Rechy's City of Night follows in its way much the same path that Kerouac traced in On the Road, eastside, westside and all around the country. And part of his desire—wild reaching of the writer's organism—is to swing this huge cityscape wordwise with a series of variations on the theme of the male hustlers' experiences in the homerotic world through which his narrator wanders. The novel is sure to be read as a confessional exposé documenting the night side of homosexual life. Which it is. But it seems to me that Rechy has a deeper than confessional interest in the nationwide sexual skid road he writes about. The determining factor there is not so much this, that or some other sexual inclination, but what is much worse, a starved male impotence so pervasive that any momentary recognition of sexual existence at all is the real dime some buddy may be persuaded to spare. That his narrator is searching for the sources of this impotence accounts for the at times strict, almost clinical aspects of the journey. But a deeper striving, some dream of the father, causes the writer to swing his huge city of dreadful male night at the strong wrist of what is at times a heroic writing nerve and style. (pp. 155-56)
Warren Tallman, "The Writing Life" (copyright © 1976 by Warren Tallman; reprinted by permission of the author), in Open Letter, Third Series, No. 6, Winter, 1976–77, pp. 150-58.
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