Mental: Funny in the Head by Eddie Sarfaty (Kensington Books)

I saw standup comic Eddie Sarfaty on stage recently, here in Kansas City. I had seen him perform live before, but never in such a dump. It was the kind of dark and gritty gay bar where you suspected each tawdry surface of hiding something gross, like a turd dipped in glitter.

The “emcee” for the evening was Dirty Dorothy, a self-described lesbian drag queen (I’m not kidding) with orange pigtails, a gingham dress, ruby red shoes, and a potty mouth. How original. The audience came complete with a drunken heckler, the kind who is not even remotely entertaining, just boring and irritating. I wondered why management didn’t throw him out, then realized they couldn’t—he was a regular.

After belting out a perfunctory song, and passing around complimentary “shots” that tasted like Nyquil mixed with Boone’s Farm Apple Wine, Dorothy introduced Eddie. A seasoned performer, the handsome and affable comic wooed the audience, handled the heckler, and let Dirty Dorothy rub up against him. It was all for a good cause—our local AIDS Service Foundation. But for me the highlight of the evening came after the performance, when Eddie sold and signed copies of his new book, a collection of personal essays entitled Mental: Funny in the Head.

Standup comics aren’t necessarily good writers. They may understand the structure of a joke, but the structure of a sentence can be something else altogether. And while there may be a storyteller’s soul inside the punster who delivers one ba-dump-bump line after another, that doesn’t mean he can sustain a narrative over the course of many pages.

Happily, Eddie is a natural as a writer. The thoroughly engaging Mental far exceeded my expectations for a book written by a funnyman, being not only funny but solidly well-written. Describing his mother’s plan for a European trip, he captures the wistfulness and homeliness of family life in one sentence:

She slips the faded travel brochures out of the fruit bowl on the sideboard where they’ve been cushioning the bananas for the last six years.

So strongly do I wish I had written that sentence, it makes my toes curl. And to torture myself even further, let me type out a passage from Eddie’s account of working as a bartender at a gay gentleman’s club:

The surreal air of the Eton Club was enhanced by the overwhelming amount of smoke produced by two hundred men puffing away on Marlboros and Virginia Slims. In the hazy dark, the artistic sweeps of glowing cigarettes reminded me of fireflies in search of mates, and I mused about the poor drunks, lured in by the graceful trails of light, who awoke in the morning appalled to get a good look at the insects they’d spent the night with.

Eddie is blessed with more than the satirist’s eye for detail; he also has a heart. While his essay “The Eton Club” may pull no punches in describing an over-the-hill milieu, it also contains a measure of hard-won sentiment. This particular essay stands up against any short story I’ve read in a long, long time.

Eddie, you don’t need my advice, but here it is anyway: don’t give up your night job, if it satisfies your performance jones. But please, please write more books. Lots of them. Okay?

Reviewed by Wayne Courtois

Pumpkin Teeth – Tom Cardamone (Lethe Press)

It might be a bit late for Halloween but any time of the year is right for the kind of shudders and chills you’ll find in Tom Cardamone’s Pumpkin Teeth. This collection of short fiction will take to you to worlds you never dreamed of and introduce you to people you’d rather not know existed. And his journeys are fascinating.

Cardamone’s worlds span an impressive range – from the surrealistic dreamscape of “Yolk” to the post-apocalyptic suburbia of “Lotus Bread” and everywhere in between. You’ll meet a guy who accidentally gets mail for his next door neighbor, a sphinx (“It was about the size of a box of checks,” he says), a man who genetically alters himself into a manatee (“Bottom Feeder”), a homeless girl turned superhero (“River Rat”), and a nurse who works at a retirement home for vampires (“Sundowners”).

It’s not just the variety or breadth of ideas that fascinates me in Pumpkin Teeth. What I keep coming back to again and again is their execution. Entertaining ideas and plots are a dime a dozen (well, maybe a quarter a half-dozen), but Cardamone’s writing is so exquisitely right for each one that I swallowed this book whole in the space of a few hours and had to go back and read more carefully to better admire the style. Ray Bradbury (one of my heroes) came to mind, and Cardamone is as adept at blending beauty and oddity as Bradbury ever has been.

And if the pieces mentioned above aren’t enough to pique your interest, try my two favorites on for size. The first is “Suitcase Sam,” a uniquely disturbing story about a junkie named Dio and his lust to see a person … well, if I say any more I’ll be spoiling it, but Cardamone has the literary chops to make even the most disgusting, grotesque images not only palatable but fascinating. In a nightmarish sort of way. The other story I especially loved was “Sick Days,” a picture of suburban anomie whose dread grows and grows as the characters live a seemingly normal life with a couple of slight differences. In the face of the H1N1 “epidemic,” this tale has a special relevance for us.

