In the late 1970s, after publishing “a few things, in some obscure places,” an almost 30-year-old Gary Indiana abandoned Los Angeles for New York City and began writing for several downtown publications, ultimately landing in 1985 at The Village Voice, then at the zenith of its influence. The earliest of these pieces were more or less straightforward critical essays: on Irving Penn, Paul Schrader, and Gilbert & George (whose work, Indiana concluded, with his characteristic ability to scalpel away pretension like a pathologist peeling back a cadaver’s face, “shows what artists can do without any urgent insights”). But as time passed, the writing became increasingly based in reportage, on subjects ranging from Branson, Mo., to Euro Disney, from the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary to the adult film industry at…
