About the Book

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Between thought and language: the body. 

A collection of 16 portrait-fictions – 15 men & a boy.

Visceral, luminous & opaque – a veil-writing on the borderline of intimacy and invasion. Literary, the writing as much a character as its inhabitants. The pieces are generally undated; generally read as now or the near future; many obviously in NYC; some location undefined; one perhaps another planet. The erotic drives it – all. But that’s – probably – not the misunderstood thing. More essentially – lived somatic life – as words – as love – the nurturing catastrophe of relationship – grounds.

These men, furious, tender stupid and bright, forlorn and unforgiven, in a world without trace.

It is adult work, in its exploration of sexual life; it is Jewish work, in that many of the men are identifiably such; and as there’s no title story, the work as a whole – ultimately an unprovable, sensed unity - is lit by the title’s spiritual failure and passion.

Includes the Mary Gaitskill-chosen 2012 Summer Literary Seminars' winning story "See Oh Oh Pee [that]", published in Black Warrior Review; and others previously appearing in H.O.W. Journal, Paraphilia Magazine, and Lemon Hound.