Bawer's book "A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society" (1993) was published by Simon & Schuster. He described it in its first pages as "a reflection on the theme of homosexuality", motivated by the fact that current debates had "generated a lot more heat than light". The book, which criticized both heterosexuals' antigay prejudices and the political and cultural stereotypes which, in his view, were foisted on many gay people by the "queer subculture", received much attention. Reviews in mainstream media tended to be positive, while, as Bawer himself later put it, "antigay conservatives and queer lefties alike savaged the book"