The Invisible Dragon / Essays on Beauty and Other Matters / Dave Hickey

Dolly Parton, upon hearing of her inclusion in the 30th Anniversary Edition:

To this day, after thousands of interviews with thousands of writers, Dave Hickey is still at the top of my list. In “Dolly Triumphant!” in 1974 [reprinted in this edition] he captured what I wanted to believe about myself at the time, but he had a better take on it than I did. The article gave me strength and confidence to go on and try to do even better. I ran across it not long ago and I thought to myself, Dave Hickey was a genius. Not because of what he did for me but because of the way he was, the way he felt, and the wonderful way he worded things. He was beyond compare. I liked him, I loved him and yes, I had a crush on him too. Long live the memory and the words of Dave Hickey.

—Dolly Parton, July 2023

An expanded edition of Dave Hickey‘s controversial and exquisitely written apologia for beauty―championed by artists and reviled by academicians—is as powerful as ever 30 years on.

The 30th Anniversary edition includes:

• Four Essays on Beauty (originally published in 1993)

• Profile of Dolly Parton, written 50 years ago

• Elegiac tribute to comedian Richard Pryor

• Witty “Listener’s Guide” to word art by Ed-werd Rew-shay

• Review of John Rechy’s experimental gay novel Numbers

• Personal essay on the art of writing

An afterword by Hickey’s friend and Dragon’s editor "queers" the brash, heterosexual gambler. It situates the creation of Dragon squarely within the traumatic time of the AIDS plague. The book’s original four essays on beauty are revelatory. Hickey’s coupling of Caravaggio’s 1601 Incredulity of St. Thomas and Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph Lou, NYC still has the ability to shock. His gloss on art by Bellini, Velázquez, Raphael, and others provides urgent lessons for contemporary art and gender politics. In today’s fraught culture wars, Hickey’s prescient diagnosis of the “therapeutic institution” resonates anew. Artists respond by harnessing beauty as a source of meaning and of joy.

Click here for a set of images of The Invisible Dragon

Published 2023

160 pages, 12 illustrations, casebound

Design by Alison Hahn, Hahn Studio

ISBN 9798987596500