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John (Francisco) Rechy |
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In 1963 a thirty-two-year-old west Texan, John Rechy, published his first novel, City of Night. In a time when other Texas writers alluded to homosexuality with euphemisms, if at all, Rechy opened the subject to honest portrayal. Writing from the highly marginal perspective of the gay hustler, Rechy defined the culture in a series of passionately and tenderly written novels. His books on the gay world are perhaps his best known, but he also writes about people in other unprivileged segments of American culture, particularly women and Latinos. City of Night opened the hidden worlds that became his subject matter as he crafted what Debra Castillo calls his "outlaw aesthetics" from naturalistic, romantic, and existential philosophies that were dominant in the post-World War II period.
Also influencing Rechy was his Catholic upbringing, with apocalypse underlying much of his work, often with the act of revelation leading to violence and destruction. The line that he planned to use in all of his books, "No substitute for salvation," captures the desperation of Rechy's characters, driven by their desire and need for a salvation he believes may be nonexistent.
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