... brilliant ... Cervini is a smooth writer and a brilliant researcher. Besides being the first full-length biography of the intellectual father of the gay liberation movement, Cervini’s work provides a wealth of fascinating new details about the movement before the Stonewall riots of 1969 ... The book also does a fine job of tracing the decades-old divide within the movement, between those like Kameny who thought gays needed to look as much as possible like heterosexuals to be accepted (White House picketers were all required to wear suits if they were men or unrevealing dresses if they were women) and those most eager to celebrate gay differences ... Besides its rich portrait of Kameny, this book is careful to give honorable mentions to many other pre-Stonewall activists.
... falls short of perfection. But not by much ... With spare prose and linear sequencing that recalls James Baldwin, Cervini chronicles this mission, unsuccessful appeal after unsuccessful appeal. He takes the reader on an epic journey ... an epiphanic work. That is due partly to Cervini’s admirable use of a wealth of material ... Testimony from participants in the 1969 Stonewall riots brings that definitive act of gay defiance to life ... Is it due to academic rigor that Cervini fails to mention Hoover’s long-rumored intimacy with his deputy, Clyde Tolson? Perhaps he felt most readers would already be aware of such speculations ... A more significant issue is the book’s end. Reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, it is a summation in the form of an epilogue. Snappily, one learns the resolution of the myriad lives populating The Deviant’s War. But after earlier thoroughness, one yearns for 500 pages more instead ... I did not anticipate that in writing about Frank Kameny’s heroic stand, Cervini could also cover his own, mine and that of all LGBTQ America. Certainly it was hard to imagine, beforehand, a work that grippingly told of the emergence from turmoil of a more perfect union that is now threatened anew ... Cervini’s is a singular accomplishment. It proves one cannot judge a book by its cover, its outward identity. Seeking always to treat others justly, we ought never to do so. Happy Pride!
If the L.G.B.T.Q. movement had saints, a Jewish homosexual atheist scientist named Franklin Kameny would have an exalted place in the pantheon ... In Eric Cervini, a young historian of L.G.B.T.Q. politics and the author of the exhaustively researched and vividly written biography The Deviant’s War, Kameny has found his hagiographer ... Both the strengths and weaknesses of The Deviant’s War are tied to its relentless adherence to chronology. The narrative’s rapid clip is engrossing and succeeds in making readers feel they are witnessing history as it unfolds. But it often keeps Cervini from pausing long enough to weigh the relative significance of events, draw explanatory connections among them or analyze the reasoning behind the sometimes perplexing actions of key figures ... There are few revelations for historians in this book. But its riveting account of Kameny’s struggle will be eye-opening for anyone keen to have a crash course on L.G.B.T.Q. politics in the tumultuous decade leading up to Stonewall.
...a brisk, clear-eyed new biography ... Much of the granularity of Cervini’s account comes from F.B.I. files, rather than from what survives of Kameny’s papers or the society’s archives—a testament both to the garrulity of informers and to the Mattachines’ extreme caution about anything that might incriminate members.
Cervini’s complex and layered narrative contains many threads ... Cervini is not afraid to quote at length from interviews and primary sources, but he does so skillfully rather than heaving big, undigestible chunks into the narrative ... Cervini’s many examples of Kameny’s domineering and inflexible personality make it clear he was, or could be, a deeply problematic person ... If there are weaknesses in Cervini’s narrative, one is his failure to explicitly connect Kameny’s privilege as a white, educated man to his activism ... Cervini also chooses to summarize the events of Kameny’s life after 1971. This is understandable, given the length of his biography, but the story of how Kameny faded in obscurity and poverty is the story of many of the early LGBTQ activists. The question is why the community allowed this to happen to Kameny. Granted, he could be pretty awful, but Cervini’s description of him in his sources and acknowledgments as, at age 80, 'living in near destitution,' is heart-breaking and deserves elaboration ... one is left wondering how Kameny found himself in such miserable circumstances at the end of his life. On the other hand, Eric Cervini’s amazingly researched and beautifully written biography guarantees that Kameny, warts and all, will take his place among the heroes of the social justice movements in the United States.
Timely and essential, Cervini’s book is packed with nearly forgotten events and brave stories that will expand the understanding of queer history for many readers ... Cervini paints a vivid portrait of the petulant but driven Kameny, and how the negative, controlling aspects of his personality imperiled unity within the fractious, nascent gay rights movement ... a treasure trove of inspiration for budding writers or biographers looking for future subjects or projects ... Cervini’s extensive notes at the end of The Deviant’s War demonstrate that he’s talking to and reading the right people. In my experience, his age doesn’t make him the exception. So, if you’re not engaging with young activists and writers like him, perhaps you should look into expanding your circle. You can start by picking up this book.
... ambitious, diffuse ... Something of those ancient quarrels also informs Cervini’s book, which is so bent on capturing the whole quilt of gay liberation — from Harry Hay and Bayard Rustin to Barbara Giddings and Evelyn Hooker — that it threatens to lose its most precious thread: Cervini’s unprecedented access to the Kameny archives ... is most alive when delivering us this principled, uningratiating character on his own terms and most provocative when arguing for the bravery of a Queens-born Jew who, in August 1963, stood up to three-and-a-half hours of interrogation from a deeply hostile Texas congressman bent on revoking the Mattachine Society’s license.
His is a fascinating story, and Cervini does it more than ample justice in this insightful, meticulously detailed book. He has clearly done a remarkable job of research, creating an absolutely indispensable, highly readable work of history that belongs in every library.
Cervini is wide-ranging in his coverage of such topics as the medical classification of homosexuality as deviance and the government’s justification for not hiring gay workers for fear that they would be security risks ... While insightful on such big-picture issues, the author also focuses on individuals who made their identities known in order to protest such misguided policies. A solid contribution to LGBTQ history—and that of civil rights generally.
Weaving the Kinsey report, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s 'Sex Deviates' program tracking homosexual arrests and allegations, and the 1969 Stonewall riots into his portrait, Cervini provides essential context, but occasionally overstuffs the narrative with undigested material, including trial transcripts and interviews. Readers interested in the origins of the LGBTQ rights movement will be deeply informed by this meticulous account.
