality, Fellows manages to make his book to serve two different audiences, preservationists and gay men. What we have is ma book that concerns itself with the social psychology of gender-role identity and Fellows not only presents but he clarifies it beautifully.



2. Congratulations to Will Fellows for writing a truly remarkable and highly enjoyable book!
   
   His account of his childhood and his attraction to antiques could have passed for my own. This is a subject that deserves the attention. In an age of assimilation, the author's research illuminates the gay and lesbian past and its contributions to the world at large. As the author explains; the irony is that in the process of preserving the historical architectural record, gay men erased their footprints, and like a detective, this collection of essays uncovers their tracks.
   
   I highly recommend this book.



3. This is a very important book for anybody to read regardless of their sexual identity as only gays know how to restore houses, furniture, design, etc. There should be a law prohibiting heterosexuals from doing design work, restoration, decoration as we know too well what horrendous jobs straight folks can do with a house! All the cardinal sins; vinyl windows, etc and gays have to come in and clean up the mess afterwards. Most gays can identify with this book. Too bad there are not more gays doing such positive & wonderful things in this culture. It is shocking how I can identify with most of the guys he interviewed! The book could use some pics; you know queens like pretty pictures. Will Fellows should be on HGTV to tell them a thing or two! He has done his homework! He goes to the top of my class!



4. Will Fellows is himself a sort of preservationist writer. His first book, Farm boys, recovered the childhoods of rural gay men in scholarly-memoir format. This time, he painstakingly identified gay men nationwide who seek to "keep culture" by restoring historically-valuable old buildings. The body of the book consists of the recorded testimonies of 29 individuals (or couples) by region, plus cameos of still others.
   
   But this body is not the book's "soul" perhaps. Which is to help clarify "what it means to be gay." "Even more than culture keeping, that's what this book is about," Fellows confirms. Specifically, he scrutinizes the suspect stereotype of gay men as gender-role atypical or noncomformist, let alone effeminate. He finds it may be an accurate image or a "sociotype" after all. That is, an image based in reality. Florists, hair stylists, interior designers? Yes, but also house restorers and antiquarians. And joining women in "fields that revolve around creating, restoring, and preserving beauty, order, and continuity." Gay men flourish in those concerns, sometimes outnumbering women. The image is true, it seems.
   
   Fellows usefully clarifies key terms. "Homosexual" refers to sexual orientation: behavior, self-identification, fantasy and arousal. (And, I would add, emotional spiritual adhesion...) But then "gay" encompasses not only that but gender identity. Which can include gender-atypicality-being "psychologically and perhaps physically androgynous." And also "effeminacy," although this surpasses "a swishy, limp-wristed prissiness. It encompasses "qualities or characteristics generally possessed by girls and women" and may involve not only speaking gesturing walking, but also interests aptitudes values emotions. Such as the passion to conserve, preserve. As Fellows puts it, "Males have great inclination and capacity for creating and building new, but females and gay males possess the greater inclination to re-create, rebuild, restore, preserve." Due to "a decidedly feminine ethos" that values "continuity of identity, maintaining connections, remembering."
   
   So this thrust usefully helps balance clarify this contested issue of gender-role-identity. Stereotypes, Political Correctness, social consructivism, essentialism. Now we can point to this culture-keeping quality of gay males as due to more than-more disposable income plus oppression!
   
   So the book serves at least two audiences. Specifically, preservationists and their camp followers. Generally, those interested in gay male identity, gender-role-identity.
   
   I could quibble only with the statistics? Does a "sampling error" raise its head here? Gay men into preservation, the sample, does not examine all gay males. So it might be insufficient, unrepresentative for the generalization about gay men? But it does echo prior research finding that childhood gender-atypicality and homosexuality are correlated. And indeed we recall those "special" farm boys, mavericks or outliers before puberty, amateur family genealogists, raisers of fancy poultry, and the rest...
   
   I could also wish for more meat with the potatoes? I could wish the interviews had been less storytelling and more conceptual. In Telling Our Stories concretely, we sometimes miss the interesting conceptualities behind it all. I felt yoked to the plowing team (so to speak) of autobiography on the lower field. I wished to ascend to the hilly heights of ideas about preservation, keystone issues in it. Perhaps a separate essay to learn about problems, pitfalls, potentialities, levels of competence, etc.
   
   But the reviewer shouldn't condemn a book for not doing what the reviewer personally preferred. All told, Fellows' contribution to the social psychology of sexual-role identity is really valuable. In the glut of print today, what justifies "yet another book"? Well, something truly new on an important issue, or at least not just repeating the known but advancing and clarifying it. As I found here.

No comments about The Mid-Century Modern House in Denver (Historic Denver Guides).

No comments about Historic Preservation for a Living City: Historic Charleston Foundation, 1947-1997 (Historic Charleston Foundation Studies in History and Culture).

No comments about Recording a Vanishing Legacy: The Historic American Buildings Survey in New Mexico, 1933-Today.

No comments about Historic Preservation: Collective Memory and Historical Identity.

No comments about Dutch Harbor, Alaska: Naval operating base, Dutch Harbor and Fort Mears, Unalaska Island, Alaska.

No comments about Plazas And Barrios: Heritage Tourism And Globalization In The Latin American Centro Historico (Society, Environment, and Place).