If you’re interested in going places you might not ordinarily travel or meeting people you won’t run into every day, let Tom Cardamone’s Pumpkin Teeth open your eyes and mind to some beautifully described and defined worlds substantially different from your own.

Unless you are a manatee, that is.

Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler

A (Somewhat Lengthier) Conversation with Sarah Schulman

Facebook message from Sarah:

Jerry,

Is there a way to re-do our interview so that it is interactive- based in human communication? So that, for example, when you asked me about gay people refusing to be in their families, and I replied that the book argues the opposite- you could then come back and and forth with me so we could figure out together why you got that impression. It could be a beneficial conversation that would reveal the ideas at the core of the book. If it can only be rigid pre-conceived questions that can’t change based on new information, it just can’t really address the complexity of a new idea. Know what I mean?
I understand that you don’t want the hassle of having to transcribe a conversation, but could we do one question at a time, so that we can put the INTER back into INTER view?

Let me know. SS

(My response was, obviously, affirmative but pretty long – if anyone wants to read it, I’ll put into the “Comments” section – our e-mail exchange is as follows, unedited and uncut).

JW: What was the catalyst for “Ties That Bind?” Was there a particular incident that sparked your writing it?

SS: The problem w number 1 is that i honestly dont remember. Would it help if i asked you if there is some other way of getting at what you want to know about how or why it was written in a way that deepens but doesnt sum up what is in the book…help me get at what you really want to know/understand here.

JW: Okay, how about “Why did you decide to write about familial homophobia?”

SS: TIES THAT BIND is the first book to examine the experience of homophobia in the family. In fact, I had to coin the phrase “Familial homophobia” because- amazingly, there was no name for the most pervasive experience that gay people share. I had to look in the air and see iron-clad but invisible structures that are determining in the lives of all people, but that had never been articulated or identified. For after all, the family is the place where all people gay and straight first learn about homophobia. It is where straight people are first rewarded and gay people are first punished.  Through  enormous intellectual will, I spent many years observing, understanding and identifying these structures, and figuring out how to talk about them in a way that would provoke recognition in the reader. How is familial homophobia enforced? Who benefits from it? What are its consequences? How can it be changed? There is, of course, a long tradition of this kind of work- whether it is Said’s revelation about Orientalism, Susan Brownmiller’s discovery that rape is a cultural political crisis, not a personal problem, Rich’s articulation of compulsory heterosexuality etc. I had the good fortune to have spent my life reading books by people who were able to uncover that forces deemed “neutral, natural and value free” are actually, as Rich said “imposed by force.” So that lifetime of reading gave me the tools to be able to undertake this project. I realize that is more of a “how were you able to do this work?” answer and not a “why.” But why individuals take on these kinds of huge tasks is something that can’t be explained really. It’s a combination of neurology, ie the way one’s mind works, and incredibly depth of optimism that may also be biological in nature. Who knows?

 

The Gigolo Murder – Mehmet Murat Somer (Penguin Books)

Who says a nice, light read has to rely on stock characters, stale situations and the same old places? If you’re tired of buff sleuths who work out solutions while they work out at the gym or San Francisco de-twink-tives, give Mehmet Murat Somer’s Turkish Delight series a try. The second (and latest) installment, The Gigolo Murder, is a hot little kick in the harem pants.

Our nameless detective is a software programmer by day and a drag queen club hostess by night. She is fixated on Audrey Hepburn, especially her My Fair Lady period, and as the book opens, she is depressed over a breakup with her boyfriend. Her best friend, Ponpon, oversees her recovery and return to the drag club, where she meets handsome, married, straight lawyer Haluk Pekerdem.

Their meeting, however, is interrupted by the news that Pekerdem’s (I love typing that name) brother-in-law has been arrested for the murder of Volkan Saridogan, a notorious gigolo and minibus driver. Will our detective be able to solve the murder without using her Thai kickboxing skills? Will she recover from the breakup? Will she score the straight married lawyer? And what about the mysterious assignment she gets from her boss that requires her hacking into Turkey’s central telephone system? I’ll never tell.

Not only are the characters interesting, but their quirks are used to great effect in moving the plot along. The mystery is engaging and Somer has a sharp eye for the well-placed bit of Turkish culture, enriching the book instead of distracting from it. In addition to some laugh-out-loud funny exchanges, there are moments of true tension, especially as our detective finds out just where her computer has led her. And at about 250 pages, it’s a book that doesn’t overstay its welcome – good for a short plane hop and a cab ride to your hotel. So for a good time, call up The Gigolo Murder.

