Synopses & Reviews
Jonathan Ascher, an acclaimed 1960s radical writer and cultural hero, has been dead for thirty years.
When a would-be biographer approaches Ascher’s widow Martha, she delves for the first time into her husband’s papers and all the secrets that come tumbling out of them. She finds journals that begin as a wisecracking chronicle of life at the fringes of the New York literary scene, then recount Ascher’s sexual adventures in the pre-Stonewall gay underground and the social upheavals that led to his famous book “JD.” As Martha reads on, she finds herself in a long-distance conversation with her dead husband, fighting with him again about their rocky marriage and learning about the unseen tragedy in her own apartment that ended with the destruction of their son, Mickey. Mickey comes to life in the space between Jonathan and Martha’s conflicting portraits of him, while Martha and the biographer tangle over the continued relevance of Jonathan’s politics and his unfulfilled vision of a nation remade. Martha learns about herself, finally, through her confrontation with a man who will not let her go, even in death.
Mark Merlis’s JD is a brilliant and harrowing view of a half century of the American experiment, acted out on a small stage by three people who cannot find a way—neither sex nor touch nor words—to speak their love for one another.
Review
Truly bracing in its border-crossing and the wide sweep of spaces it explores,
Little Reef and Other Stories is an unblinkered, wide-vista escape from New YorkLos Angeles parochialism.”Tim Miller, author of
1001 Beds Review
These stories, keenlyeven cruellyobservant, occupy the verges of love and death where the truest and most recklessly aware emotions abide. Romantic yet bitterly insightful, this is a solid, smart collection.”Joy Williams, author of
Honored GuestReview
A riveting collection. Casually confessional with the
mea culpa banished,
Little Reef and Other Stories makes new the much explored terrain of New York City and makes the reader feel disturbingly comfortable in unfamiliar places. Here, the dreams of the people conflict with lifes unexpected demands and watchfulness replaces restlessness.”Ann Beattie, author of
The New Yorker StoriesReview
The dialogue is pitch-perfect.
Little Reef and Other Stories will, of course, appeal to gay readers, but it will also appeal to people who like good writing, or who have a need to read fiction which is set in that dream-space between New York and more traditional American spaces, or in that hazy area between a self in the making and a self already formed.”Colm Tóibín, author of
The Testament of MaryReview
"Mr. Carroll's world is a little vicious, slippery in its sexuality, discontinuous, fracturingstrangely reminiscent of the hootier, hard-candy end of the Tennessee Williams spectrum. It is flat-out odd, fun, and seeming true."Padgett Powell, author of You and Me
Review
“An important novel that masterfully evokes the tensions and social upheavals of the 1960s and sheds a fresh and highly insightful light on gay liberation, family life, and American masculinity.”—Trebor Healey, author of
A Horse Named Sorrow and
FaunReview
“Powered by stunning emotional, intellectual, and erotic complexities,
JD is a trenchant portrait of a marriage and its heartbreaking casualties and, at the same time, something far more ambitious: a disquieting meditation on how and why America’s best hopes went so stupendously awry during the 1960s and early 1970s. What emerges is an angry, loving hymn to a generation’s failure to create the world we so passionately believed we longed for. There is no better novelist at work in our troubled country right now than Mark Merlis.”—Paul Russell, author of
The Unreal Life of Sergey NabokovReview
“This is vintage Merlis: historical yet timely, intellectually rich, bracingly witty, unnervingly erotic, and, finally, deeply tender and affecting.”—Michael Lowenthal, author of
The Paternity Test and
Charity GirlReview
“An amazing novel: beautifully written, ingeniously structured, involving and dangerous. The two narrative voices here, a wife and a husband, are perfectly realized. Martha in particular is a remarkable character—I've never read anyone like her in American fiction. This is a chamber drama about one family, yet it’s full of windows that look out on the wider worlds of the Vietnam War, New York literary politics, and the gay revolution. Mark Merlis is a major writer and this is his best novel yet.”—Christopher Bram, author of
Eminent Outlaws and
Gods and MonstersSynopsis
Little Reef and Other Stories is a collection of stories that dramatize the lives of contemporary gay men, their families, and especially the women who become important in their lives.
Synopsis
Jonathan Ascher, an acclaimed 1960s radical writer and cultural hero, has been dead for thirty years.
When a would-be biographer approaches Ascher s widow Martha, she delves for the first time into her husband s papers and all the secrets that come tumbling out of them. She finds journals that begin as a wisecracking chronicle of life at the fringes of the New York literary scene, then recount Ascher s sexual adventures in the pre-Stonewall gay underground and the social upheavals that led to his famous book JD. As Martha reads on, she finds herself in a long-distance conversation with her dead husband, fighting with him again about their rocky marriage and learning about the unseen tragedy in her own apartment that ended with the destruction of their son, Mickey. Mickey comes to life in the space between Jonathan and Martha s conflicting portraits of him, while Martha and the biographer tangle over the continued relevance of Jonathan s politics and his unfulfilled vision of a nation remade. Martha learns about herself, finally, through her confrontation with a man who will not let her go, even in death.
