That title is a button-pushing one, of course, or at least invites the reader to wonder exactly what Irish culture writer Kevin Brazil might mean. Chiefly, he’s concerned with representations of queer happiness, rather than trying to calculate the average mood of the global community, but for this collection of eight essays, his starting theory has it that queer art and literature tend towards the navel-gazing and traumatic, taking up space that might better harbour the celebratory and triumphant.
As with most overarching statements like this, you can cite counterexamples if so inclined. Whatever…’s final chapter takes us through the playlist of a lockdown-era Zoom disco for Brazil and his friends, with an entry for each song: it’s superbly written and serves to illustrate that music, at least, is arguably in a purple period of queer advocacy at present. That said, agreeing with the premise is far from essential for enjoyment of this book (and one’s sexual identification less important still).
Brazil deftly weaves together personal recollections and historical marginalia, a quasi-profile of Wolfgang Tillmans coloured by the writer’s youthful ambitions to emulate the cult photographer’s life. Elsewhere, he looks askance at the strange, sex-fuelled life of Samuel Steward and the problematic, if outwardly well-intentioned, notions of creating a woman-only planet (in early sci-fi) or a nation state exclusively for gay men (in reality).
Whatever Happened To Queer Happiness?, Kevin Brazil (Influx)
Price: £9.99. Info: here
words NOEL GARDNER