Book Review: Hiding in Hip Hop

Book Review: 'Hiding in Hip Hop' by Terrance Dean
celebrating Black History Month 2014

4 / 5 Stars

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to celebrate Black History Month by reading a book - fiction or non-fiction - that illuminates the Black Experience.

For Black History Month 2014, our selection is 'Hiding in Hip Hop', an autobiography by Terrance Dean. The book (305 pp.) was published in 2008 by Atria Books, a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster.

I felt a sharp pain and my body flinched.

In ‘Hiding’, Dean relates his experiences as a ‘down low’ man – the term preferred by bisexual black men who exhibit masculine behavior and dislike being labeled as 'gay'.

Dean attributes his attraction to men as the result of being molested, at the age of 13, by a neighbor in his 20s named ‘Ramone’. As he grew older, Dean dated and had sexual experiences with women, but remained attracted to men. As a college student, his first gay liaison was with a neighbor named ‘Kelvin’…..

I had never experienced such an excruciating pain in my life…..

The bulk of ‘Hiding’ deals with Dean’s experiences as a down low man in the television, feature film, and music industries in LA and New York City during the 1990s. According to Dean, in the black community, the prevailing opinion is that gays are un-natural, and homosexuality is considered a perversion. 

As a consequence, down low men were, and are, scrupulously careful about how, when, where, and with whom they confide their sexual secrets. In 'Hiding', Dean describes his introduction to the underground world of the ‘down low brothers’, where carefully screened parties allow ‘beautiful’ black men to congregate and hook up without fear of being discovered.

I stared at the ceiling praying that it would be over soon.

Much of the entertaining portions of ‘Hiding’ derive from Dean’s accounts of hookups and one-night stands with actors and rappers whose external appearance is studiously straight. It’s hard not to start laughing aloud when Dean relates an encounter with a 'thug' rapper who, even in the throes of passion, nonetheless insists that he’s a ‘real’ man and ‘not gay’ !

Interestingly, Dean states that down low men are not on very good terms with gay black men. According to Dean, too many black gays are intent on 'outing' down low brothers, framing them as hypocrites who cover up their homosexuality even while publicly disparaging or denigrating gays. 

For their part, down low men view gays as overly effeminate, and too fond of becoming emotionally unhinged. 'Twinks', in particular, are strongly disliked by down low men.

Dean is careful not to disclose the names of the down low brothers mentioned in his book, providing just enough of a hint to get the reader speculating, but never confirming, the identity of the guilty party. 

However, I suspect readers with a detailed knowledge of hip hop in the 1990s will be able to figure out 'who’s who' for some of the pseudonyms liberally sprinkled through ‘Hiding’. If you google ‘Hiding in Hip Hop + identities’ or 'Hiding in Hip Hop + guesses', you’ll get some links to websites where people make educated guesses…....and you’ll laugh even harder.

I looked around and saw other guys kissing and fondling one another….Most of them looked like L.A. thugs.
 
‘Hiding’ is not a perfect book; the narrative often jumps back and forth in time, making any effort to apply a chronology difficult. As well, Dean expends considerable page space on lengthy, angst-filled expositions about how hard life is being on the down low, living a lie, forced to hide the truth, etc., etc. These complaints have a superficial quality as it becomes clear that for Dean, being down low allows him to have cake and eat it, too.

All in all, ‘Hiding’ is an interesting, often entertaining read, and well worth picking up.

The Black Widow from Bizarre Adventures 1981

The Black Widow in 'I Got the Yo Yo, You Got the String'
by Ralph Macchio and Paul Gulacy
from Bizarre Adventures (Marvel / Curtis) No. 25, March, 1981

The March 1981, 25th issue of the Marvel / Curtis black and white comic magazine Bizarre Adventures (previously titled Marvel Preview) featured an all –female cast of 'Lethal Ladies', which included The Black Widow, 'Lady Daemon', and 'The Daughters of the Dragon'.

The Black Widow adventure, titled ‘I Got the Yo, You Got the String’, was written by Ralph Macchio. The plot, which has something to do with a double-double cross, is incoherent, but the comic features some really good artwork by Paul Gulacy, who models the Widow on Victoria Principal, who at that time in 1981 was a superstar due to her recurring role on the drama Dallas.