Mark Merlis s JD is a brilliant and harrowing view of a half century of the American experiment, acted out on a small stage by three people who cannot find a way neither sex nor touch nor words to speak their love for one another.
Best Books of 2015: Fiction, Open Letters Monthly
Finalist, Gay Fiction, Lambda Literary Award
Finalist, Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction, Publishing Triangle
Best books for public & secondary school libraries from university presses, American Library Association
Many years after a 60s New York writer's death, his widow confronts their tumultuous marriage and private identities through his journals. . . . JD s most masterful element is its treatment of these two characters, both of whom spent their lives groping for contentment like one trying to find a light switch in a darkened room. A great writer offers not just tight prose but also insight, a series of probing questions that extend from the fictional world into the real one. JD asks who its characters were, and in doing so, forces the reader to confront the intricate and fascinating politics of identity. Shelf Awareness for Readers, *starred review
A truly impressive work of literary fiction, JD documents author Mark Merlis as an extraordinary novelist able to deftly craft a complex plot and populate it with a roster of inherently fascinating characters and memorable events. The result is an entertaining and engaging read that will linger in the mind long after the book is finished. Very highly recommended for both community and academic library literary fiction collections. Midwest Book Review/Reviewer s Bookwatch
The fantastic JD (U. of Wisconsin), by acclaimed gay writer Mark Merlis (American Studies), is the writer's first novel in a dozen years. It's told in two voices. The first is that of the late gay writer Jonathan Ascher, and we hear from him through his journals. The second belongs to his widow Martha, who learns more about Jonathan than she ever imagined while reading the journals after agreeing to help a biographer of her late husband. Gregg Shapiro, Bay Area Reporter"
Synopsis
Dashingly told and meticulously researched, this double biography of D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda von Richthofen is the first to draw fully on Frieda s unpublished letters and on interviews with people who knew her well. It explores their collision with an industrial world they hated and chronicles the stormy relationship between husband and wife. The strong sexual vitality that inspired Lawrence s art brought both joy and anguish to his marriage. Here, the Lawrences emerge as proud but not conceited in their unconventional lives, staunch in the face of fierce opposition from a conformist society.
Living at the Edge follows the separate lives of Lawrence and Frieda up to their first meeting in 1912. Tracing their new life together, it depicts their grateful escape from the English Midlands; their discovery of exotic places where they made temporary homes Italy, Cornwall, Australia, New Mexico, and Mexico; Lawrence s courageous battle against illness; and, after his death in 1930, Frieda s success in recreating the simple life on ranches near Taos, New Mexico, where she died in 1956.
At the center of their story is Lawrence s literary career. Biographers Squires and Talbot see Lawrence s major novels The Rainbow, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley s Lover as a fresh way to understand his turbulent and conflicted life. They reveal the extreme care with which he rewrote his personal experience to satisfy his deepest needs, and they introduce the many influential people who entered the Lawrences lives and work. The rich materials from Frieda s letters reveal a different Lawrence more difficult as a man but more interesting as an artist; they also reveal a different Frieda more vibrant as a woman, more substantial as a companion. This superb biography gives both Lawrence and Frieda striking new dimensions."
Synopsis
Little Reef and Other Stories announces the arrival of an original voice in literature. From Key West to Maine, Michael Carrolls debut collection of stories depicts the lives of characters who are no longer provincial but are not yet cosmopolitan. These women and their gay male friends are B-listers” of a new, ironic, media-soaked culture. They live in a rich but increasingly divided America, a weirdly paradoxical country increasingly accepting of gay marriage but still marked by prejudice, religious strictures, and swaths of poverty and hopelessness. Carroll shows us people stunned by the shock of the now, who have forgotten their pasts and cant envision a future.
Synopsis
Thirty years after Jonathan Ascher’s death, Martha finally opens her husband’s journals and discovers his secret affairs with men as well as his all-absorbing passion for their deceased son, Mickey. Through the dysfunctional marriage between Martha and Jonathan Ascher as well as the story of Mickey’s untimely death, Mark Merlis shows readers a vivid picture of a family who cannot find a way through sex or touch or words to speak their love for one another.
About the Author
Mark Merlis is the author of the highly praised novels
American Studies,
An Arrow’s Flight, and
Man About Town, which have garnered awards including a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Ferro-Grumley Award, and a Lambda Literary Award. He grew up in Baltimore and lives in Philadelphia. For more information, visit www.markmerlis.com.
Table of Contents
Part One: After Dallas
From the Desk of . . . Hunter B. Gwathmey
Referred Pain
Barracuda
Her Biographers
Little Reef
Pascagoula
Werewolf
Part Two: After Memphis
First Responder
Admissions
Lack
Avenging Angel
Unsticking