Consider what Rudnick offers almost without comment: the comparatively rare opportunity to spend decades watching two men navigate love. Like so much of the author’s work in other media — the play “Jeffrey,” the film “In and Out” — “Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style” seems less interested in serving as a gay museum piece than as a filigreed statement.
Turn your gaze, it beckons, and you’ll see we were more than simply here; we made this place beautiful.
The book is by turns affirming and hopeful, and heartbreaking. It includes stories of those who have learned to cope with difficult experiences and those who have found pride in their identities, as well as those who have experienced homelessness, discrimination and early death. It is an intense read. But Scott’s vivid voice, which threads a friendly authority throughout the multiplicity of stories and research, makes this essential book remarkably approachable.
The question one bumps up against these days, when reading about any of the multitude of environmental crises hurtling toward us, is an old one: What is to be done? Also: Will this book/movie/video/blog/podcast make a difference? The Gyllenhaals, longtime journalists (and bird lovers), want their book to be a wake-up call, and I hope it is. People need to know that the animals they live closest to, apart from their own pets, are in dire need of our help.
Despite the stakes, “A Wing and a Prayer” is no jeremiad. The authors tour the country in their refurbished Airstream, and like the retirees they are, calmly and competently report their observations.
He’s not so absorbed in the life around him
That he never looks up on clear nights
To admire the starry face of the sky.