The best little boy in the world

by John Reid

Paper Book, 1976

LCC

HQ76.U5 R44

Status

Available

Call number

HQ76.U5 R44

Series

The Best Little Boy in the World (1)

Genres

Publication

New York : Ballantine Books, 1977, c1976.

Description

The classic account of growing up gay in America. "The best little boy in the world never had wet dreams or masturbated; he always topped his class, honored mom and dad, deferred to elders and excelled in sports . . . . The best little boy in the world was . . . the model IBM exec . . . The best little boy in the world was a closet case who 'never read anything about homosexuality.' . . . John Reid comes out slowly, hilariously, brilliantly. One reads this utterly honest account with the shock of recognition." The New York Times "The quality of this book is fantastic because it comes of equal parts honesty and logic and humor. It is far from being the story of a Gay crusader, nor is it the story of a closet queen. It is the story of a normal boy growing into maturity without managing to get raped into, or taunted because of, his homosexuality. . . . He is bright enough to be aware of his hangups and the reasons for them. And he writes well enough that he doesn't resort to sensationalism . . . ." San Francisco Bay Area Reporter… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member TimBazzett

Found this book at an AAUW booksale and bought it on the strength of its first few pages. And it was a deal, even if only for the first half. Tobias/Reid is an engaging writer with a terrific, self-deprecating sense of humor, which comes across wonderfully. TBLBITW is, I think, an excellent primer

for non-gays like me about the heartaches and difficulties of growing up gay in the 1950s and 60s - and probably before that too. Tobias conveys a real and vivid sense of just how awful it was to pretend to be straight for the first 21 years of his life, and I felt for the guy. It is his sense of humor which ultimately saves the book, and makes it eminently readable for the most part. And it was, I'm sure, that same healthy sense of humor that saved Tobias himself as he was going through all those terrible and trying years of growing up, first groping for, then finding his true sexual identity and trying to figure out how in the hell he was supposed to live. It was only the second half of the book, after he "came out" following his college years, that the narrative became rather self-absorbed and even tedious, as he gave in to his compulsion to tell all about the various couplings and sexual practices of the gay community - in NYC, Boston, Provincetown, etc in that pre-AIDS era of the 70s. I know he'd been missing all this "fun" for ten-plus years, but sometimes "TMI" can be an apt objection. So I did some skim-reading for the last 50 or 60 pages. That said, this was a better, more readable book, in many ways, than Edmund White's gay autobiography, MY LIVES. But not quite as good as FAMOUS BUILDER, by Paul Lisicky, who knew where to draw that line. So I'll recommend the first half of the book, and the second half with reservations.

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