Secret Historian The Life and Times of Samuel Steward Professor Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade (Audible Audio Edition) Justin Spring Sean Runnette Inc Blackstone Audio Books
Download As PDF : Secret Historian The Life and Times of Samuel Steward Professor Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade (Audible Audio Edition) Justin Spring Sean Runnette Inc Blackstone Audio Books
Drawn from the secret, never-before-seen diaries, journals, and sexual records of the novelist, poet, and university professor Samuel M. Steward, Secret Historian is a sensational reconstruction of one of the more extraordinary hidden lives of the 20th century. An intimate friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, Steward maintained a secret sex life from childhood on and documented these experiences in brilliantly vivid and often very funny detail.
After leaving the world of academe to become Phil Sparrow, a tattoo artist on Chicago's notorious South State Street, Steward worked closely with Alfred Kinsey on his landmark sex research. During the early 1960s, Steward changed his name and identity once again, this time to write exceptionally literate, upbeat, pro-homosexual pornography under the name of Phil Andros.
Until today he has been known only as Phil Sparrow, but an extraordinary archive of his papers, lost since his death in 1993, has provided the material for an exceptionally compassionate and brilliantly illuminating life-and-times biography. More than merely the story of one remarkable man, Secret Historian is a moving portrait of homosexual life long before Stonewall and gay liberation.
Justin Spring is a writer specializing in 20th-century American art and culture and is the author of many monographs, catalogs, museum publications, and books, including Fairfield Porter A Life in Art and Paul Cadmus The Male Nude.
Secret Historian The Life and Times of Samuel Steward Professor Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade (Audible Audio Edition) Justin Spring Sean Runnette Inc Blackstone Audio Books
"Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade" by Justin Spring, 2011I quite liked this book. Samuel Steward, aka Phil Andros and Phil Sparrow, led a remarkable life, as the subtitle described, as a university professor, novelist, tattoo artist, photographer and pornographer. The "secret historian" angle comes in as he was a fanatical chronicler of his own sex life, and an aggressive sex life it was. He kept a "Stud File" with all the data. The record keeping attracted the attention of Alfred Kinsey, who much valued Steward's records and observations (and photographs).
He also counted among his friends a who's who of the literary world, and was great friends with Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas. He later turned his correspondence with them into a book. His escapades included Thornton Wilder, Lord Alfred Douglas, Thomas Mann, André Gide, and Rock Hudson and his friendships brought in Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, and in later years Chuck Renslow and Dom Orejudos (Etienne). By the end of his life his "Stud File" totaled 807 people and over 5000, er, events.
The book is not a quick read, as it's very detailed. Spring is quite meticulous in detailing Steward's life, and while it describes a whole lot of sex, it doesn't get exploitative with the details...it's not a sexy book. Steward's life (he died in1993 at age 84) covers much of the last century and certainly those pre-Stonewall times are especially of interest.
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Secret Historian The Life and Times of Samuel Steward Professor Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade (Audible Audio Edition) Justin Spring Sean Runnette Inc Blackstone Audio Books Reviews
Samuel Steward could have very well remained little more than a popular and closeted university professor for his entire life. But instead, he left "the ivied nursery", as he refers to academia, and jumped into real life with both feet.
The title "Secret Historian" is unfortunate, as it implies a passive observer, watching and chronicling history safely from the sidelines. But Steward was no lurker (except perhaps when he was cruising the back alleys of Chicago, seeking sex with like-minded men). Instead, he was an active participant in many aspects of society and history, and created any number of snippets of history himself along the way.
Because of his interactions with so many levels of society for so long (from Gertrude Stein to the Hells Angels), and his extensive notes, writings, letters, and detailed documentation of his sexual contacts with other men (which remarkably averaged about 4 per week from the 1920's through the 1970's), he's left behind a vast archive of data regarding gay life in the days before Stonewall. Those 80 boxes of Stewards writings and artifacts would probably still be moldering in the attic where they were found, or worse, tossed out, if not for the clearly heroic efforts of the author of this biography, who tracked them down, saved them, and then managed to make sense of it all.
Steward is quoted extensively in the book, and he comes across as warm, extremely intelligent, very funny, down-to-earth, moral, and a keen observer of human nature, not to mention an excellent writer. He is a very sympathetic character, and by the end of the book, I had grown to like him a great deal.
I found the first 1/3 of the book very interesting. Steward's active gay sex life as a teen and young man in a small town in Ohio in the days just after World War I are something that I would not have thought possible. The middle 1/3 of the book, during which Steward is a professor and writer, was not particularly exciting. The last 1/3 is the best, as Steward seems to break free of conventional society, as well as an addiction to alcohol, becoming a noted tattoo artist, and later, a writer of a series of critically acclaimed leather-oriented erotic stories, among many other things. (In fact, I now know that the Phil Andros stories that had so titillated me in my youth were actually written by Steward.)
Steward gets five stars for a fascinating life, well-lived. The author gets five stars for unbelievable effort and thoroughness. But the book only gets 4 stars, because it can bog down at times with a lot of detail, as it strikes a balance between being an unparalleled academic work, and entertaining reading.
There are many brilliant portions of this book (childhood, early Paris, tattooing) that really paint a picture of Steward and the world in which he lived. These parts are sometimes shocking and/or funny, and may not be for everybody, but I certainly enjoyed the living heck out of them. These parts are heavily weighed down by the other sections where the author's writing is almost as painfully dry as a college textbook. Most noticeable example for me was the recounting of 30+ stud file entries and Steward's sex life in general during in spintriae period, where you might see three different encounters described one after another.
Still, overall I DO recommend reading it from beginning to end. The author has obviously put in a great deal of research and effort into the book, and you can always skip ahead a little if you start to feel like you're studying for a midterm.
"Secret Historian The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade" by Justin Spring, 2011
I quite liked this book. Samuel Steward, aka Phil Andros and Phil Sparrow, led a remarkable life, as the subtitle described, as a university professor, novelist, tattoo artist, photographer and pornographer. The "secret historian" angle comes in as he was a fanatical chronicler of his own sex life, and an aggressive sex life it was. He kept a "Stud File" with all the data. The record keeping attracted the attention of Alfred Kinsey, who much valued Steward's records and observations (and photographs).
He also counted among his friends a who's who of the literary world, and was great friends with Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas. He later turned his correspondence with them into a book. His escapades included Thornton Wilder, Lord Alfred Douglas, Thomas Mann, André Gide, and Rock Hudson and his friendships brought in Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, and in later years Chuck Renslow and Dom Orejudos (Etienne). By the end of his life his "Stud File" totaled 807 people and over 5000, er, events.
The book is not a quick read, as it's very detailed. Spring is quite meticulous in detailing Steward's life, and while it describes a whole lot of sex, it doesn't get exploitative with the details...it's not a sexy book. Steward's life (he died in1993 at age 84) covers much of the last century and certainly those pre-Stonewall times are especially of interest.
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