Rushes is not a novel of propaganda; if any political statement is to be derived from the novel, it would seem to be that the oppressive "straight" world is ultimately responsible for the grotesque and perverse behavior to which the alienated homosexual is driven. The novel has much wider social implications, however. Rushes presents not so much the homosexual world but a particular cult within it. When it is seen as a cult with all the dogmas and trappings of a religion, the world of Rushes becomes an expression of and a metaphor for what Christopher Lasch calls the "culture of narcissism." By means of biblical and liturgical epigraphs before each chapter, together with frequent use of Christian terminology and symbols within the novel, Rechy sets up an ironic contrast between the shared values of Christian community and the self-seeking pilgrimages of the characters presented. But the empty ritualism of Rushes suggests far more about American culture than about homosexuality….

The hunt is not merely for sex—most of the characters seem insensate and beyond feeling for ordinary sexual contact in any case—but for total fusion, however momentary. It is the desire to achieve what can't be achieved, it seems, in the world outside. The "macho" world of the bar cannot be reconciled to the world of jobs, responsibilities, and even love. In the ritual of the cult, distinctions blur, opposites meld; but the melding produces not the fusion of a greater wholeness but only a more desperate isolation. Outside, as at the end of the novel, is the world of irreconcilable opposites, represented in this case by the queer-hating attackers who come not for imitation or ritual violence but for the real thing.

Rechy's novel is a triumph of dramatic skill. The horror of his infernal cult is fully realized, but often only in spite of the over-rich language. At times it is as if one of his characters has become the author, seeking in a straining lyricism to justify the horror or to blur the distinction between beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain, heaven and hell.