Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. Today I finally read the New Yorker article about David Foster Wallace, which was by turns inspiring and depressing; inspiring because (and this is hardly a surprise) he seemed to genuinely believe in fiction as a means to reflect/analyze/transform currents of our […]
Filed under: Architecture, Disease, Landscape, Literature, Quotes, Resignation, Travel, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Airplanes, David Foster Wallace, Ennui, Huysmans, Pascal, The George Washington Bridge, Waves, Work
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. Today we sent out to our millions of followers on Twitter the following tweet: Q: What post-war (US) novel best reflects the gay experience as BELOVED reflects the Af-Am exper? Me: Holleran/DANCER FROM THE DANCE (You?) Nobody answered! We followed it up […]
Filed under: Conspiracy, Gay, Literature, Writers-American | 6 Comments
Tags: Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance, Surveys, Tweets, Twitter
In which The Gay Recluse finishes reading Roberto Bolaño. Through the fourth part of 2666, Roberto Bolano’s epic treatment of many things, we were extremely forgiving of the many tangents and digressions that permeate the work; not only were we impressed by the obvious genius of the writer, but we marveled at his ability to […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Conspiracy, Gay, Landscape, Literature, Memory, Nostalgia, Writers-Chilean, Writers-German | 1 Comment
Tags: 2066, Archimboldi, Bolaño, Letdowns, X-Files
In which The Gay Recluse reads Roberto Bolaño in stages. In the fourth book of 2666, we are presented with something of an encyclopedia of the literally thousands of crimes (99 percent of them against women) that occur in Bolano’s fictional border city of Santa Teresa — modeled on the real Juarez — over a […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Conspiracy, Decay, Disease, Dissonance, Gay, Landscape, Language, Literature, Sickness, Writers-Chilean | 1 Comment
Tags: 2666, Feminism, Juarez, Murder, Rape, Roberto Bolaño, Serial Killers, The Part About the Crimes, Torture
On The Part About Fate (2666)
In which The Gay Recluse reads Roberto Bolaño in stages. In the third book of Roberto Bolaño’s epic 2666, we leave behind the maybe-psychotic descent into madness of Professor Amalfitano for a broader type of madness known as the fringes of modern/capitalistic civilization. Bolaño does this by way of a Harlem-based reporter who goes by […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Conspiracy, Infrastructure, Literature, Search, Sickness, Writers-Chilean | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2666, Boxing, Fate, Mexico, Murder, Noir, Roberto Bolaño
In which The Gay Recluse reads Roberto Bolaño in stages. As the title indicates, the second book of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 is devoted to Amalfitano, a professor of philosophy (or maybe sometimes literature) at the university in the Mexican town where — in the previous book — the three pretentious European academics/literary critics gathered to look […]
Filed under: Dream, Literature, Memory, Writers-Chilean | 1 Comment
Tags: 2666, Amalfitano, Chile, Geometry, Madness, Mexico, Roberto Bolaño
In which The Gay Recluse reads Roberto Bolaño in stages. In our experience, one test of a great novel is whether you find yourself altered as you ingest the text, so that your mental dialog seems to be narrated by the writer in question. This is one of the strengths of the form, to the […]
Filed under: Dream, Faith, Literature, Search | 1 Comment
Tags: 2666, Novels, Roberto Bolaño, The Part About the Critics, Windbags
In which The Gay Recluse ponders Junot Diaz and the purpose of novels. Today we finished The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. For obv reasons — namely, the book won every award last year — our expectations were high, and but for the most part were met. In case we’re only the second-to-last […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, Dream, Literature, Pessimism, Washington Heights, Writers-American | 3 Comments
Tags: Dictators, Entertainment, Junot Diaz, Novels, Oscar Wao, Rafael Trujillo, Truth
In which The Gay Recluse looks out windows. Eventually we reached an age when we could no longer think about the larger world except with terror; it was too complicated and cruel, and every time we tried to engage it we returned defeated and misunderstood. Our own trajectory, combined with an examination of world history […]
Filed under: Faith, History, Literature, Longing, Memory, Philosophers | Leave a Comment
Tags: Candle Holders, Schopenhauer, Sky
On Netherland
