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Alvin’s 2022 Year in Books
Take a look at Alvin’s Year in Books. The long, the short—it’s all here.
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Alvin Orloff
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Born
in Los Angeles, The United States
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April 2007
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Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person
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published
2004
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Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997
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published
2019
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3 editions
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The Unsinkable Bambi Lake: A Fairy Tale Containing The Dish On Cockettes, Punks, And Angels
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published
1996
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2 editions
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I Married An Earthling: A Novel
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published
2000
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Gutterboys
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published
2004
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Why Aren't You Smiling?
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published
2011
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4 editions
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Vulgarian Rhapsody
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I was not prepared for the weirdness!
The English eccentric, Quentin Crisp, once said that, "Only a lie is boring," and I believe that truer words were ne'er spoke. I wanted my memoir, "Disasterama!" to be exciting, so I told the truth about my louche and feckless youth as a club kid, hustler, and somewhat delusional cultural activist. When, after 56 rejections, it was accepted by Three Rooms Press for publication in the fall of '19,
Read more of this blog post »
Alvin’s Recent Updates
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Alvin
is now friends with
Olivia Jones
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Alvin
rated a book liked it
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| This hot mess of a book contains humor, lyrical beauty, fascinating characters, a compelling plot, and moments of delightfully surreal and surprising weirdness. Sadly, the language is tortured - even by 19th century standards. Huge chunks are basical ...more | |
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Alvin
rated a book it was amazing
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| Lunatic drag queens, hustlers, junkies, and art-damaged weirdoes abound in this charmingly written and meticulously researched bio. Anyone interested in the social history of gender bending and queer culture is advised to read this ASAP. It's not jus ...more | |
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Alvin
rated a book really liked it
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| Lingo is full of fascinating factoids dealt out in pithy little chapters, each dealing with one European language. A few chapters deal with linguistic matters so academic it turns them into information dumps, but only a very few. Mostly the book is h ...more | |
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Alvin
rated a book it was amazing
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| Orner's ever-so-slightly droll graphic style is pleasing to the eye and Congressman Frank's life makes for an engaging read. Stories of closets and coming out are - let's admit it – pretty played out at this point, but in this case the political aspe ...more | |
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Alvin
rated a book really liked it
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| Garbo is full of gossip, but also recounts the process by which Garbo became an ICON, which says a lot about human nature, the nature of mass media, and the nature of the culture industry. Gottlieb writes with a light touch, which is appreciated, and ...more | |
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"There are a lot of books about Greta Garbo out there, and as someone who really knew nothing about her (but enjoys reading about "Old Hollywood,") I recommend this as a great place to start.
Not only is Gottlieb exhaustive in his own research - which " Read more of this review » |
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Alvin
rated a book liked it
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| I'm usually fine with quiet, float-y, plotless, atmospheric novels, but this one didn't make much of an impression. The characters and setting were well drawn, and I liked learning a bit about the situation of Koreans in Japan, but the overall effect ...more | |
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Alvin
rated a book it was amazing
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| A terrific collection! Rather heavy on heavy subjects, but I guess we're living through some pretty heavy times. ...more | |
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Alvin
rated a book it was amazing
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| Just reread this extraordinary book, which is a must read for anyone who appreciates highly idiosyncratic prose stylists. Nothing of great import happens to the narrator, an upper-crust English teenager with a love of beautiful things, but his voice ...more | |
“Reagan's going to mess everything up, cutting taxes for the wealthy and getting rid of the safety net and all that. The rich and the poor won't be able to mix socially. The rich will be afraid of getting ripped off or asked for money and the poor won't be able to afford to hang out in the same places anyway. Society's going to be divided by class and instead of expressing themselves, people are going to spend all their time advertising their status. It'll be shallow, like the Eisenhower era. Parties will suck.”
― Gutterboys
― Gutterboys
“Unlike prostitution or promiscuity, stripping was entirely public. One foot on the state would forever mark me as a disreputable character, the sort respectable people called a sleaze. On the other hand ... I didn't know any respectable people and my workday would be a mere thirty minutes long. And, I had to face it, some quirk of my psychic constitution rendered the strictures of ordinary jobs insufferable to me. Restaurant work felt like a cross between the treadmill at the gym and one of those Japanese game shows on which contestants are abused and humiliated in front of a sadistic audience. Office work was even worse, calling to mind those B movies in which some poor soul--bound and gagged, but eyes wide with terror--is slowly walled up brick-by-brick in the dungeon of some damp, rat-infested Transylvanian castle.”
― Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997
― Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997
“I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.”
― Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt
― Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt
“It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.”
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“As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.”
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“As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.
But the frogs die in earnest.”
― The Female Man
But the frogs die in earnest.”
― The Female Man
“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
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Hi Alvin, thanks for the add. I had no idea you wrote "Why Aren't You Smiling?," it's already on my TBR list!
Wow, great to meet you!
Alvin