Times Literary Supplement 6337 13 September 2024

The Wild One - Thom Gunn's Californian odyssey  by Sean O'Brien

James Baldwin declared that “the great problem” was “how to be – in the best sense of that kaleidoscopic word – a man”. Ralf Webb’s study of literary masculinity in mid-century America, Strange Relations, reviewed by Kevin Brazil, describes a world of sexual repression and unspoken desires. Some British writers, however, discovered new freedoms in the US. As Michael Nott’s Thom Gunn: A cool queer life records, the precocious star of Cambridge poetry found happiness in 1954, when he left for San Francisco with Mike Kitay, his American partner.

By Martin Ivens