Gulacy also models some of the supporting characters in 'Yo Yo' on other famous actors…..and if you look carefully, he  pays homage to the op-art effects that Jim Steranko used in his 'Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD' comics from the mid-60s. 

It's all part of Gulacy's approach to illustration that makes it worth showcasing more than 30 years after it first appeared.

Moby Dick by Voss

'Moby Dick' by Al Voss
from the January, 1982 issue of Heavy Metal magazine

Book Review: Rune

Book Review: 'Rune' by Christopher Fowler

4 / 5 Stars

‘Rune’ was first published in 1990; this Ballantine paperback edition (339 pp., cover artist unknown) was released in July, 1992.

Author Christopher Fowler is prolific, publishing novels and short story collections in the crime and horror / fantasy genres. Two of the supporting characters in ‘Rune’, the elderly detectives Arthur Bryant and John May, went on to become lead characters in the ‘Peculiar Crimes Unit’ series of novels, the tenth of which was released in 2012.

‘Rune’ is set in London in the early 90s. It’s Spring, and the city is shrouded in chilly temperatures and continuous rain. As the novel opens an aged executive, possessed by a deep and abiding terror, is running through the city streets. After a series of mishaps with traffic and passersby, he comes to a gruesome end.

The deceased man’s son, Harry Buckingham, is an advertising executive and very much the self-assured Modern British Man. Stunned by the sudden nature of his father’s passing, Harry questions those who witnessed his father’s strange behavior during his last moments. 

It emerges that Harry’s father is one of a number of businessmen who recently have killed themselves under violent, inexplicable circumstances. There is a common link to these suicides: the victims had in their possession scraps of paper marked with an unknown script.

Aided by a punk rock girl named Grace, Harry Buckingham embarks on an investigation of the strange script. It turns out that the script is comprised of runes: a prehistoric form of writing used in pagan religious rituals. To his alarm, Harry learns that with the proper visual cues, exposure to the runes can trigger super-realistic hallucinations in susceptible viewers.

Someone is marrying runes with modern videotape and broadcasting technologies……. and for a nefarious purpose. Will Harry and Grace act in time to discover the agents behind a scheme to brainwash British society into a new state of consumer compliance ? Or will they, too, fall victim to the terrifying power of the runes ?

‘Rune’ is an entertaining combination of the corporate thriller, horror, and cyberpunk genres, leavened with a healthy dose of satiric humor. Author Fowler does a good job of giving his narrative a sense of time, place, and culture for the London of the early 90s. The subplots support, rather than leach momentum from, the main narrative, and the novel features an interesting (but manageable) cast of characters.

‘Rune’ is recommended for those who appreciate a worthy effort at introducing occult horror into a modern sensibility.

Conan: The Phemonenon

'Conan: The Phenomenon' by Paul M. Sammon

January 22 marked the 78th year since the death of Robert E. Howard, so it's as good a time as any to take a look at  'Conan: The Phenomenon', which was published in hardcover by Dark Horse Books in 2008. The trade paperback version reviewed here was released in September 2013.

C:TP is essentially a coffee table book devoted to the famous barbarian; the author, Paul M. Sammon, is probably the world's foremost Conan Fanboy. The book, which measures 9 inches x 12 inches, is very well made, featuring glossy, high-quality paper and very good reproductions of the artwork, many examples of which occupy not just an entire page, but sometimes a double-page spread.

The book features a Foreword by Michael Moorcock, who, in tendentious prose, somehow re-casts the barbarian as freedom fighter devoted to the overthrow of oppressive, exploitative capitalist societies (!?)

It's no secret that Moorcock (like many British authors and artists in the sf and fantasy realms) regards Marxism with undisguised affection and reverence, but branding Conan as a hero of the Class Struggle seems more than a little contrived.....

Anyways, the opening chapter, 'Birth of A Barbarian', provides a biography of Robert E. Howard, along with a variety of archived photographs of the young REH out and about in Cross Plains, TX. 

