Queer Moderns: Max Ewing’s Jazz Age New York

Starstruck, ambitious pianist Max Ewing moved from the tiny farming town of Pioneer, OH, to New York City in 1923, gleefully landing in the middle of the queer artistic avant-garde bohemia of the roaring ’20s that extended across the Atlantic to Paris and Venice, and across the country to Hollywood. Letters to friends and loving parents, stuffed with tales of social conquests and breathless star sightings, are the backbone of this book, along with innumerable expressive photographs he took of the people in his world. This combination provides an intimate ground-level view of his milieu and of the person he hoped to become during a time of crushing repression alongside wild expression. Ewing freely comments on virtually every famous person he meets but reserves expressing his true self for the queer circle he befriends before his tragic death in 1934.