Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

Product Information

Atherton Lin emphasizes his membership in communities of people making similar choices, for similar reasons. Promotion for this book started late last year and when I read advanced reviews about it, I was excited.

Gay spaces are a live issue and Lin's writing respects the current realities and future aspirations of the various communities. Gay Bar, the debut of Jeremy Atherton Lin, won the National Book Critic's Circle award for autobiography.

First, a travelogue about the various bars that Lin has frequented throughout the various stages of his life. I found Gay Bar tiresome, mostly because of the style, but pushed on, because it was loaned to me by a friend. Honestly, this book is more of a 2 star, "it was [an] ok" book, mostly because I didn't find the author and his personal stories that interesting, and I found myself skimming as fast as I could over those sections, skimming/skipping over quite a lot of the book, in fact. Such a pleasure to "see" so many places I also love deeply through somebody else's eyes, memories, experiences.

The title to be read and discussed is sign-posted and on sale for the whole of the previous month (with a discount for those who make it known they intend to come) and everybody is welcome, whether first-timer, part-timer or regular-timer. Gay Bar memorializes raunch, sex, friendship, and adventure; it tells the story of a shifting identity trying to find grounding in physical spaces that are themselves equally as shifting. Lin considers this as circular logic, for the mere fact that we have gender-fluid, well-balanced, relatively sane and unfucked-up kids wandering around is the ultimate affirmation of the Struggle’s success. I also agree with some other reviewers who were disappointed that there wasn't more of a social historical overview of the development of gay bars and their wane in the wake of apps and online dating and hook-up sites.

In one particularly disappointing chapter, Lin begins to explore the relationship that has evolved in London between anti-Muslim skinheads, the Brexit movement, and gay culture. One need only look at the online discourse of “Gays Over Covid” or “Gays for Trump” to recognize that something is afoot.