A Memory of Fictions
(or) Just Titty-Boom - A Novel
A Memory of Fictions (or) Just
Titty-Boom concerns a black character but is
not a "black book." It concerns a gay character,
but is not a "gay book." The narrative is
non-linear and the techniques it employs are unusual
in this context. No one has suggested it is
boring. Just the opposite, in fact.
But commercial in the traditional sense or conventional in the literary sense? No.
However, I stubbornly insist on believing that the book is entertaining, even if it's not bound to be everyone's cup of tea. This being the 21st century and all, I offer it up here for the entertainment of readers online--just click the image above.
Description below. If it sounds interesting to you, I sincerely hope you enjoy:
Part memoir, part fiction (and refusing the fantasy of much difference between the two), A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Titty-Boom, uses a fugue-like structure to create a modernist take on the bildungsroman, chronicling the psychological, social and cultural coming of age of its main character, a young, black, hopelessly bourgeois, Harvard-educated gay man from the Kennedy 60s to the Reagan 80s, dealing with the contradictions all of the above imply. His past is not past but dictates his present and colors his future; and they all intertwine in this novel.
This jazzy take on the coming-of-age form uses everything from poetry, images, lyrics, and diaries to paint a portrait of Jessie Vincent Grandier, battling to reconcile his existence with expectations and preconceptions of those around him -- black and white. He shoulders the weight of his black bourgeois family’s pride and fear through the 60s and 70s, and a death that tears his world apart. If not broken, then seemingly irreparably bent, he wends his way through Harvard in the 70s, and stumbles through LA, liquor and love in the Reagan 80s. When his grandiose ambitions have abandoned him, when he’s almost beaten, and when he's a breath away from too late, he looks back and regards the jagged shards of his life. He takes the cuts and bruises as he pieces them together. A ribald, brutal and unique look at self, race, sex, and redemption the hard way.
A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Titty-Boom
But commercial in the traditional sense or conventional in the literary sense? No.
However, I stubbornly insist on believing that the book is entertaining, even if it's not bound to be everyone's cup of tea. This being the 21st century and all, I offer it up here for the entertainment of readers online--just click the image above.
Description below. If it sounds interesting to you, I sincerely hope you enjoy:
Part memoir, part fiction (and refusing the fantasy of much difference between the two), A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Titty-Boom, uses a fugue-like structure to create a modernist take on the bildungsroman, chronicling the psychological, social and cultural coming of age of its main character, a young, black, hopelessly bourgeois, Harvard-educated gay man from the Kennedy 60s to the Reagan 80s, dealing with the contradictions all of the above imply. His past is not past but dictates his present and colors his future; and they all intertwine in this novel.
This jazzy take on the coming-of-age form uses everything from poetry, images, lyrics, and diaries to paint a portrait of Jessie Vincent Grandier, battling to reconcile his existence with expectations and preconceptions of those around him -- black and white. He shoulders the weight of his black bourgeois family’s pride and fear through the 60s and 70s, and a death that tears his world apart. If not broken, then seemingly irreparably bent, he wends his way through Harvard in the 70s, and stumbles through LA, liquor and love in the Reagan 80s. When his grandiose ambitions have abandoned him, when he’s almost beaten, and when he's a breath away from too late, he looks back and regards the jagged shards of his life. He takes the cuts and bruises as he pieces them together. A ribald, brutal and unique look at self, race, sex, and redemption the hard way.
A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Titty-Boom