What do you think?
Rate this book
The Life and Times of the Legendary Larry Townsend
WINNER! INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD - GOLD MEDAL LGBT Nonfiction WINNER! INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER BOOK AWARD - BRONZE MEDAL LGBT Nonfiction
A lively memoir of West Hollywood author-activist-influencer Larry Townsend whose signature Leatherman's Handbook was a founding text for gay men worldwide in the 20th century. Celebrating Townsend's 90th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his Handbook , this homage to Townsend written by his close friend of 40 years is vivid as a screenplay. Like a biographical film comedy sauced with honest realism, it stars the best-selling author of nearly 80 books who, long before the glitter bomb of Stonewall, helped found the new world of gay publishing, politics, and popular culture. The propulsive text, based on the testimony of intimate friends, especially his "Leather Wife" Jeanne Barney, reveals the rise and fall of the private man in all his unvarnished glory struggling behind his public persona even as he fights for the rights of other independent authors, and ends his life in a huge scandal of self-defense, suing floundering gay bookstores to protect his copyrights. The illustrated memoir offers readers unfamiliar with Townsend's leather milieu a charming and intimate profile of the author as a psychologist, author, and healing mentor whose Handbook was such a years-long bestseller that he literally educated American and international gay popular culture about the nature of leather people, principles, and practice. In Europe in 1977, Der Spiegel reported that in the world scene of leathermen, " The Leatherman's Handbook by a certain Larry Townsend is considered their Bible." He was an entertaining teacher who was not didactic, prescriptive, or old guard. His writing was a declaration of gay diversity. He challenged politically-correct mainstream censors condemning as pornography the consensual sadomasochism he championed as a kind of empowering analgesic ritual for men trying to cope counterphobically with PTSD caused by exposure to lifelong homophobia. This memoir unwrapping gay history spotlights the operatic Townsend, founding president of the Hollywood Hills Democratic Club, through revealing quotes from his own writing. It breaks down the barriers between so-called "low" and "high" culture and focuses on filling in the gaps that a neglect of gay popular culture by the politically-correct gay establishment has made in our understanding of the workings of broadband gay society. What Townsend wrote in 1972 describing his own Handbook applies to Fritscher's 2021 handbook about "...a definitive exploration of the gay S&M leather scene...written by a qualified writer who has observed it all from the inside." Jack Fritscher, PhD, qualified as a founding member of the American Popular Culture Association in 1968, is the 1970s editor-in-chief of Drummer who invited Townsend to write for that magazine for twelve years. Fritscher, who stayed true to his friend to the scandalous end, is the perfect eyewitness in this candid documentary memoir of gay history. A fascinating, witty, and wise story of leather lives well lived from the 1950s to 2008.
A lively memoir of West Hollywood author-activist-influencer Larry Townsend whose signature Leatherman's Handbook was a founding text for gay men worldwide in the 20th century. Celebrating Townsend's 90th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his Handbook , this homage to Townsend written by his close friend of 40 years is vivid as a screenplay. Like a biographical film comedy sauced with honest realism, it stars the best-selling author of nearly 80 books who, long before the glitter bomb of Stonewall, helped found the new world of gay publishing, politics, and popular culture. The propulsive text, based on the testimony of intimate friends, especially his "Leather Wife" Jeanne Barney, reveals the rise and fall of the private man in all his unvarnished glory struggling behind his public persona even as he fights for the rights of other independent authors, and ends his life in a huge scandal of self-defense, suing floundering gay bookstores to protect his copyrights. The illustrated memoir offers readers unfamiliar with Townsend's leather milieu a charming and intimate profile of the author as a psychologist, author, and healing mentor whose Handbook was such a years-long bestseller that he literally educated American and international gay popular culture about the nature of leather people, principles, and practice. In Europe in 1977, Der Spiegel reported that in the world scene of leathermen, " The Leatherman's Handbook by a certain Larry Townsend is considered their Bible." He was an entertaining teacher who was not didactic, prescriptive, or old guard. His writing was a declaration of gay diversity. He challenged politically-correct mainstream censors condemning as pornography the consensual sadomasochism he championed as a kind of empowering analgesic ritual for men trying to cope counterphobically with PTSD caused by exposure to lifelong homophobia. This memoir unwrapping gay history spotlights the operatic Townsend, founding president of the Hollywood Hills Democratic Club, through revealing quotes from his own writing. It breaks down the barriers between so-called "low" and "high" culture and focuses on filling in the gaps that a neglect of gay popular culture by the politically-correct gay establishment has made in our understanding of the workings of broadband gay society. What Townsend wrote in 1972 describing his own Handbook applies to Fritscher's 2021 handbook about "...a definitive exploration of the gay S&M leather scene...written by a qualified writer who has observed it all from the inside." Jack Fritscher, PhD, qualified as a founding member of the American Popular Culture Association in 1968, is the 1970s editor-in-chief of Drummer who invited Townsend to write for that magazine for twelve years. Fritscher, who stayed true to his friend to the scandalous end, is the perfect eyewitness in this candid documentary memoir of gay history. A fascinating, witty, and wise story of leather lives well lived from the 1950s to 2008.
220 pages, Paperback
Published July 29, 2021
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 22, 2022
The Life and Times of the Legendary Larry Townsend
By Jack Fritscher
Review by Les Wright
What becomes a legend most? Having his story told by another legend. And who better to tell Larry Townsend’s story than Jack Fritscher?
