Kevin Bentley interview
The latest issue of Suspect Thoughts has an interview with Kevin Bentley, author of Wild Animals I Have Known, a memoir of bohemian, hedonistic gay life in 1970s San Francisco.
Why would the diaries of a non-celebrity be interesting to readers?
Because they cover a memorable time and place--gay San Francisco in the late `70s and `80s--and are edited down to the most interesting narrative, leaving out the kind of tiresome personal soul-searching characteristic of young people's diaries, it's my hope that they succeed as a story. The book takes place in an era and a place of which you might say, "If you can remember it, you weren't there"--but I was there, to a degree, and I usually made notes the next day. The gay dream--any young person's dream--of fleeing your humdrum hometown and heading to SF, LA or New York is a perennially appealing story, I think. And then sex and drugs are always interesting to some people.
Several excerpts from the book accompany the interview.
