Bøker av Felice Picano

Bold, funny, and shockingly honest, Ambidextrous is like no other memoir of 1950s urban childhood. Picano appears to his parents and siblings to be a happy, cheerful eleven-year-old, possessed of the remarkable talent of being able to draw beautifully and write fluently with either hand. But then he runs into the mindless bigotry of a middle school teacher who insists that left-handedness is "wrong," and his idyllic world falls apart. He uncovers the insatiable appetites of a trio of neighboring sisters, falls for another boy with a glue-sniffing habit, and discovers the hidden world of adult desire and hypocrisy. Picano exits his boyhood sooner than most, but with this sense of self intact and armed with a fuller understanding of the world he is about to enter.

Felice Picano''s first collection of gay short stories spans the period 1975-1982 as published by the pioneering Gay Presses of New York. Read again forty years later, they are a delicious time-capsule of gay life mostly before AIDS and set in iconic gay meccas such as New York and Fire Island. In "Spinning", we get inside the head of a DJ busy spinning for the customers, tricking in his mind and deftly conjuring up the disco subculture which has since faded away. In "The Interrupted Recital" we eavesdrop into the classical music world where ego clashes lead to disastrous outcomes.There are marvelous character portraits as in "Teddy", about a handsome Vietnam vet back home for a quick furlough. Or the evocation of Christmas in multiple New York households in "Xmas in the Apple". Longer works such as "Hunter", set in a writer''s colony, are pure horror fiction. The longest piece, the novella "And Baby Makes Three", spreads its wings recreating Fire Island of the 1970s and features Picano''s trademark surprises and miscues which make the tale memorable long after the last page is turned.First published to acclaim in 1982, this new edition features a foreword by Eric Andrews-Katz (The Jesus Injection).

Handsome, intelligent, street-smart, ruthlessly ambitious, and omnisexual, young Addison Grimmins has been hired by the Lord Exchequer of England to be his second and to do what Lord R. cannot do himself. After a country estate wedding, the Marchioness of R. is discovered missing. Is it a kidnapping or...a more sinister plot? Addison vows to find her and bring her back no matter what it takes. It is the 1880s and despite only letters, bribed information, and telegrams as communication; despite only horse, coach, and train service as transportation, Addison tracks Lady R. across Europe, via the strangest people and places: from Venetian palaces to opium dens. Who and what he discovers about her, and more fatefully about his own life, will lead Addison to the crisis of his life, an extraordinary decision, and a stiletto duel with his most implacable foe.

Bright, ambitious, and handsome, Ross Ohrenstedt is a high flier in the fashionable field of queer studies. He has just taken a prestigious university position in Los Angeles and has been appointed to oversee the collection of papers and works of a leading light of the gay literary salon known as the Purple Circle. Ross stumbles across a lost work by an unknown author and his quest to identify the mystery writer and achieve the glory of scholastic tenure unveils increasingly bizarre and unbalanced facts about a group of writers who in the 1970s and 1980s broke new ground in the creation of a gay literary sensibility. But the dark truth contained within The Book of Lies is even more startling.With biting wit and a lush sense of place and character, Felice Picano's daring novel is at once a stylish mystery, a comical roman-à-clef, and a wicked send-up of the new Ivory Tower.First published to acclaim in 1998, this new edition for 2020 features a foreword by David Bergman (The Violet Hour)."The Book of Lies is funny, dark, sexy, shocking, and yes, smart. Set in the near future ('decades after Stonewall'), the novel tells of a young scholar trying to make his academic bones on the literary bodies of the 'Purple Circle'. Picano skewers the pedagogically pretentious with ease and wit. A wonderful novel, with some of Picano's best writing." - Bay Area Reporter"Picano treats his nonpulpy subject matter - grieving, the book business, the teaching business - in a pulpy way, and the results are surprisingly entertaining." - The New York Times Book Review"Based on Picano's involvement with the Violet Quill Club (which included Edmund White and Andrew Holleran), this is an absorbing Henry James-style comedy of manners about how even when some writers find their way out of the closet, others still get left behind." - The Mail on Sunday"Felice Picano's new novel, his 19th book, is a story rich with history - a history that Picano himself was part of and helped shape ..." - The Washington Blade"Leave it to Felice Picano to add a walloping dose of melodrama and intrigue to a tale already redrawing genre boundaries ... What Picano does is take an academic mystery (subject matter that might have proved tedious or solipsistic in lesser hands) and morphs it into something new - a page-turning, often campy, occasionally serious critique of academia and historical truth, literary celebrity, and the imminent future of America." - Philadelphia Tribune

Victor Regina should be perfectly happy in New York. His novels are best sellers, he has a kick-ass agent, and the upcoming Black Party at the exclusive club Flamingo promises to be a cornucopia of gay desire. But New York is hard. The city is gripped by a winter that won't quit, and although he has plenty of dishy friends, there is no lover in the picture. When his agent calls with an offer from Hollywood to adapt his latest novel, Justify My Sins, for a famous director, he jumps at the chance.In ';El Lay,' the sun is warm, the food is fantastic, the men are plentiful and eager. It's all so easy. So easy, in fact, that Victor begins to suspect there's nothing quite real about itnot the quick affairs, not the luxurious cars and ostentatious architecture, and certainly not the film script or scenario or treatment or whatever the hell it is everyone wants him to write. He begins to long for NYC, hard but real.Noted names and events of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s intermingle with public triumphs and private tragedies in this hilarious roman clef with a heart. Felice Picano exposes the clash between celebrity and integrity, the rivalry between love and lust, while showcasing the grittiness of Manhattan and the voluptuousness of Hollywood. Through disastrous production meetings, steamy sex clubs, and encounters with friends who grow old, or strange, or both, Victor tries not once, not twice, but three times to find authenticity and contentment in a life that, while perhaps never fully justified, is fully lived.

'Explosive...Felice Picano is one hell of a writer' Stephen King. Shocking and controversial when first published in 1979, The Lure rocketed Felice Picano to fame with its candid description of the gay subculture of the era. Now a gay classic.

In the early 1970s, when he was still an aspiring, unpublished writer, Felice Picano had a days-old kitten slated for euthanasia who refused to perish. Rescued, named, and trained, Fred became a companion. Fred in Love is a story about how we learn and grow, and how we love.

'A hugely ambitious and engrossing saga...gloriously camp and also acts as a critique of America in general' - Guardian

*Bringing to life three decades of gay history, a campus novel of love, intrigue and betrayal from the winner of the GAY TIMES Readers' Award for Fiction 1996.