Depeche Mode? I wish. Nope, just me. Been away from the page for a while now but trying to get back into it. So here’s the heads up on what’s up:
Body Surfing has been out in paperback for a couple of weeks. No idea how it’s selling. I just imagine people walking into Barnes and Noble, seeing the cover, and falling on the floor in convulsions. In addition to the NY Times mention, however, there was a nice review here. The Sprout pb is up next, in about a month.
I just finished a review of a pair of new books about E.M. Forster: a biography by Wendy Moffat and a “causerie” by Frank Kermode. Look for it in the next issue of Bookforum—and then check back here for a couple of addenda to the review that were cut for space reasons (what can I say, I’ve always been a wordy mf, and it’s not getting any better as I get older).
Also in the pipeline is an essay about anxiety attacks and the art-making process called “Dutcher’s Notch,” which will be in the next issue of Threepenny Review. I wrote the piece several years ago, and when I showed it to my then-agents, they suggested, not unkindly (oh hell, it came off as pretty damn unkind) that it was of interest only to myself and perhaps my friends. I was so chagrined that I put it away and more or less forgot about. In the past couple of weeks, however, I’ve been contemplating putting together a new collection of essays, mostly culling from material I wrote in the early ’90s about what it meant to be young and gay in America in the second decade of the AIDS epidemic, and I came across it and decided to risk sending it to Wendy Lesser at Threepenny, who’s always been a perceptive reader of my work (I should add that this was just after she rejected another essay I’d sent her, so don’t think she’s a shill for anything I do). The subject line of her email said it all: “Yes!!!” Maybe there were only two exclamation points, but you get the picture. That essay she rejected, by the way, is a long piece called “Homer’s Forge” about the relationship of setting in fiction to the real world, and is still looking for a home. Hopefully I’ll find one for it soon.
And, finally, the thing that’s kept me away from this site for so long: Shift, or S H I F T (we go back and forth on the orthography), the first volume of The Gate of Orpheus trilogy (formerly The Flag of Orpheus trilogy), is done and in the bag. I’m reading page proofs now (the book has a really great internal design, btw, but we’re still trying to find a cover: email crown and tell them that retro is way cooler than contemporary slick) and the book itself is due to drop in September. I think it’s okay for me to say drop that way, since the p.r. and marketing campaigns for this particular project are way more rock star than anything I’ve ever worked on: we’re designing websites, advertising, and lots of innovative things I’m not even allowed to talk about but will be pretty cool. More later as info becomes available…
That’s it for now. I’m already hard at work on the second book of the trilogy: from the early 60s to the late 80s: Ollie North, Manuel Noriega, Saddam and the Ayatollah and the mujahideen. It’s going to be a fun one…
dp