tlavideo.com

Amos Lassen wrote on 02/28/2011:

Ganz, Earl. “The Taos Truth Game”, University of New Mexico Press, 2006
The Truth Behind Art
Amos Lassen
In this first novel, Earl Ganz in “The Taos Truth Game” writes about the truth behind art and reveals the life of a forgotten writer, Myron Brinig. Brinig came to Taos in 1933, nursing a hangover and ready to attempt to see the world. He was on his way to Hollywood to write the great American screenplay. But the picaresque surroundings of Taos caused him to fall in love. For the ensuing twenty years, Taos would be home to him.
He became involved in the literary salon of Mabel Dodge Luhan joining some of the noted authors of the period, Frieda Lawrence and Gertrude Stein among them. While there, he came to be consumed by lust for an artist by the name of Cady Wells. It was this lust that propelled the man, Myron, and this is the substance of the book.
Ganz shows us Myron Brinig’s life as conflicted relationships and does so by researching that part of his life which was private and unknown and in doing so reveals a great deal of the coterie that was known as America’s avant garde. “The Truth Game” was a favorite pastime—not just a parlor game but an expose of the players’ sexuality, loyalty and hidden thoughts.
This is a fascinating look at those considered to be the thinkers of modern America and gives an in depth look at the queer past of the American West, something that had barely been mentioned aside from in footnote or in passing. What is so clever is that we are also invited to play the truth game along with the characters in the book.
Ganz resurrects the dead in his book and not just restores but animates them and gives them both spiritual and psychological life. The book is beautifully written and captures the reader from the first sentence. Here is a book for anyone who wants to know about how the west really was and what did it contribute to our gay lives—it is quite an achievement.