The Emphatically Queer Career of Artist Perkins Harnly and His Bohemian Friends

The Emphatically Queer Career of Perkins Harnly is the story of a Nebraska-born artist (1901-1986) who over the course of his long-life crossed paths with a staggering array of famous and infamous personalities. He partied with Sarah Bernhardt. Was friends with Paul Swan, a.k.a. "The Most Beautiful Man in the World," (who made women swoon when he danced in his tiny leopard-skin tunic). Was the frequent houseguest of Rose O'Neill, the free-living artist who invented the Kewpie. And dedicated correspondent of William Seabrook, author and occasional cannibal who--for better or worse--introduced Americans to the zombie.
The story follows Harnly's steps from remote farmlands of Nebraska through silent-era Hollywood, post-revolutionary Mexico, Depression-era New York, wartime Tinsel Town, queer Los Angeles during the repressive 1950s, and in the 1970s. And romping through Europe and South America, where Harnly indulged in his hobby of visiting the graves of the famous and infamous from Vladimir Lenin to Oscar Wilde, Queen Victoria, and Eva Peron.
Sarah Burns uses archives of letters and interviews to bring the lives of Harnly and his circle of creative friends whose antics rival the infamous "bright young things" of England. Once you meet Harnly, you will never forget him.