Description
Book SynopsisIn this provocative collection of memoirs, eight acclaimed writers go about the risky business of telling their own secrets. Collectively, they provide what amounts to a psychic map of American life, from the streets of New York’s East Village–where Peter Trachtenberg’s affair with a fragile ex-prostitute becomes entwined with scenes from an imaginary film noir, to the trailer parks of southern California–where, in a last-ditch bid for affection, Terminator dresses in drag and seduces his abusive mother’s boyfriend. in between, Jane Creighton has an affair with her gentle, sickly brother; Lois Gould recalls Businessman–the flamboyant gentleman who had a string of red-haired mistresses and who, incidentally, was her father; Philip Lopate views his pathologically schlumpy dad in a nursing home; Laurie Stone searches for the connections between her creativity and her addiction to sex; Jerry Stahl remembers his rock-bottom days doing crack in Los Ange
