Read more
"What unites us, all of us, surely is brotherhood, a sense that our friendships are historic, designed to hold Stonewall together," muses on character in Ethan Mordden's
Buddies. This need for friendship, for nonerotic affection, for buddies, shines forth as an American obsession from
Moby-Dick through
Of Mice and Men to
The Sting. And American gay life has built upon and cherished these relationships, even as it has dared-perhaps its most startling iconoclasm-to break new ground by combining romance and friendship: one's lover is one's buddy.
This book is about those relationships-mostly gay but some straight and even a few between gays and straights. Here also are fathers and brothers and stories of men in their youth, when rivalry often develops more naturally than alliance. In
Buddies Mordden continues to map the unstoried wilderness of gay life today.
About the author
Ethan Mordden is the author of dozens of books, both fiction and nonfiction, including
Buddies and
I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore. His writing has appeared in
The New York Times,
The New Yorker and numerous other magazines and journals. He lives in Manhattan.
