The novelist, playwright and critic was a bête noire of the art world and searing critic of American values

“An American writer.” That’s how Gary Indiana, who has died aged 74, described himself to me when I first ran into him at the Village Voice in the no-wave early 1980s.

Elfin yet fierce, with the knowing look of someone who had been around the chopping block of desire, Gary struck me as an authentic downtown literary artist, with a provenance that roped in Frank O’Hara’s concept of personism and Lou Reed’s unsparing empathy. (I’d throw in Joan Didion, but I’m pretty sure that Gary would haunt me if I did.)