More books like "The World Only Spins Forward"?

March 23, 2018 10:42 AM

I am reading The World Only Spins Forward and finding it to be utterly enthralling. I'm looking for other stuff to read, as I have a very hard time lately finding things that hold my attention.

The things I find gripping about this book:

-The subject matter, in that it's about theater (specifically Angels in America, the great theatrical work of my lifetime) and gay identity and politics in the 90s and stuff
-The format, which works for my attention span. It's an oral history so it's basically a million little bits of input from hundreds of different sources. (I also really enjoyed this format in George Plimpton's book on Capote.) It helps that a lot of these people are fascinating and smart like Tony Kushner himself and Kathleen Chalfant.
-The length. I am not a Massive Tome person. This one clocks in at 400pp which is just fine.

Got any suggestions?

posted by Smearcase to Media & Arts (9 answers total)

If you haven't read Coming Out Under Fire, that might be of interest - I didn't read it for a long time because I mistakenly believed that it was going to be all rah-rah military. It's not an oral history, but it draws heavily on them.

How are you on GLBTQ Books Of The Past? I went on a little kick of reading Coming To Power, Word Is Out, etc, triggered by finding a copy of The Homosexuals, which I found totally fascinating. (Not always totally cheering, but not as grim as one might expect.)

Also, do you read detective stories? No, wait, hear me out! I bet the Henry Rios mysteries would be a good fit, although the middle of the arc is very sad. Back when I was a teenage indeterminately queer person, I would secretly read bits of the first two in the library - I could of course not check them out or be observed to read them. But anyway, Henry Rios is a left-leaning gay Latino lawyer like a more appealing Philip Marlowe. And these books are a window on the world, let me tell you - in part they really took me back to my youth in the nineties, in part they revealed a lot about debates within and depictions of queer culture in the nineties that I'd been too young to understand.
posted by Frowner at 10:56 AM on March 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

I can't really speak to the subject matter, but two not-too-long oral histories/biographies that I really enjoy are Edie: American Girl (the apex of this subgenre, I think) and All for a Few Perfect Waves. The latter is about groundbreaking surfer Miki Dora, and is fascinating even if you don't know anything about surfing (like me).
posted by Dr. Wu at 12:23 PM on March 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

How to Survive a Plague is on related subject matter, but is on the tome-y side.
posted by praemunire at 1:32 PM on March 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

You may have read it already but if not try the script of The Laramie Project.

(I proofread The World Only Spins Forward! I'm so excited you're enjoying it!)
posted by ferret branca at 1:32 PM on March 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

I highly recommend Free For All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told, by Kenneth Turan and Joe Papp. It's a multi-sourced oral history of NYC's Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, the folks who created Shakespeare in the Park, originated Hair on Broadway, and were involved in so many groundbreaking theatrical productions that you've heard of that the list is too long to repeat. Funny, touching, interviews a lot of really unexpected people, discusses things like the intersection of the theater with NYC and national politics.
posted by Rush-That-Speaks at 8:49 PM on March 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Live From New York checks your second and third boxes. It's a pretty entertaining read if you have any interest in the media business, even from a not-specifically SNL perspective.

Founders at Work is the same format. Been awhile since I read it and I've since become considerably more disillusioned with the tech world, but in my memory it reads as pretty straightforward history.
posted by mrmurbles at 11:28 PM on March 23, 2018

Based on really enjoying Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, I added another book by Legs McNeil, The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry to my list. But I haven't read it yet, and it's a bit long, at ~600pp. (Please Kill Me was compulsively readable to me, something about the oral history format makes the pages fly by.)
posted by Bron at 9:27 AM on March 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Hamilton: The Revolution is really great - mostly 2-4 page chapters interspersed with the lyrics (and lots of great photos). Not oral history format, but lots of quotes from the people involved, and several of the short chapters focus on a particular person.

Hat Box: The Collected Lyrics showcases Sondheim's shows with various asides and digressions by Sondheim about the shows, the performers, his collaborators, and so on.
posted by kristi at 10:49 AM on March 27, 2018

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone. For the moment I went with the Joe Papp book, which seems up my alley.
posted by Smearcase at 4:08 PM on March 27, 2018