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WORK TITLE: Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Boston
STATE: MA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Columbia University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist. Pulitzer Traveling Fellow; Lynton Fellow in Book Writing.
WRITINGS
Contributor to the Big Roundtable, the Brooklyn Ink, the Week, and Narratively.
SIDELIGHTS
Robert W. Fieseler is a Boston-based journalist. He contributes to the Big Roundtable, the Brooklyn Ink, the Week, and Narratively. Fieseler is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and the Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing.
Fieseler published Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation in 2018. The account looks into a fire that took place in 1973 at The Up Stairs Lounge, a gay bar at the edge of New Orleans’ French Quarter, that took the lives of thirty-two people. The cause of the fire was arson, set by a patron who had been kicked out of the bar the previous night for having gotten into a fight. Through Fieseler’s research, he positions the fire as one of the lynchpins for the rise of the LGBTQ rights movement in New Orleans. Fieseler chronicles the lives of those who worked there and frequented it, as well as recreating the conditions for those who were trapped inside during the fire itself. Fieseler is critical of the lackluster police investigation and the response from the general public about this attack, which, until the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting of 2016, was the most deadly attack on a gay venue in the United States. Fieseler is also critical of leaders of the civil rights movements in New Orleans, who failed to incorporate the LGBTQ community into their movement or do anything as a result of this attack.
Booklist contributor Michael Cart insisted that “attention must be paid, and Fieseler has done a laudable job of insuring that it will be.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly pointed out that “Fieseler shines a bright light on a dark and largely forgotten moment in the history of the gay rights movement.” The same reviewer did note, though, that the prose can occasionally “overreach.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor stated: “Powerfully written and consistently engaging, the book will hopefully shed more light on the gay community’s incredible and tragic journey to equality.” The same reviewer called Tinderbox “a momentous work of sociological and civil rights history.” Writing in the New York Journal of Books, Lew Whittington insisted that “Fieseler does invaluable investigative reporting of the social landscape of the era and writes with sensitivity about the many victims of the fire, their lovers, their families, their survival and the profound effect it had on GLBTQ community in NOLA.” Whittington reasoned that “for generations gay communities were treated separate and unequal in the eyes of the law. Tinderbox is a reminder that this history can never be forgotten as the backlash against GLBTQ civil rights are once again under attack.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 1, 2018, Michael Cart, review of Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation, p. 52.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2018, review of Tinderbox.
Publishers Weekly, April 16, 2018, review of Tinderbox, p. 86.
ONLINE
New York Journal of Books, https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/ (July 31, 2018), Lew Whittington, review of Tinderbox.
Robert W. Fieseler website, https://www.rwfieseler.com (August 24, 2018).
ROBERT W. FIESELER
Robert W. Fieseler is a journalist and nonfiction author who currently resides in Boston. He graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and the Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing.
His essays and feature stories have appeared widely and been recognized in roundups of best nonfiction by The Atlantic, etc. He writes about marginalized groups and overlooked people who make the world better for themselves. As such, his heroes tend to be exiles and outcasts seeking their own strange forms of freedom.
Fieseler's favorite childhood movie was The Wizard of Oz because he related to the witch. He melted everywhere as a kid, including one time in the middle of Cook Country traffic court. Now, he owns an opinionated Cairn Terrier – same breed as Toto – who accompanies him to the library. Perhaps unsurprisingly to his mother, Fieseler grew to be a proud gay American.
Robert W. Fieseler is a journalist and essayist who graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia Journalism School and is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and the Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing. His work has appeared in The Big Roundtable, The Brooklyn Ink and THE WEEK.
Robert W. Fieseler is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and the Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing. A writer for The Big Roundtable, Narratively, and elsewhere, he lives in Boston.
Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation
Michael Cart
Booklist. 114.17 (May 1, 2018): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.
By Robert W. Fieseler.
June 2018. 320p. Norton/Liveright, $26.95 (9781631491641).364.152.
