Bodies and Souls: A Novel
Dec 2007 · Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
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452
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About this ebook
"A memorable feast . . . powerful, chilling, moving . . . extraordinary" from the bestselling author of City of Night and The Sexual Outlaw ( Los Angeles Times).
An exceptional novel from the bestselling author of the modern classic City of Night, Bodies and Souls is a portrait of modern Los Angeles on an epic scale, "the most spiritual and physical of cities." Gorgeous, seedy, and striving, the Los Angeles of Rechy's imagination is a magnetic city that draws to it the nation's brightest and darkest energies—characters that include a female porn superstar; a young Chicano punk-rock fan; a Bel Air matron and her tyrannical husband, a Supreme Court judge; an aging male stripper; a black maid with apocalyptic visions; and a cynical TV anchorwoman. Through this rich tapestry of human struggle, Rechy paints a lush portrait of a paradise lost but also a heroic odyssey in search of redemption.
"Masterful . . . one of the most important novels of the year." — Dallas Times Herald
"There's so much energy, ambition, and humor in Bodies and Souls that the phrase 'scarred beauty' might well describe the novel." — The New York Times Book Review
"Brilliant portraits of modern lives . . . superb." — San Francisco Chronicle
"Rechy is very good at evoking the seamier side of the streets, and he is masterful in funny, graphic sex scenes." — Publishers Weekly
An exceptional novel from the bestselling author of the modern classic City of Night, Bodies and Souls is a portrait of modern Los Angeles on an epic scale, "the most spiritual and physical of cities." Gorgeous, seedy, and striving, the Los Angeles of Rechy's imagination is a magnetic city that draws to it the nation's brightest and darkest energies—characters that include a female porn superstar; a young Chicano punk-rock fan; a Bel Air matron and her tyrannical husband, a Supreme Court judge; an aging male stripper; a black maid with apocalyptic visions; and a cynical TV anchorwoman. Through this rich tapestry of human struggle, Rechy paints a lush portrait of a paradise lost but also a heroic odyssey in search of redemption.
"Masterful . . . one of the most important novels of the year." — Dallas Times Herald
"There's so much energy, ambition, and humor in Bodies and Souls that the phrase 'scarred beauty' might well describe the novel." — The New York Times Book Review
"Brilliant portraits of modern lives . . . superb." — San Francisco Chronicle
"Rechy is very good at evoking the seamier side of the streets, and he is masterful in funny, graphic sex scenes." — Publishers Weekly
"A memorable feast . . . powerful, chilling, moving . . . extraordinary" from the bestselling author of City of Night and The Sexual Outlaw ( Los Angeles Times).
An exceptional novel from the bestselling author of the modern classic City of Night, Bodies and Souls is a portrait of modern Los An...
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About the author
Rechy is an important gay writer also linked to the Beat Movement, whose work has been recognized by a number of prestigious grant nominations or awards, including one from the National Endowment for the Arts. He grew up in El Paso, Texas, in a poor, Mexican American family. Because of his poverty and his ethnic heritage, he learned very early in life to feel himself an outsider, which was intensified by his later experiences as a gay hustler traveling America in search of his social and sexual identity. He came to popular and critical attention with his first published novel, City of Night (1963), which was a bestseller and was nominated for the International Prix Formentor. A fictionalized account of his travels, the novel focuses on the people whom the unnamed narrator encounters on the hustling scene in a number of cities, including New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Together, these cities make up the titular "city of night," or, as Rechy writes, "the city of night of the soul." A state of mind rather than a particular place, this "city"---modern America---is where hypocrisy and homophobia are reconciled with the fact of homosexuality in various forms, and poverty may be more spiritual than material. The book owes something to two classics: Jack Kerouac's Beat novel, On the Road, which celebrates countercultural alternatives to middle-class culture and lifestyles, including bourgeois marriage and family life, and Djuna Barnes's modernist novel Nightwood, which explores a tragic gay "nightworld" as a symbol of the modern urban wasteland. Rechy addresses similar themes in a later work that is equally well known, The Sexual Outlaw (1977), which he has described as an experiment with the novel form. Ostensibly a documentary of the life of a gay man, the book is also a critique of American values and morality. Commentaries throughout the text are really journalistic essays that expose the double standards and double binds of a "closeted" culture, in which many fear to be openly gay because of homophobic reprisals. Rechy has suggested that all of his work (which includes plays, essays, and reviews, as well as novels) articulates the need to preserve gay "difference," which he associates with "abundant sexuality," in the face of increasing "heterofascism."
Rechy is an important gay writer also linked to the Beat Movement, whose work has been recognized by a number of prestigious grant nominations or awards, including one from the National Endowment for the Arts. He grew up in El Paso, Texas, in a poor, Mexican American family. Because of his povert...
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