In which The Gay Recluse recommends a book about loss. In Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, we meet a narrator “Hans” — a Dutch expat originally from The Hague — who both at the beginning and the end of the story (this is not a spoiler, because we learn this in the first few pages) appears to”have […]
Filed under: Brooklyn, Decay, Literature, Pessimism, Ruins, Search, Writers-Irish | 1 Comment
On The Rest Is Noise
In which The Gay Recluse recommends a book about music. When we finished The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross’ survey of twentieth-century (classical-ish) music, our feelings were mixed; not about the book, which — as we are hardly the first to point out (Google it!) — works brilliantly on many levels. It’s really beyond our […]
Filed under: Bad Rock, Gay, Good Rock, History, Landscape, Literature, Writers-American | 5 Comments
Tags: Aerosmith, Alex Ross, Classical, Free Jazz, La Monte Young, Led Zeppelin, Pierre Boulez, Pittsburgh, The Rest Is Noise, The Who, Walter Benjamin, WDVE
On the Scent of Cinnamon
In which The Gay Recluse files a book report. After we read Keith Banner’s The Smallest People Alive, we could not have imagined a more fucked-up society/culture than the low-class Midwest (US) described so effectively by Banner; imagine our surprise then, when we turned to another set of short stories — The Scent of Cinnamon […]
Filed under: Disease, Dissonance, Gay, Landscape, Literature, Ruins, Sickness, Writers-British | 1 Comment
In which The Gay Recluse writes a book report. Just as the snow began, we finished Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking, a 2007 debut novel by Aoibheann Sweeney. The book is about a girl — Miranda — who grows up with her father on a tiny island off the coast of Maine; her […]
Filed under: Gay, History, Literature, New York City, Washington Heights, Writers-American | 2 Comments
Tags: Aoibheann Sweeney, Gay Voice, Ovid, Shakespeare, Snow, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather
On The Book of Getting Even
In which The Gay Recluse files a book report.* In The Book of Getting Even (a title we love, btw!) by Benjamin Taylor, we meet some interesting characters: first (and last) there is Gabriel Geismar, a Jewish — and notably, unapologetically gay! — teenage boy from New Orleans with a horribly abusive father (a rabbi) […]
Filed under: Gay, Literature, Nostalgia, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Benjamin Taylor, Book Reviews, Gay Fiction, The Book of Getting Even
In which The Gay Recluse reads dead flowers. When we first read about The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher, we were excited! Not only was it short-listed for the Booker Prize, but it was rated the #1 Editors’ Pick for Best Book of 2008 by Amazon.com.* And oh yeah, Hensher is “openly gay” — kinda […]
Filed under: Dissonance, GWB Project, Language, Literature, Photography, Stereotypes, Writers-British | 4 Comments
Tags: Book Reviews, Dead Flowers, Gay Writers, Philip Hensher, Roses, The Northern Clemency
In which The Gay Recluse ponders gay marriage literary equality. (Ed: we accidentally published an earlier version of this piece with a lot of unfinished crap at the bottom — please disregard in favor of the below!). UPDATE: please check out this post for gay-oriented 2008 book recommendations from those better informed than us! Last November, […]
Filed under: Disease, Gay, Government, Health, Landscape, Language, Literature, Politicians, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Assfucking, Cocksucking, Fiction, Gay Marriage, James Balwin, Janet Maslin, Marcel Proust, Michiko Kakutani
In which The Gay Recluse considers the dark ages. So today we were reading about the new Thomas Pynchon novel, which is going to be released next year. Like so many adolescent boys we’ve known, we went through a serious Pynchon phase. His maddeningly complex yet (somehow) crystalline prose managed to resonate with the best […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Conspiracy, Gay, GWB Project, Literature, Memory, Science, Technology, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | 2 Comments
Tags: Adolescents, Boys, Conspiracy, Dark Ages, Entropy, Physics, The George Washington Bridge, Thomas Pynchon
In which The Gay Recluse loves The Manhattan Times. Hey, so The Manhattan Times wrote a charming (if we say so) piece on The Metropolis Case. If you’ve never read the uptown weekly, you’re missing out (and really, we’re not just saying that!). In this week’s issue alone, there are excellent articles about Andy Linares […]
Filed under: Animals, Literature, The Gay Recluse, The Russian Blue, Washington Heights, Writers-American, Writers-French | 4 Comments
Tags: Beatrice, Book Deals, Novels, The Manhattan Times, The Metropolis Case, Uptown
The Gay Recluse 