And don’t forget the hookah

Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler

Retail Hell – Freeman Hall (Adams Media)

It’s happened to all of us at one time. You’re sitting around the break room at the day job talking with your co-workers about the crazy bosses/customers/patients when suddenly someone remembers you’re a writer. “You should write a book about this place,” you hear. “It’d be hysterical.” Freeman Hall’s Retail Hell is that book. And it’s anything but hysterical – in the sense of humorous, that is.

An aspiring screenwriter, the very gay Hall pays the rent by selling handbags (not purses – a line that he seriously overworks) at an upscale clothing store he calls The Big Fancy. We are introduced to his bosses, his co-workers, his zany customers and even treated to winking glimpses of his screenplays during dreams about his retail experiences. Hall tries hard to be funny, working the Augusten Burroughs/David Sedaris vein so popular these days. But he tries so hard it’s like opening that vein with the jagged lid from a rusty cat food can. This passage is on the back cover of the book:

“I think you left these behind,” I said, handing them to her. This happens all the time when women try to return bags they’ve used. Tampons, lipstick, coins, Tic Tacs, and condoms are the top treasures found.

‘Greasy’ let out a sigh, as if I were the problem. “I was just trying my things in it. I really don’t see what the problem is here. It’s none of your business what I keep in my handbag.”

It is when my commission is at stake! I’m not your Designer Handbag Rental Service! My name is not BagBorrowOrSteal.com!

And this is fairly representative of the rest of it – cute character names like Greasy, acid-tongued exchanges over the sales counter and capitalized phrases and exclamation points to make sure you don’t miss the Humor inherent in these Stock Situations!

Having said that, I realize that a big part of Humor is recognition of yourself or others. Perhaps I haven’t worked enough retail to make this funny to me. However, 304 pages of the same smart salesman/hard-working employee vs. stupid customer/idiotic boss scenario is going to tax even the girls in the stockroom, especially with the mean misogynistic streak running through it.

I also realize that another component of Humor is Warmth, and Retail Hell has none. It’s a cold, complaining read that often smacks of an overly long Human Resources complaint by an employee threatening to launch a lawsuit if he has to work through his break One More Time. And if you’re going to use a pop culture figure as a means of describing a character, make sure you spell it right (It’s Edna Turnblad from Hairspray, not Edna Turnblatt). Google is your friend – and as long as you’re online, you might as well shop for handbags there.

Unless you want the salesman to Talk Behind Your Back!

Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler

The Hour Between by Sebastian Stuart (Alyson Books)

It’s the beginning of the 1967 school year, and closeted Arthur McDougal has been kicked out of Manhattan’s prestigious Collegiate School.  He is shipped off to Spooner in Connecticut, a somewhat shabby prep school run by Christian Scientists known for its liberal admissions policies for troubled kids.

There Arthur meets Katrina Felt, the daughter of a famous Hollywood diva and an Oscar-winning musical director.  Though Arthur is the narrator, he and the other characters orbit Katrina.  She is vivacious, charismatic, and talented.  She has the ability to charm, if not fascinate, everyone she meets.  Her life would seemingly be the envy of everyone if not for her dependence on drugs and alcohol, a problem Arthur earnestly attempts to fix.  While the troubled-child-of-the-stars theme is a bit predictable, the author infuses enough life into the details to keep it from being cliché.   There are also other intriguing plot threads including a struggle for control of the school, a handsome jock who just might be bi-curious enough to do more than flirt, and a secret Arthur’s upper-crust parents have been unwilling to divulge.

Stuart relies heavily on arch, slick dialog and enough Connecticut Lockjaw voice that you half expect someone to say “Lovey, let’s have Gilligan fan us some more with those palm fronds.”  At first, it seemed overdone, but as the characters differentiate themselves and the plot broadens, the effect is pleasantly atmospheric.  Arthur’s descriptions are often beautiful or humorously original. (“She wore a hat the size of a pizza.”)