Author of The Leatherman’s Handbook, Townsend has long been recognized as a primary shaper and influencer of the gay leather-and-kink world, his book a founding text of the leather and kink culture of the 20th century. Jack Fritscher, author, scholar, editor of Drummer magazine, and long-time friend of Townsend, serves up a carefully documented, thoroughly engrossing (at times dishy), and insightful account of Townsend’s life and the world both men inhabited.
Sexual outlaw and social iconoclast Fritscher brings fresh life to a frequently misunderstood community, usually overlooked by queer historians more concerned with being “respectable” than in telling the whole truth. Writing with an immediacy reminiscent of John Rechy, Fritscher details the back story of another side of postwar gay Los Angeles, in all its unvarnished glory. Recounting many of the less than flattering grudge matches, Fritscher revels in the imperfect humanity of Townsend, himself, and many others—the sort of thing that many “respectable” historians are loathe to commit to print. This honesty is some of what makes this such a an enjoyable and satisfying read.
*****
I first read The Leatherman’s Handbook in 1974 when I was 21 years old. It changed my life. I had recently come out and was reading everything I could find about homosexuality. Being drawn particularly to butch, preferably hairy, working-class men, men in white tee shirts and leather jackets, men who loved men who (to my eyes) looked and acted like men, I was astonished to find there weas a whole tribe of gay men like me. Townsend guided me into the subculture of kink. Feeling doubly stigmatized for being not just a homosexual, but also a sadomasochist, I was so relieved to find I was not alone.
I had come across an ad for The Leatherman’s Handbook in an American gay magazine. I bought it mail-order, and it arrived with a small bottle of poppers. I was a student in West Germany at the time and living in a small university town. Emboldened by what I had been reading, I ventured out to the leather bars in Munich. It was there I had my first BDSM encounters and met my first leather master. The rest is history.
Many years later, as I learned how recently unearthed gay history became susceptible to revision as it became a “respectable” subject of inquiry, like the white washing of earthy Roman culture by Victorian scholars, I paid close attention. As a participant-observer of the gay bear culture I saw taking shape before me, I took Larry Townsend’s example to heart. With The Bear Book I sought to gather snapshots of what early bears were like, what they did, how they saw themselves—before historians after the fact would record a history not directly experienced to better align with their interpretation than the unvarnished truth. I also fashioned my book to be a how-to guide in the spirit of The Leatherman’s Handbook.
Once upon a time people like me were considered sexual outlaws. The action is often on the margins. Change is often brought about by what emerges from the margins. As an old man myself now looking back, I particularly enjoy now octogenarian Jack Fritscher looking back on Larry Townsend’s long life as well as his own. As Jack might quote from the Eagles, “You call someplace paradise / kiss it goodbye.”
By Jack Fritscher
Review by Les Wright
What becomes a legend most? Having his story told by another legend. And who better to tell Larry Townsend’s story than Jack Fritscher?
Author of The Leatherman’s Handbook, Townsend has long been recognized as a primary shaper and influencer of the gay leather-and-kink world, his book a founding text of the leather and kink culture of the 20th century. Jack Fritscher, author, scholar, editor of Drummer magazine, and long-time friend of Townsend, serves up a carefully documented, thoroughly engrossing (at times dishy), and insightful account of Townsend’s life and the world both men inhabited.
Sexual outlaw and social iconoclast Fritscher brings fresh life to a frequently misunderstood community, usually overlooked by queer historians more concerned with being “respectable” than in telling the whole truth. Writing with an immediacy reminiscent of John Rechy, Fritscher details the back story of another side of postwar gay Los Angeles, in all its unvarnished glory. Recounting many of the less than flattering grudge matches, Fritscher revels in the imperfect humanity of Townsend, himself, and many others—the sort of thing that many “respectable” historians are loathe to commit to print. This honesty is some of what makes this such a an enjoyable and satisfying read.
*****
I first read The Leatherman’s Handbook in 1974 when I was 21 years old. It changed my life. I had recently come out and was reading everything I could find about homosexuality. Being drawn particularly to butch, preferably hairy, working-class men, men in white tee shirts and leather jackets, men who loved men who (to my eyes) looked and acted like men, I was astonished to find there weas a whole tribe of gay men like me. Townsend guided me into the subculture of kink. Feeling doubly stigmatized for being not just a homosexual, but also a sadomasochist, I was so relieved to find I was not alone.
I had come across an ad for The Leatherman’s Handbook in an American gay magazine. I bought it mail-order, and it arrived with a small bottle of poppers. I was a student in West Germany at the time and living in a small university town. Emboldened by what I had been reading, I ventured out to the leather bars in Munich. It was there I had my first BDSM encounters and met my first leather master. The rest is history.
Many years later, as I learned how recently unearthed gay history became susceptible to revision as it became a “respectable” subject of inquiry, like the white washing of earthy Roman culture by Victorian scholars, I paid close attention. As a participant-observer of the gay bear culture I saw taking shape before me, I took Larry Townsend’s example to heart. With The Bear Book I sought to gather snapshots of what early bears were like, what they did, how they saw themselves—before historians after the fact would record a history not directly experienced to better align with their interpretation than the unvarnished truth. I also fashioned my book to be a how-to guide in the spirit of The Leatherman’s Handbook.
Once upon a time people like me were considered sexual outlaws. The action is often on the margins. Change is often brought about by what emerges from the margins. As an old man myself now looking back, I particularly enjoy now octogenarian Jack Fritscher looking back on Larry Townsend’s long life as well as his own. As Jack might quote from the Eagles, “You call someplace paradise / kiss it goodbye.”
Displaying 1 of 1 review