PRIDE SHOW: Featuring Milo Todd and Vince Aletti

LARB Radio Hour

In this double episode celebrating pride month, Kate Wolf speaks with the critic Vince Aletti about his new book, Physique, an assortment of hundreds of physique photos from Aletti’s own personal collection. The images in the book represent a time when homosexual life in the US was illegal, existed mostly underground, and was by necessity furtive and coded. Yet throughout the country there were photo studios producing erotic and often very beautiful photographs of barely clothed men, and distributing them through mail order catalogues and small magazines. Aletti revisits these images and their quiet revolution in his book; post-Stonewall physique photos may have appeared timid or kitsch but today they point to a largely unknown story and genre of imagery that is worthy of reconsideration as well as enjoyment. Then Milo Todd discusses his novel The Lilac People with Eric Newman. Set in the aftermath of World War II, The Lilac People follows three queer Holocaust survivors—Bertie, a trans man; his girlfriend, Sofie; and a young trans man named Karl—as they attempt to flee a hostile postwar Germany. As they evade Allied forces who are re-imprisoning queer and trans survivors, they must also navigate betrayal, suspicion, and the ongoing threat of violence from neighbors and hidden Nazis alike. Todd’s debut shines a light on a buried chapter of Holocaust history, one in which the queer and trans people, who were among the Reich's first victims, became victims anew after its fall.