My Queer War

"James Lord . . . is a tremendous storyteller. He brings dramatic intricacies to his encounters with Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Cocteau, Alberto Giacometti, Peggy Guggenheim and a host of other characters in the memoirs and recollections he published over the course of nearly half a century, from A Giacometti Portrait in 1965 to My Queer War, completed before his death . . . My Queer War reflects the skills of a practiced fiction writer who can track a young man's shifting consciousness and knows what is best left unsaid."—Jed Perl, The New York Times 

 

"James Lord wanted to leave college in October 1942; at 20, he hated every minute of campus life and harbored a secret that shamed him. Volunteering for the U.S. Army and heading off to war seemed like the perfect escape. My Queer War reveals what this young man, so innocent of worldly experience, learned about himself, the army, the enemy, Europe, and even the artists he worshipped (Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein and Thomas Mann, among others) during his tour of duty from enlistment until discharge in December 1945 . . . Overwhelmed by both the atrocities he witnessed and the rampant absurdities of the army, he asked himself, 'Was it merely the war? Being queer in the war, making the war queer.' Portraying his actual war duties as farcical (he was awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious achievement—for nothing, he says), Lord delivers a sobering and heartbreaking account of the personal battle he fought to come to terms with his inexperience, hero worship and sexuality in the unforgiving theater of war. In poignant summary, Lord (who died at 86 in 2009) writes, 'I stood by the ragged edge of the action in fear and fascination, and I dreamed that maybe mere proximity might make the story of my queer war the history of an epic.'"—John McFarland, Shelf Awareness