It happened on June 24, 1973, on the fringe of New Orleans' French Quarter. Fire erupted at a gay bar, The Up Stairs Lounge, that would kill 32 people. The cause, it was later determined, was arson, the arsonist being a disgruntled bar patron who had been evicted from the premises following a fight. Largely forgotten for many years, this tragedy has now been brought to vivid life by Fieseler, who has done a remarkable job of research in telling the story of an event that would help give rise to the LGBTQ rights movement in New Orleans. "It is routinely through death," the author writes, "that we reckon with violations of our basic liberties." Yet insuring these liberties in New Orleans--and elsewhere-- was an often fraught process at a time when a tragedy of this scope was largely ignored or trivialized by the mainstream population. Attention must be paid, and Fieseler has done a laudable job of insuring that it will be. His inspiring account is an important contribution to LGBTQ literature.--Michael Cart
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Cart, Michael. "Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation." Booklist, 1 May 2018, p. 52. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A539647316/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f4ba3378. Accessed 31 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A539647316
Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation
Publishers Weekly. 265.16 (Apr. 16, 2018): p86.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation
Robert W. Fieseler. Liveright, $26.95 (320p)
ISBN 978-1-63149-164-1
Journalist Fieseler's eye-opening first book examines the 1973 arson attack on the Up Stairs Lounge in New Orleans, which killed 32 people and which was, until the Pulse nightclub shooting of 2016, the worst attack on a gay club in American history. The book begins with a scene from the morning of the fire in which bartender Buddy Rasmussen and his lover, Adam Fonte, drive to the bar. The chapter on the fire itself is a haunting recreation of what it was like for those trapped inside, including Fonte, who died, and Rasmussen, who made it out and led a group to safety. Fieseler then focuses on the public's largely ambivalent response to the attack, which received little media attention and a less-than-thorough police investigation that failed to identify the culprit. He describes how the gay liberation movement virtually shut down in New Orleans in the fire's aftermath and adds that "the Up Stairs Lounge ... exposed a majority of citizens as at best apathetic towards homosexuals while also revealing that civil rights movements of the era were tone-deaf." Though Fieseler's prose leans toward overreach--"Humidity, so thick with vapor that breathing air could feel like crying tears, would almost routinely reach 100 percent"--his attention to detail and intricate exploration of the material is spot-on. Fieseler shines a bright light on a dark and largely forgotten moment in the history of the gay rights movement. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation." Publishers Weekly, 16 Apr. 2018, p. 86. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536532765/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=061da58d. Accessed 31 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536532765
Fieseler, Robert W.: TINDERBOX
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Fieseler, Robert W. TINDERBOX Liveright/Norton (Adult Nonfiction) $26.95 6, 5 ISBN: 978-1-63149-164-1
A history of the 1973 events that set a club in New Orleans--and the gay community--on fire.
Gay liberation movements are often associated with the Stonewall riots or ACT UP's transgressive and vital actions during the AIDS crisis. It's not often that the Up Stairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans, is placed within the narrative of gay uprisings and the reinforcement of community values. In this significant debut, journalist Fieseler has effectively made himself the authority on the subject. On June 24th, 1973, as men and women of all ages enjoyed a coveted evening in the safest place they knew, a gay man, angry after getting in a fight with patrons, poured lighter fluid on the steps leading to the Up Stairs Lounge. The events that ensued were horrific: "Lambent flames reached the back corner of the bar area, and the street lit up with the sound of seventeen people shrieking. Seeing faces burn in the windows, [a patron] yelled for them to jump. Fire ate them up." That night, 32 people lost their lives, but their deaths set fire to a different kind of flame. Fieseler discusses in great detail the conditions in which gay men were forced to live: in hiding, constantly afraid of discovery, putting a straight mask on in public. At the time, homosexuality was still illegal. More shocking, however, is what the author's rigorous research shows about how authorities, the media, and legislators mishandled the fire and aftermath. Through a series of systemic dismissals, linguistic omissions, and general complacency, the event has been largely erased from American history. Fieseler's work is an essential piece of historical restitution that takes us from 1973 to 2003, when homosexuality was finally decriminalized in Louisiana. Powerfully written and consistently engaging, the book will hopefully shed more light on the gay community's incredible and tragic journey to equality.
A momentous work of sociological and civil rights history.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Fieseler, Robert W.: TINDERBOX." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530650733/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a03280e6. Accessed 31 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530650733
Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation
Author(s):
Robert W. Fieseler
Release Date:
June 4, 2018
Publisher/Imprint:
Liveright
Pages:
384
Buy on Amazon
Reviewed by:
Lew Whittington
“Tinderbox is a reminder that this history can never be forgotten as the backlash against GLBTQ civil rights are once again under attack.”
