[PKS]≫ PDF Now Let Talk About Music Gordon Merrick 9780380778676 Books

Now Let Talk About Music Gordon Merrick 9780380778676 Books

Download As PDF : Now Let Talk About Music Gordon Merrick 9780380778676 Books

Now Let Talk About Music Gordon Merrick 9780380778676 Books

Gordon Merrick is the bastard child of F. Scott Fitzgerald and gay porn.

He was so important, in his time. He broke the barriers and demonstrated that gay literature could indeed, be profitable and successful in the marketplace. He was the first, the progenitor of all the serious (and even not-so-serious) authors of gay fiction to follow - to the point that LGBT Fiction has become a very successful genre in its own right. He was important to a twenty-some gay kid like me trying to find a place in the world that hated me and my kind, a voice that said "you are not alone".

That's why I decided to revisit Merrick as a much older, and hopefully, much wiser gay man.

The work doesn't hold up particularly well. As is his style, it's a work of melodrama peppered with over-the-top gay porn. The characters, while ostensibly deep, are, in fact, simply the fevered imaginings of gay people as Merrick wishes they were. First, they are rich. Then, they are beautiful. On top of that, they are all well-endowed, particularly Gerry, the main character, whose only claims to fame appear to be his legendary endowment and his newly found need to live a more authentic and meaningful life.

So who does he fall in love with? A legendary, but impotent, playboy who lives a life of wretched excess with minions to wait on his every need, even cleaning his most private parts for him. The "love of his life" is one of the most superficial people on the planet who can only get involved as a voyeur, both in sex and life - one for whom social convention is more important that either truth or reality.

It is a love destined for failure, and it does fail. Which leaves us with a surprising anomaly, a Gordon Merrick book without a happy ending, unless you consider our erstwhile hero becoming filthy rich upon the death of his stepfather a happy ending.

It's a fairly tedious book, too. It just goes on and on. Lots of travelogue, which is nice (Merrick lived in both Ceylon and Paris), lots of descriptive sex and at least a hundred pages too many of Gerry mooning about like a lovelorn teenage girl. "Now Let's Talk About Music" would have been a better book with fewer pages.

Writing this review was a bit strange for me. After all, there's no fear of discouraging a promising author (Mr. Merrick is deceased) or even turning readers off of gay fiction. And the book was written in a world that has changed dramatically in a very short time, with all kinds of new potential available to gay people to define their lives and families, not to mention a general worldwide disgust with the "rich and famous" where, once, existed mostly admiration. On the other hand, it's not easy to read or review a book in a historical context. The characters live or they don't, their needs and desires resonate with us, or they don't. After all, Shakespeare still stirs and moves us four hundred years after his death. "Now Let's Talk About Music", probably not so much.

His seminal work was "The Lord Won't Mind". Unfortunately, much of what came after was best-seller pap, and I'm afraid this book was just one of those. Too bad.


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Now Let Talk About Music Gordon Merrick 9780380778676 Books Reviews

Gordon Merrick is the bastard child of F. Scott Fitzgerald and gay porn.

He was so important, in his time. He broke the barriers and demonstrated that gay literature could indeed, be profitable and successful in the marketplace. He was the first, the progenitor of all the serious (and even not-so-serious) authors of gay fiction to follow - to the point that LGBT Fiction has become a very successful genre in its own right. He was important to a twenty-some gay kid like me trying to find a place in the world that hated me and my kind, a voice that said "you are not alone".

That's why I decided to revisit Merrick as a much older, and hopefully, much wiser gay man.

The work doesn't hold up particularly well. As is his style, it's a work of melodrama peppered with over-the-top gay porn. The characters, while ostensibly deep, are, in fact, simply the fevered imaginings of gay people as Merrick wishes they were. First, they are rich. Then, they are beautiful. On top of that, they are all well-endowed, particularly Gerry, the main character, whose only claims to fame appear to be his legendary endowment and his newly found need to live a more authentic and meaningful life.

So who does he fall in love with? A legendary, but impotent, playboy who lives a life of wretched excess with minions to wait on his every need, even cleaning his most private parts for him. The "love of his life" is one of the most superficial people on the planet who can only get involved as a voyeur, both in sex and life - one for whom social convention is more important that either truth or reality.

It is a love destined for failure, and it does fail. Which leaves us with a surprising anomaly, a Gordon Merrick book without a happy ending, unless you consider our erstwhile hero becoming filthy rich upon the death of his stepfather a happy ending.

It's a fairly tedious book, too. It just goes on and on. Lots of travelogue, which is nice (Merrick lived in both Ceylon and Paris), lots of descriptive sex and at least a hundred pages too many of Gerry mooning about like a lovelorn teenage girl. "Now Let's Talk About Music" would have been a better book with fewer pages.

Writing this review was a bit strange for me. After all, there's no fear of discouraging a promising author (Mr. Merrick is deceased) or even turning readers off of gay fiction. And the book was written in a world that has changed dramatically in a very short time, with all kinds of new potential available to gay people to define their lives and families, not to mention a general worldwide disgust with the "rich and famous" where, once, existed mostly admiration. On the other hand, it's not easy to read or review a book in a historical context. The characters live or they don't, their needs and desires resonate with us, or they don't. After all, Shakespeare still stirs and moves us four hundred years after his death. "Now Let's Talk About Music", probably not so much.

His seminal work was "The Lord Won't Mind". Unfortunately, much of what came after was best-seller pap, and I'm afraid this book was just one of those. Too bad.