Dirk Vanden (1933–2014)

I liked this raw, edgy story a lot. It is not a romance by any means but an in your face look at one man's life in pre-aids San Francisco. It all started with a gang rape that changed Warren Miller's life. This is Warren's account of that night and what followed it. I enjoyed Warren's naivety and his fresh look at gay life. Mr. Vanden's note at the beginning was the perfect introduction to the book and should be heeded. Based on fact, this book is worth the read if for nothing else than its historic value.… (meer)

This biography by Dirk Vanden is not an easy read, meaning that you will find difficult to forget it, and even days later, after closing the books, passages of it will remain with you. You will wonder about Dirk as a man, as an author, as an artist, as a partner, who he was and who he is today.

On the contrary of many memoirs, the fascination of having the feeling of reading a story remains in this book, and Dirk Vanden is a superb storyteller, he is passing his life like he was writing a novel, always true to himself, but also to the narrative style.

There is basically all spectrum of emotion, happiness, rage, sadness, excitement, desperation, hope. And all spectrum of vocabulary, cause Dirk Vanden, as an author, is considered a pioneer of gay porn pulps, and so there is sex, but not the “romantic” type of romance, more the anonymous sex of the bathhouses of a ’70 pre-AIDS San Francisco. But then there is the romance, a long-term relationship, and there is the tragic ending of that. There is the rebirth, much like the man on the cover: the original painting is lost, burned down along with the bathhouse where it was hanging, but the digital edition of that is now passing on history as the cover for the author’s biography (Dirk Vanden is also the artist who painted it).

This biography won the Rainbow Awards, the reprinting of Vanden’s porn pulp novels won a Lammy Award, a superserious publisher like Lethe Press decided to take Vanden under their umbrella: this is a new season for him, and I wish this author many more successes.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1590213548/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (meer)