Sammon makes an effort here to refute the argument that REH was a Mamma's Boy with an Oedipal complex that obliged him to commit suicide following her death. Rather, Sammon believes that REH had planned all along to kill himself, but had delayed the act until the death of his mother, in order to spare her the trauma of discovering her only child had blown his brains out (despite the gunshot wound which pulverized a large portion of his brain, REH's robust constitution kept him alive, unconscious, for eight hours before he expired !).

The second chapter, 'Conan Rising', covers the publishing history of the Conan character following Howard's death in June, 1936, on till the late 1960s. 

Sammon does a good job of explaining the convoluted nature of the legal agreements governing the franchise, agreements which led to a seemingly unceasing stream of lawsuits. It's difficult to come away from this chapter with anything other than dismay at the role L. Sprague de Camp (and to some extent Lin Carter) played in milking the REH canon for his own financial gain.

This chapter also gives deserved coverage to the pivotal role Frank Frazetta played in the marketing of the Lancer Books series of Conan adventures, a publishing move which brought the barbarian, and by extension REH's entire catalogue, into pop culture prominence.

'Conan the Ubiquitous' covers the further dissemination of the character into pop culture, occasioned by the arrival of the Conan comic book franchise, launched by Marvel in August of 1970. 

This chapter reproduces covers and interior art of these comic books, and is sure to spark nostalgia in anyone who remembers seeing those comics on the rack in their drugstore of convenience store back in the day.

While Sammon gives appropriate credit to the role Barry Windsor Smith's artwork played in heightening the impact Conan had on the buying public, he over-praises (in my opinion) Roy Thomas, who wrote much of the content from 1970 - 1974 before taking over as editor-in-chief for Marvel.

Thomas, Stan Lee, and Martin Goodman were unwilling to recognize that Windsor-Smith had brought a new approach - modeled on European attitudes towards graphic art - to artistic quality as far as comic books were concerned. Lee and Goodman were loathe to part with the additional sheckels that would've retained Smith's services, as well as loathe to alter the publishing schedule to accommodate his intricate draftsmanship. Unsurprisingly, Windsor-Smith left Marvel, and to a great extent the entire comics industry, for greener pastures.

For me, the Windsor-Smith issues remain the apogee of the franchise's appearance in four-color comics.

'Conan the Thespian' is devoted to the two feature films, Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984). There are stills, and insider accounts, of the movie-making process that may strike some readers as going overboard into vaguely disturbing realms of Fanboy territory ( a feeling reinforced by the photo of diminutive co-producer Edward Summer posing for a 'buddy photo' with an amiable Arnold Schwarzenegger).

The chapter also makes note of the exploitation of the REH estate throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, when a glut of Conan novels churned out by avaricious publishers (such as Tor Books) diluted the quality of the franchise.

The final chapter, 'Conan the Triumphant', deals with the franchise from the mid 90s to the late 2000s. Not surprisingly, since this is a Dark Horse book after all, Sammon gives plenty of favorable coverage to the efforts of Mike Richardson, the founder and publisher of Dark Horse comics, to acquire the licensing rights to revive the comic book Conan.

I haven't invested much effort to acquiring any of the Dark Horse Conan comics, with the exception of the Tim Truman / Joe R. Landsdale miniseries Conan and the Songs of the Dead. So I can't say if the Dark Horse incarnation does justice to the character or not, although Songs of the Dead certainly was a top-notch effort.

This chapter also covers the favorable changes to the handling of the REH franchise that came about in the mid- 1990s, when the Baum family of Texas inherited a majority of the publishing rights and acted to reduce the quantity of pastiches that had flooded the market with low-quality product. 

As a result, high-quality volumes of the REH canon, including the Del Rey illustrated versions, provided readers for the first time with content that was free of the clumsy editorial decisions of de Camp and others.

'Conan: The Phenomenon' closes on an optimistic note, as the Del Rey lineup of R. E. Howard volumes promises to attract and sustain a new generation of Conan fans. 

Whether you're a dedicated Conan Fanboy, or a fan of sci-fi and fantasy literature in general, its quality and affordability make Conan: The Phenomenon a worthwhile purchase.