GEORGE CHAUNCEY'SGAY NEW YORK:A VIEW FROM 25 YEARS LATER

Abstract

When George Chauncey'sGay New Yorkappeared a quarter century ago, it did so with deserved fanfare. Reviewers celebrated it as “brilliant,” “magisterial,” “exceptional,” “monumental,” “light-years ahead,” “masterful,” “seminal,” “groundbreaking,” “absolutely marvelous,” a “new beginning,” and a “landmark study.” While reviews ofGay New Yorkappeared in the usual American history journals, many of these were uncommonly long, indicating the book's immediate importance. This importance was also felt beyond the discipline of history with reviews appearing in sociological, anthropological, environmental, American Studies, and even speech journals. The Association of American Geographers held a roundtable onGay New Yorkin 1995 in which a participant dubbed it, “one of the more important texts written by a nongeographer to be included in a canon of new social geography.” Beyond the academy, the popular press also expressed considerable interest in the book, with theNew York Times, theNew Yorker, theNew Republic, and theGay Community Newseach taking up the matter ofGay New Yorkin its pages. And beyond the bounds of the United States, scholarly publications in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom also commissioned reviews ofGay New York. A year after its American debut with Basic Books, the parent firm of HarperCollins released it in the United Kingdom, and then eight years later the noted historian Didier Eribon translated it into French for the Parisian publisher Fayard. Within its first few years of publication,Gay New Yorkalso collected a number of notable prizes, including theLos Angeles TimesBook Prize for history, the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the Lambda Literary Award for gay men's studies, and the Merle Curti Award from the OAH.