Strange Relations

Through the lives and works of four mid-century writers, poet Ralf Webb explores the ongoing crisis in modern masculinity In San Francisco, 1960, James Baldwin spoke to John Cheever about what he saw as a 'failure of the masculine sensibility'. Strange Relations examines how Baldwin came to this assessment and what may be amiss in our understanding of masculinity. Building on Walt Whitman's philosophy of the love between men, the book considers the work and lives of Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Cheever and Baldwin. All four writers wrestled in their art, as well as in their sexual and platonic relationships, with the expectations of masculinity, the pull of queer life and the tensions between the two. With a curious, intelligent and sensitive gaze, Ralf Webb sheds new light on each writer. The cumulative effect is a powerful and essential argument for why masculinity is in crisis, when and where that crisis began, and how we as a society might begin to find our way out of it.