Gary Indiana

Gary Hoisington (July 16, 1950 – October 23, 2024), known as Gary Indiana, was an American writer, actor, artist, and cultural critic. He served as the art critic for the ''Village Voice'' weekly newspaper from 1985 to 1988. Indiana is best known for his classic American true-crime trilogy, ''Resentment, Three Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story,'' and ''Depraved Indifference'', chronicling the less permanent state of " depraved indifference" that characterized American life at the millennium's end. In the introduction to the recently re-published edition of ''Three Month Fever'', critic Christopher Glazek has coined the phrase 'deflationary realism' to describe Indiana's writing, in contrast to the magical realism or hysterical realism of other contemporary writing.

Background

Gary Hoisington was born in Derry, New Hampshire, on July 16, 1950. After a childhood rife with bullying and mistreatment, he left home when he was 16. He enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, but did not graduate. Hoisington later moved to San Francisco, and then Los Angeles; it was in LA the early 1970s when he began using the name "Gary Indiana". In 1978, he moved to New York City.

On October 23, 2024, Indiana died from lung cancer at his apartment in the East Village of Manhattan, at the age of 74.

Writing

Indiana wrote, directed, and acted in a dozen plays, mostly during the early 1980s. He performed in small New York City venues like Mudd Club, Club 57, the Performing Garage and the backyard of Bill Rice's East 3rd Street studio. Earlier plays included ''Alligator Girls Go to College'' (1979); ''Curse of the Dog People'' (1980); ''A Coupla White Faggots Sitting Around Talking'' (1980), which was filmed by Michel Auder in 1981; ''The Roman Polanski Story'' (1981); ''Phantoms of Louisiana'' (1981), and ''Roy Cohn/Jack Smith'' (1992), written with Jack Smith for performance artist Ron Vawter. The latter was filmed in 1994 by Jill Godmilow.

In the early 1980s, Indiana contributed essays on mid-century art to ''Artforum'' and '' Art in America'', which led to a position as the ''Village Voice'''s Art Critic from 1985 to 1988. A collection of Indiana's nonfiction writing, ''Let It Bleed: Essays, 1985–1995'', was published in 1996.

A later play, ''Mrs. Watson's Missing Parts'', was staged in May 2013 at Participant Inc. It drastically alters a 1922 Grand Guignol theatrical adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's novel ''The Torture Garden'' by replacing all dialogue with an "almost incomprehensible" obscenity-laden libidinal glossolalia.

In 2023, two of Indiana's books were reprinted, amid what could be considered a modern reappraisal of his work. His 1994 novel ''Rent Boy'' was reissued by McNally Jackson, under their McNally Editions imprint, and Semiotext(e) reissued his 2003 novel ''Do Everything in the Dark''.

In January 2025, Indiana's personal library was destroyed in the Eaton Fire.

Film

Indiana acted in several mostly experimental films by, among others, Michel Auder (''Seduction of Patrick'', 1979, which he co-wrote with the director), Scott B and Beth B (''The Trap Door'', 1980), Melvie Arslanian (''Stiletto'', 1981, where he plays a bellhop at the bellhopless Chelsea Hotel), Jackie Raynal (''Hotel New York'', 1984), Ulrike Ottinger (''Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press'', 1984, with Veruschka as Dorian Gray and Delphine Seyrig as Doctor Mabuse), Lothar Lambert (''Fräulein Berlin'', 1984), Dieter Schidor (''Cold in Columbia'', 1985), Valie Export ('' The Practice of Love'', 1985) and Christoph Schlingensief (''Terror 2000: Intensivstation Deutschland'', 1994, in which Udo Kier kills his character with a machine gun). John Boskovich's 2001 film ''North'' features Indiana reading from the Céline

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