Like so many teen male protagonists, Arthur McDougal has been compared to Holden Caulfield.  That’s not quite warranted as Arthur doesn’t have the same level of sharp observations that cut through society’s tendency towards fraudulence.  He’s also noticeably more passive than Holden, letting Katrina lead their adventures.  On the other hand, Arthur is a very likeable and dynamic character bravely going through the coming out process, having his first sexual experiences, and taking steps to direct his uncertain future while Katrina, the other Spooner students, and the Spooner School itself may have trouble doing the same.   This is an engaging, atmospheric book that will appeal to readers that enjoyed Felice Picano’s ability to capture a bygone era.  Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Gavin Atlas

 

Conquering Venus by Collin Kelley (Vanilla Heart Publishing)

Set primarily in Paris during a turbulent summer in the mid-1990s, Collin Kelley’s ambitious and entertaining debut novel focuses on the secrets and desires of a quartet of troubled characters.  Martin Paige is a twenty-two year-old would-be writer still grieving over the suicide of Peter, his high school boyfriend, while co-chaperoning a group of high school graduates to Europe with Diane Jacobs, a thirty-eight year old divorcee and school teacher Martin met in a Memphis support group.  David McLaren, one of the student’s on the trip, is an eighteen year-old jock and the object of Martin’s affections but not yet ready to commit to any one of them or accept his own desires.  Into this mix appears Irène Laureux, a sixtysomething agoraphobic Parisian editor, whose balcony overlooks Martin’s hotel room and its accompanying dramas.

Kelley, a well-regarded Southern poet and journalist, employs all of the tourist spots of Paris to flesh out the scenes between his American expatriates — there are drunken confessions and revelatory trips to the Eiffel Tour, Sacre Coeur, the Louvre, and Notre Dame, among other locales, though both Diane and Martin quickly prove they are ill-equipped to be chaperones.  Lucky for both of them that the author keeps most of the students invisible and out of the plotline because the author does little to make the adults sympathetic or experienced guides for their young charges. Martin is overly somber and Diane’s wit is often more coarse and sarcastic than comic or illuminating, which may possibly be Kelley’s intent, since he does have some redeeming qualities in store for her at the novel’s conclusion.  Kelley is more successful at delineating Irène and her paranoias and struggles as she befriends Martin and gingerly tries to step outside her apartment for the first time in decades.  “We’re both trapped in our own way,” she tells Martin one night. “Perhaps it is fate that we met.  Maybe we were brought together to help free each other. Somehow.”

Irène is haunted by the unsolved mystery of her husband’s death almost thirty years before.  Martin is seeking absolution from his memories of Peter. Diane is trying to free herself of the misery of her marriage.  And David is on the verge of becoming a teenage alcoholic, spying on the adults from the hotel’s rooftop.  Kelley, however, doesn’t rely on his characters fates to shape his narrative.  The writing is crisp and the novel’s pace is a swift and compressed one, with finely detailed dreams, gypsy readings, hospital apparitions, undiscovered journals, and an abundance of metaphors (tattoos, classical statues, and poems).  The plot reaches its melodramatic height when his characters survive a terrorist attack in the Paris subway and their paths begin to change. The back story — and mystery of Irène’s husband’s death in the late sixties during a riotous time in Paris’s history — is particularly fascinating and well-researched, though the shift in focus as Irène and Martin turn detective to piece together the unsolved clues makes the remainder of the plot anticlimactic when it returns to David and Diane and the novel’s resolutions.

Kelley has indicated that there might be more in store for his characters — this novel is the first of a projected trilogy — and readers of this first novel will undoubtedly want to read more by the author.

Reviewed by Jameson Currier

The Rest of Our Lives by Dan Stone (Lethe Press)

When it’s successful, humorous writing looks so effortless that we forget how much effort goes into it. There is a subjective element to humor that makes it very, very difficult to pull off on the page. Is the author as amusing as he thinks he is?

Happily, Dan Stone’s novel The Rest of Our Lives is genuinely funny. Two young male witches, the opposite of each other in many ways, meet and fall in love, only to discover that their love affair is centuries old. They met in previous lifetimes, sometimes as a mixed-sex couple; and their love didn’t always—well, didn’t ever work out.

This premise has a screwball edge to it—it reminds me of the René Clair film I Married a Witch. And as in classic screwball comedy, there is true romance afoot. Maintaining an even, light touch throughout, Stone delivers scenes of steamy love and hand-wringing angst that carry the reader along like a breeze. His narrator, Colm, is especially winning; he has the native wisdom and dicey self-esteem of a protagonist from a Stephen Macaulay novel.

While we are held aloft and lightly tickled by this story, we might contemplate how the author has taken an adage—“opposites attract”—and given it a twist that feels old and new at the same time. Old, because this bit of folk wisdom has existed in stories ever since man first took chisel to stone; and new because these particular opposites have a supernatural twist. They differ, not only in looks and temperament, but in temperature—cold for Colm, hot for Aidan. Part of the fun of the book is seeing how the hot and cold aspects of their magic work for them, and sometimes against them.