In June LGBTQ communities across the globe celebrate Gay Pride with parades in part to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots when for six days gay New Yorkers fought back against the routine bar raids, harassments, and arrests by the NYPD. Those six nights in June inspired the gay civil rights movement—then and now. But just four years later, on another June evening, an almost forgotten event occurred in a gay bar in New Orleans, the horrific fire at The Up Stairs Lounge in New Orleans. The fire that took the lives of 31 men (several of them military veterans) and one woman and injured dozens among approximately 100 gay patrons .
Now 45 years later, Robert W. Fieseler’s Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation investigates the crime and unmasks the level of official homophobia against the city’s large gay community. But mostly it honors the memory of the victims.
Fieseler’s fully sourced research correcting the record of shoddy crime work by both the New Orleans police and federal investigators. Despite the loss of life and many other survivors suffering serious injury, the fact this was a fire in a louche gay bar in the old French Quarter and how it changed the lives of the survivors and the New Orleans GLBTQ community, was left out of media reporting. The words homosexual and gay were left of most of the reporting by the straight press and if it did appear it was in a dismissive or derogatory way.
As far as the city of New Orleans was concerned, the tragedy didn’t even happen. In the wake of other events that involved loss of life in his city, New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu offered official condolences and support to victims and survivors, but he was loudly silent in the aftermath of the gay bar fire.
The police may have gone through the motions of investigating the fire, but from the start, they treated it like a crime not worth their time. Evidence and witnesses were mishandled, and they didn’t aggressively pursue leads to find the perpetrator. The police even questioned the arsonist, after witnesses put the arsonist at the scene and provided possible motives but did not arrest him. It was through a confession to his friends that Roger Nunez admitted his guilt. He was a troubled youth who set the bar on fire after being kicked out for disorderly conduct. Before he committed suicide a year later, he confessed his crimes to a former nun and a man he was involved with.
The Up Stairs Lounge was more than a dive bar with all of the French Quarter mystique of a Tennessee Williams play, it was a gay community center, host to fundraisers and amateur theater and a regular meeting place for the New Orleans chapter of Troy Perry's gay ministry The Metropolitan Community Church.
Certainly the personal lives of the victims and the survivors were never part of the story in the media coverage of the time. Aside from telling the story of the dozens of victims and survivors, Tinderbox reveals the indignities the dead and survivors continued to suffer in the aftermath of the fire. Funeral homes refused to bury bodies, some families refused to identify bodies or contact relatives who were victims, police officers didn’t even want to talk to gay witnesses.
Buddy Rasmussen, the manager of the Up Stairs Lounge, single handedly rescued 20 people by guiding them to a hidden escape route as the fire engulfed the bar. He even went back in, to try to save more, but it was too late. And after giving his account to police, he dealt with the fact that his lover Adam, had been trapped in the fireball that had incinerated moments earlier. His heroism, in particular, was ignored by the media.
Fieseler condenses a lot of history of The Big Easy, which wasn’t so easy for everybody and its conflicted image as a gay mecca, but otherwise was a completely oppressed community. Tinderbox paints a vivid picture of the (in)visible gay community of about 400,000 strong, but where a gay person could still be arrested for even the suspicion of being gay or their names were printed in the paper if a bar was raided, people could be fired from their jobs, and routinely barred from many professions.
Fieseler does invaluable investigative reporting of the social landscape of the era and writes with sensitivity about the many victims of the fire, their lovers, their families, their survival and the profound effect it had on GLBTQ community in NOLA.
Many of the survivors were initially declined to be interviewed for the book, but Fieseler writes in his introduction that they changed their minds in the aftermath of the massacre in June 2016 at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando two years ago, which brought new attention to what was among the most horrific tragedies in gay American history.
For generations gay communities were treated separate and unequal in the eyes of the law. Tinderbox is a reminder that this history can never be forgotten as the backlash against GLBTQ civil rights are once again under attack.
Lew J. Whittington writes about the arts and gay culture for several publications including Philadelphia Dance Journal, Dance International, CultureVulture, and Huffington Post. His book reviews and author interviews have appeared in The Advocate, EdgeMedia, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.