Stone gives no hint of a sequel, but there is plenty of room for one. I hope I get to see these characters again…without waiting a lifetime.

Reviewed by Wayne Courtois

Beantown Cubans – Johnny Diaz (Kensington Books)

I love books that take me to another place, that show me something of someone else’s culture or something new about mine – books that entertain as well as educate me in the customs, language and cuisine that comprise another way of life. Johnny Diaz’s Beantown Cubans is not one of those books. It’s not even close.

Beantown Cubans is the story of Carlos Martin, a Miami transplant who finds himself teaching high school in Boston after suffering the recent loss of his mother. He hooks up with Tomas “Tommy” Perez, another former Miami resident who now writes for a Boston newspaper and together they go to malls, out to bars, stop for lunch, work out at the gym, talk about Tommy’s alcoholic boyfriend Mikey, listen to Gloria Estefan and have coffee at Barnes & Noble. And that’s pretty much it.

But these boys are fiercely proud of their Cuban roots. They must be – they mention them in every single frickin’ chapter, screaming so loudly you can almost hear the upper case letters heralding their CUBAN values, their CUBAN parents, their dark CUBAN good looks, their CUBAN accents and their search for a good CUBAN sandwich. If that wasn’t enough to get the point across, they pepper their speech with Spanish words like “hijo” and “bueno” and “loco” to remind you how CUBAN they are. It’s enough to make you don your slicked-back Ricky Ricardo wig, grab your conga drums and play “Babalu” on the rooftop until you’re devoured by rabid neighborhood squirrels driven into a CUBAN rodent frenzy.

None of this would be so bad except that Diaz’s CUBAN characters are two-dimensional and bland. They are to CUBAN what Taco Bell is to Mexican food. It’s a good thing his chapters, which alternate the two POV characters, are titled either “Tommy” or “Carlos,” because their voices are not distinct enough to tell them apart. Diaz, a pop culture writer for the Boston Globe by trade, falls prey to the journalistic habit of telling too much and not showing enough. Create multi-dimensional characters that your readers can invest in and let them tell the story. Stay out of it as much as you can.

But this formula has worked for Diaz in two other books – Miami Manhunt and Boston Boys Club – and so another Kensington career is made. If someone recommends this to you, be stern. Slap them viciously and delete them from your cell phone.

It’s the CUBAN thing to do.

Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler

A (Brief) Conversation with Sarah Schulman

By Jerry Wheeler

Novelist/activist/playwright Sarah Schulman is a woman of few words, but we got her to jot down a few for Out in Print about her latest book and some of her working habits.

Jerry L. Wheeler: What was the catalyst for “Ties That Bind?” Was there a particular incident that sparked your writing it?
Sarah Schulman: Honestly I can’t remember.

JW: You mention both your family and some therapeutic experiences in the book – were those difficult to write since you did not have a fictional persona as cover?
SS: The problem with the five or so pages of personal experience is my fear that some people will then continue to pretend that familial homophobia is a personal problem, when in fact it is a cultural crisis.

JW: One of the book’s main concepts is the intervention of third parties in private relationships. Have you ever been the one to intervene? What was the outcome? And to follow up, has anyone ever intervened with a family member on your behalf?
SS: No one has ever intervened with my family on my behalf. I have intervened on behalf of violated people asking for help many many times in my life. Perhaps daily.

JW: As a professor, you obviously come into contact with a lot of younger people – is the process of coming out getting easier for them than in previous generations or are they confronted with the same problems?
SS: I teach on Staten Island, a throwback borough that really should be part of Texas (as it is in my new novel THE MERE FUTURE). The homophobia is pervasive and gay students’ lives are hell on our campus. Gay students and Muslim students experience constant diminishment in the classroom from their peers.

JW: You clearly have some opinions about how the LGBT culture is treated in the mass media – do you think current programs like “The L Word” or the now-defunct “Will and Grace” hurt us or help us in the long run?
SS: I believe that the L Word has been cancelled.

JW: As the holidays are rapidly approaching, what would be your advice for those members of the LGBT community who will be going “back home” for family gatherings in terms of standing your ground and refusing to be shunned?
SS:I don’t understand your question. My position is that gay people must have a place in their families. Your question implies the opposite.

JW: I always find writers’ creative processes interesting – how do you work? Do you outline or just have a general idea of where the piece is going and let it flow organically?
SS: I never outline.

JW: Do you find writing novels or plays more satisfying, or are they equally so?
SS: I have graphomania, apparently, so any kind of writing is fine.